Three days of community fun - Mud volleyball, parade highlight Booster Days

It seemed only appropriate that as the Valley Springs Booster Days Mud Volleyball Tournament was about to begin, the hit song Another One Bites the Dust by Queen was blaring on the loudspeakers at center court.

Several of the members from 26 different teams did indeed bite the dust as they tried to orchestrate their way through a muddy, globby mess on three separate courts just north of Broadway Avenue on Saturday morning.

The five-hour long double elimination tournament is a fundraiser for the Valley Springs Community Club, and is arguably the anchor event over the three-day Booster Days bringing in teams and hundreds of players from around the area.

The three courts nestled between Broadway and Cliff are owned by the city and only used once per year for the tournament. Valley Springs resident John Sjaarda preps the courts by cutting down the grass and tilling the grounds during the week. 

On Friday, the Valley Springs Fire Department fills the three pits with water. On Saturday morning, they top it off after some of the water soaks in overnight.

Event organizer Jen Rossow said many of the teams and competitors return each year.

“I asked someone why they come back every year and they said it’s the one thing that’s marked on their calendar each year,” Rossow said. “It’s just fun. It’s competitive, but it’s still fun.”

For Sioux Falls resident Steven Celis, Saturday’s muddy adventure was his first. His place of business, Black Ridge Security, has had a team for three years. Celis said he’s played sand volleyball before, but trudging through the mud was a new discipline.

“It’s hard, because you can’t see what’s under there. All the blotches of mud, you don’t know it’s there until you feel it,” he said following his team’s opening round win. “And once you sink in, you can’t move.”

Along with running the show, Rossow also serves as the event’s PA announcer. She was a referee at the event before becoming the organizer in 2018.

She said with some research, they believe this is the 33rd year of the tournament. They didn’t play in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 was canceled because of road construction on Cliff Avenue. Construction workers used the volleyball pits to store equipment.

Rossow is a Valley Springs native who now lives in North Dakota. But the mud volleyball tournament brings her back each year, only as an organizer and not as a player.

“Somebody has to coordinate the chaos and I stick to that,” she said with a laugh.

For as big as the mud volleyball tournament has become, it’s obviously not the only thing going on in Valley Springs during Booster Days. Friday’s Community Club supper at Legion Park went as planned, as did the kids’ games, cake walk and pedal pull on Saturday morning. Saturday also featured a water fight and a parade that made its way down Broadway and beyond.

“Everything went extremely well this year,” said Valley Springs Mayor Rick Larsen.

The parade had a special twist as an active duty sailor was part of the Color Guard that led the parade. The sailor was Larsen’s granddaughter, Chynna Labata. Larsen said it is believed she is the first active member to serve on the Color Guard at the start of the Booster Days Parade.

Labata serves on the USS Mesa Verde based in Norfolk, Va. She’s currently on leave but upon her return to Norfolk, she is scheduled to serve out a three-year assignment in Japan.

“Everybody was buzzing about having her in it,” Larsen said. “It was cool. She was ear-to-ear smiles. I appreciated her doing that. I can’t march that far and she can. I’m going to miss her when she’s gone.”