Sioux Falls Stampede

The Sioux Falls Stampede is a Tier 1 junior ice hockey team playing in the West Division of the United States Hockey League (USHL). Based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the Stampede plays its home games at the Denny Sanford PREMIER Center.

In the 2005-2006 season, the Stampede won their first Anderson Cup for the best regular season record as well as their first division championship. The Stampede advanced in the playoffs, dispatching the Tri-City Storm in five games (best-of-five) and the Lincoln Stars in four games (best-of-five), earning the right to represent the West division in the Clark Cup Finals. They lost to the Des Moines Buccaneers in five games (best-of-five).

The 2006-07 season looked grim at the outset with the Stampede earning but a single point in their first six games. After bottom dwelling for the entire first half, the Stampede became one of the hottest teams during the second half of the season. They entered the playoffs as the four seed in the West and quickly dispatched the Lincoln Stars in four games for the second straight year (best-of-seven). After losing to Des Moines in the first game of the round robin, Sioux Falls defeated the Tri-City Storm in overtime to make it into the final four. The Indiana Ice were their next opponent and were undefeated in the playoffs until the Stampede prevailed over them, again in overtime, to advance to the championship game against the host team of the event, the Waterloo Black Hawks. The Stampede shutout the Black Hawks 3-0 to win their first Clark Cup.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Sioux Falls (/ˌsuː ˈfɔːlz/) (Lakota: Íŋyaŋ Okábleča Otȟúŋwahe; "Stone Shatter City") is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Dakota. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County, and also extends into Lincoln County to the south. It is the 47th fastest-growing city in the United States and the fastest-growing metro area in South Dakota, with a population increase of 22% between 2000 and 2010.

As of 2014, Sioux Falls had an estimated population of 168,586. The metropolitan population of 248,351 accounts for 29% of South Dakota's population. It is also the primary city of the Sioux Falls-Sioux City Designated Market Area (DMA), a larger media market region that covers parts of four states and has a population of 1,043,450. Chartered in 1856 on the banks of the Big Sioux River, the city is situated in the rolling hills on the western edge of the Midwest at the junction of Interstate 90 and Interstate 29.

History

The history of Sioux Falls revolves around the cascades of the Big Sioux River. The falls were created about 14,000 years ago during the last ice age. The lure of the falls has been a powerful influence. Ho-Chunk, Ioway, Otoe, Missouri, Omaha (and Ponca at the time), Quapaw, Kansa, Osage, Arikira, Dakota, Nakota and Cheyenne people inhabited the region previous to European descendants. Numerous burial mounds still exist on the high bluffs near the river. The inhabitants maintained an agricultural society with fortified villages on many of the same sites that were previously settled. Lakota populate urban and reservation communities in the contemporary state and many Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, and other Indigenous Americans reside in Sioux Falls today.