The last 12 months in the Sioux Falls area brought everything from extreme weather, to celebrations to heartaches, and Argus Leader photojournalists were there to capture many moments in our community’s history.
In preparing for the new year, we also take time to look back and reflect on the moments that made 2019 memorable.
Here’s a month-by-month look at the year in photos:
On Jan. 5, Gov. Kristi Noem took her oath of office and made history as the first woman to serve as governor of South Dakota.
Her inauguration drew a packed house at the state Capitol, and in the hour-long ceremony, the 47-year-old former Congresswoman promised to govern with an eye to the future.
“The North Star that I want to follow with each decision I make as governor is the impact on the next generation. How does this policy, this legislation, this program, impact the next generation of South Dakotans?” she said in her inauguration speech.
► You couldn’t have scripted a better ending to this year’s Hanson Classic. With the final shot of the tournament, Ethan junior Carly Van Roekel, who has Down syndrome, hit a two-pointer at the buzzer.
An Argus Leader investigation in February introduced readers to Nick Johnson, a teen who battles several mental illnesses that have landed him in the Juvenile Detention Center.
Sioux Falls and other South Dakota communities rely on jail cells as part of their mental health system, even though national advocacy groups are critical of the practice and local jail officials say their facilities aren’t designed for mental health treatment.
South Dakota is one of five states where this procedure, putting people in jail on what’s known as an involuntary mental health hold, is an option provided in statute.
These are people like Johnson, struggling with a diagnosed mental illness. Jailing people for being in crisis criminalizes mental health, traumatizes an already sick person who needs treatment and is a potential violation of their Constitutional due process rights.
► On Feb. 28, Former Sioux Falls Fire Rescue Chief Jim Sideras was given a suspended six-year sentence for child pornography possession, meaning he would not spend time behind bars.
Minnehaha County’s then-State’s Attorney Aaron McGowan addressed the media following the sentencing. It was the first of many moments in 2019 in which McGowan would make headlines. The 45-year-old resigned in early December amid an investigation that he sexually harassed employees in his office.
That investigation followed an earlier probe from Attorney General’s Office, prompted by the governor, which looked into McGowan’s extended absences from work.
► A wild year of weather started out with a stretch of cold worthy of the Night King. From early February to early March, Sioux Falls went more than a month without temperatures above freezing — the longest stretch of the decade.
In late March, the Big Sioux River hit a “major” flood level, and floodwaters hit homes in both Dell Rapids and Renner.
The water came up so fast that one family of four had to be evacuated from their home.
► A core group of Brandon Valley seniors that had been together since elementary school closed out their high school careers with a 60-40 victory over No. 3 Lincoln in the Class AA state championship game in Rapid City.
“I’ve been playing with these girls since we were in fifth grade,” said guard Trinity Law, who led all scorers with 17 points. “Being able to win it here with those girls — and some younger girls to show them what this program is all about — it’s amazing. It’s amazing.”
A new housing program put together by a housing action team under Sioux Falls Thrive began helping families like Hanah Christman’s find stability, meant to give low-income families a stronger chance at overcoming poverty and minimizing high mobility rates for children.
Called OneRoof, the program partners with mostly private property owners who open their doors to at-risk families willing to partner with a case manager and mentorship program to get back on their feet.
►The Rock Steady Program at the Inn on Westport empowers people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that typically progresses from a tremor in the hand to balance issues and problems with speech.
The classes of high intensity training are designed to slow down the progression of Parkinson’s in the program’s 50 boxers.
“When you step through that door you’re an athlete, not a person with Parkinson’s,” coach and program director Lisa Howard said.
More than 1,500 students from Sioux Falls’ four public high schools earned their diplomas on May 26 in ceremonies at the Sioux Falls Arena.
► The Arc of Dreams, a sculpture six years in the making, arrived in Sioux Falls on May 18. The 70-foot tall structure sculpted by Dale Lamphere was built with to celebrate the SculptureWalk and Sioux Falls.
The full sculpture was installed in June, with a lighting ceremony to dedicate the artwork soon after.
► Josephine Dal clocked an impressive 14.75 on the 100 hurdles at the state track meet in Sioux Falls before transitioning to the field, where she won the long jump (17-11) by .75 inches over Yankton’s Jaiden Boomsma. Add in a runner-up finish in the 300 hurdles (44.33) and a strong showing the 4×4, and Dal had a dominating day.
Crowds lined Phillips Avenue on June 15 to watch Sioux Falls’ first pride parade, a prelude to the day’s Pride in the Park festival.
Local businesses and organizations showed their support for the city’s LGBTQ community during the half-hour parade, which featured dozens of participants and floats.
► The first concert at the Levitt at the Falls concert facility on June 14 was the culmination of nearly a decade of planning, fundraising and construction that led to the transformation of an empty park lawn into a venue expected to draw thousands of visitors to the heart of Sioux Falls each summer.
The project is a partnership involving the Los Angeles-based National Levitt Foundation, the local nonprofit called Friends of the Levitt that Kirby and former lawmaker Tom Dempster put together and the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.
The inaugural 2019 lineup was limited to 30 concerts, but the agreement between the foundation and the local non-profit calls for at least free 50 shows a year going forward.
► A team from the state Game, Fish and Parks met in several Sioux Falls parks to perform the annual task of affixing identification bands to the legs of the Canadian geese as a way to track their population numbers, hunting survival rates and migration habits.
Sioux Falls police and fire departments teamed up with the city’s parks and recreation department to host a weekly Hydrant Block Party in various parks and neighborhoods through mid-August.
The first block party kicked off at Bakker Park, and the city was already planning more for next summer.
► Jacob Herrboldt, a 26-year-old Tripp native, took up bull-riding competitively this year after the unexpected passing of his brother, Chad Herrboldt.
Before Chad had passed, the two had made a plan to start riding bulls. Chad was already an accomplished horseman, winning handfuls of competitions in his lifetime, but Jacob was new to the rodeo scene.
“I think about him a lot,” Jacob said. “It’s what we wanted to do. I thought I would just go right ahead and do it.”
Jacob has been pushing himself to stay atop for eight seconds, the amount of time a rider must stay on a bull to receive a score.
► A “Sioux Falls street fight” was held in parking lot of the Icon Lounge during the Midwest All Pro Wrestling Super Summer Sizzler Series.
“In a street fight there are no rules,” said Jonathan Coachman, a former World Wrestling Entertainment personality and ESPN commentator. “We can and will do anything to win.”
The spring flooding coupled with tariffs on foreign ag markets made for a tough year for South Dakota farmers and ranchers. So the Sioux Empire Fair waived entry fees for its livestock show competitions for the first time this summer.
“This is a great thing we have come up with to kick off the 80th anniversary, and with the hard times with the farmers and ranchers, we want to give them this opportunity,” said Julie Hammer, administrative assistant for the Sioux Empire Fair.
► The Sioux Falls Airshow came to town mid-August and featured the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds.
The organizers said they think more people came out to the event this year than ever before.
“We’re pretty confident we set records for attendance,” said event chair Rick Tupper, who estimated there were well over 100,000 people.
► The Burke football team hosted Lyman in their first game of the season just a couple of weeks after the town had been hit by a tornado.
“Keep everything in perspective,” Burke coach Mike Sebern told his players before their customary walk to the field. “Football isn’t more important than community. It’s not more important than life. But this is an opportunity for us to heal as a community. The people out there, they’re waiting for you.”
As the players lined up outside their makeshift locker room at the town’s fire station, the heavily damaged high school was visible down the road. This was the same pregame tradition the Cougars have carried on for decades, just with a different route.
Three EF-2 tornadoes packing winds of 130 miles per hour caused significant damage to the Western Mall area of Sioux Falls along 41st Street, the Avera Health complex and a residential neighborhood in the southeastern part of the city on Sept. 10.
The tornadoes caused significant damage to businesses and residences — 37 in all, officials said — and left eight injured, but none of those were serious, Mayor Paul TenHaken said.
The three tornadoes all struck the city within four minutes of each other, the National Weather Service said.
An EF-2 tornado can be measured by winds between 113-157 mph that cause damage to roofs, houses, large trees being snapped or uprooted and cars being lifted off the ground, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
► Flooding pummeled the town of Madison on Sept. 12.
The flooding began in north Madison, quickly overtaking bridges and submerging entire roads before flowing south.
Some parts of town saw anywhere between two to three feet of water, according to Mayor Marshall Dennert, who heard one area reached six feet — enough to cover the tires of a backhoe.
“There was really no way to prepare for this,” Dennert said.
► In the last year, Siouxland Library officials have been focused on finding new ways to captivate young readers and learners by reaching them before they get to kindergarten.
And the best way to make that happen is by breaking social norms and making libraries engaging, fun and loud.
► With players representing (at least) 11 different countries and multiple foreign languages, the Washington boys soccer team is defined, at least in part, by its diversity.
It’s representative of Washington High School, but it has also created some of the challenges this team has had to overcome. Though brought together by a shared passion for the game, the unification of the Warriors has been a two-year process, with players learning to play together as a team and, in some instances, speak the same language.
The Warriors lost to Roosevelt 1-0 in the championship.
Jeff Thompson would normally have three-fourths of his soybeans harvested by the beginning of October. This year, he began harvesting on Oct. 7.
But it’s more than the crops that have Thompson on edge. It’s the tough crop prices and trade problems with China and the carryover soybeans he’s still holding from last year. A lot of soybean farmers are in the same boat, said Thompson, president of the South Dakota Soybean Association.
“It’s not just a South Dakota issue, it’s a Midwest issue,” he said. “It goes down to Missouri, up to Illinois, North Dakota. It’s such a huge area that’s just been so messed up with the weather conditions.”
Farmers were prevented from planting 19.4 million acres of crops nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency. That’s 17.5 million acres more than last year and the highest number of prevented plant acres since the USDA established the program in the 1990s, said U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Bill Northey, a former Iowa agriculture secretary from Spirit Lake east of Sioux Falls.
► Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium, the South Dakota State campus and Brookings became ground zero for the college football world in late October when ESPN’s wildly popular college football pregame show/tailgate party ‘College Gameday’ made the trip to broadcast the show live from College Green on the Jackrabbit campus.
ESPN brought the show to spotlight the Dakota Marker game with rival and national championship powerhouse North Dakota State, spending much of the week in Brookings to record interviews and feature stories that aired on Saturday’s show. They also broadcast live from the set on Friday for ‘College Football Live’.
► Flooding impacted the pheasant hunting season in South Dakota this year.
The state saw a 17% decrease compared to last year in its 2019 pheasant brood survey. The number of roosters increased by 2% and the number of hens decreased by 21% from last year, according to a Game, Fish and Parks survey.
South Dakota typically has 120,000 pheasant hunters in a year, and officials said no one would have a problem trying to find a hunting spot.
► Britton-Hecla quarterback Trevor Zuelke was hospitalized Oct. 18 after he fell unconscious on the Britton-Hecla bench during the team’s final regular-season game at Warner, a few minutes after taking a hit early in the fourth quarter. Zuelke is currently recovering at a hospital in Lincoln, Neb.
The outpouring of support for Zuehlke and his family has included donations, messages and prayers from seemingly every pocket of South Dakota, as well as Minnesota, North Dakota, Arkansas, Texas, California and Ohio.
The Expo Building at the W.H. Lyon Fairgrounds was roaring with high-flying dirt bikes in November.
Peterson Racing Promotions brought their Midwest Supercross back to Sioux Falls for their second year with a series of races. Both nights featured the top riders in the Midwest as they competed for cash, trophies and prizes, according to a news release.
► A system dropping 3.5 inches of snow in the Sioux Falls area led to slippery driving conditions and dozens of car crashes Tuesday, Nov. 26, police said.
Sioux Falls police officers responded to 58 car crashes between 3 p.m. on Nov. 26 and midnight on Nov. 27, police spokesman Sam Clemens said. Of those crashes, 27 happened during the 5 p.m. rush hour.
There weren’t any serious injuries among the car crashes.
► Charles Russell Rhines, 63, was executed by lethal injection on Nov. 4 for the 1992 murder of Donnivan Schaeffer, 22, at a Rapid City doughnut shop.
Schaeffer’s parents and his fiancee at the time of his death spoke to media following the execution.
They described Schaeffer’s “contagious laugh,” his willingness to help those in need and that he will be remembered for many things, including being “the guy who drove that old red pickup,” said his mother Peggy Schaeffer.
“Today is a big day, a day marked with sadness and grief but also relief and justice,” she said. “But above all today is a day we talk about Donnivan, the boy who loved his family, fiancee and friends, the guy who drove that old red pickup … He is missed, and he is loved, and he will never be forgotten.”
►Some four-legged friends have been teaching students to take care of themselves and others for years, serving as therapy dogs in local schools.
► For the first time in 14 years, the O’Gorman football team were state champions.
Acquiring their first state title since they won back-to-back crowns in 2004-05 required the Knights to take out top-seeded Roosevelt in the semifinals then dethrone a Brandon Valley squad that had beaten them 40-16 during the regular season.
The cochlear implants hit the kitchen counter, and Trey Diedrich started crying.
His mother, Shawna Diedrich, paused and looked up from the turkey roast she was preparing to see the tears fall from her lanky 12-year-old son’s blue eyes.
“I’m done,” Trey said using sign language. “I want to be deaf.”
He was done with the implants, which only allowed him to hear about one in every two words said to him.
He was done being misunderstood by teachers and classmates, done getting in trouble at school for using sign language, done trying to learn without an interpreter, done getting passed along in school despite having only a third-grade reading level.
Done.
An Argus Leader investigation found South Dakota leaders have ignored the needs of deafand hard of hearing children like Trey Diedrich for decades.
Systematic decisions from lawmakers, educators and state officials left hundreds at risk of falling through cracks in the system and failing to get the free appropriate public education guaranteed to them under federal law.
► Despite making the playoffs, South Dakota State’s season, which ended at 8-5, was characterized more by its defeats than victories. Coach John Stiegelmeier said it in his postgame press conference after a 13-10 playoff loss in a rematch with Northern Iowa — his team lost five games by a total of 29 points.
The Jacks were a deep, veteran team in most areas but relied on freshman quarterbacks to lead them, and in the losses to Minnesota and NDSU in particular, freshman mistakes by those quarterbacks proved costly.
► Sioux Falls has a long list of requirements to legally own pets — and the regulations vary by animal. Click the link to find out more.