Good to be back at the Dome Sweet Dome

It was nice to get back to the DakotaDome on Saturday for the 11AAA championship football game.

That place has always held a fascination for me, even from the start. It was completed in 1979 when I was 10 years old, and in 1981, the South Dakota High School Activities Association began playing the state finals in football in the Dome.

Back then, there were only five classes of football in South Dakota. It was too many then, and having seven now is cringy. But still, even with seven classes 43 years after the first championship games, getting to the Dome is a big deal, and it obviously feels big when you’re there for a high school football game.

I don’t exactly recall my first time to the Dome. I think it was my junior year at Sioux Falls Lincoln High School in 1986 when the Patriots played a regular season game against Yankton. I know for sure it wasn’t for a championship game. Lincoln didn’t make it to the Dome to play in the Finals until 2008, making it 27 years of futility at Lincoln.

I do recall the 1987 championship game. I had just graduated from Lincoln, and I wasn’t at the game. Rapid City Stevens beat Sioux Falls Washington 3-0 for the title. I was with about a thousand others at the downtown Sioux Falls YMCA for a dance canteen, which was open to teenagers from all over the Sioux Falls area.

If you were ever at the “Y” in its heyday, there was a huge, massive gymnasium in the center of the facility. On those Saturday nights during canteen dances, it was packed with a bunch of hormone-flowing teenagers.

Those dances were a tad overwhelming for some of us coming into our own, myself included. If there was ever an opportunity to meet a girl, the canteen provided it.

But during the canteen on Nov. 14, 1987, I was glued to a television in one of the back rooms at the “Y”. There was a chaperone sitting in that room with little interest in the dance, watching the championship game. I left my friends many times and joined the chaperone to watch Washington and Stevens.

Several of my friends questioned my decision to leave the girls on the dance floor, and instead watch the game.

“You might be the dorkiest guy here,” one of my friends said – something like that – when I left them for a few minutes.

“Yea, but Washington is driving,” I said, looking for some sort of acceptance. “And it’s late in the fourth.”

I only got an eye roll back from my friend.

I’m pretty sure the next time I made it to the Dome was later in life when I started working for the daily newspaper in Sioux Falls. I covered so many high school football championship games over the years. There were several times when I spent the entire day and night there, covering three straight games. There were also countless track and field events that I covered at the Dome.

I also covered University of South Dakota football games at the Dome, and a few times I covered USD men’s and women’s basketball games. That was a strange vibe, watching and covering a basketball game in such a cavernous building.

In 2011, I was offered the Sports Information Director position at USD and I returned to the building for the first time in a long time for an interview. A new steel roof was built in 2001 to replace the original air-supported structure that collapsed numerous times over the years. That was a funky, new look for me. It wasn’t because of the new roof, but I didn’t take the job with the Coyotes nonetheless.

Then in 2020, the interior of the west side of the Dome was completed. That’s very cool to see now, but for the first 41 years of the facility, the west side was filled with simple wooden bleachers you’d find at any high school gym in the state.

Before last Saturday night, I hadn’t been to the Dome since 2021 when Brandon Valley lost to Harrisburg in the championship game.

So this year, thank you Lynx. It was good to be back at the Dome again, a place that brings back many great memories, including a missed sure-bet date at the “Y” 37 years ago.