Grand Forks, N.D. (KELO AM and KWSN) - The next NCAA Championship event to land in South Dakota may be in a sport that no college in the state sponsors at the varsity level.
Men's Ice Hockey.
According to Brad Schlossman of the Grand Forks Herald a joint bid between the University of North Dakota and the Sioux Falls Sports Authority to host the 2018 West Region of the Division I Men's Tournament appears to be a front-runner for selection next Tuesday. It would be yet another new challenge for the Sioux Falls Sports Authority, which has received glowing reviews after successfully hosting a Division I Women's Basketball regional and several Division II championships events in the last three years.
Given the success of the Sioux Falls Stampede's run in the venue and a sellout of the 2017 USHL Top Prospects game, there's reason to believe that college hockey could bring out similar crowds.
The wild card in all this is the assistant GM of the Premier Center Chris Semrau, who has experience working with NCAA hockey tournaments during his time in Grand Forks and has worked with UND in the past. Placing the regional in Sioux Falls would also make geographic sense given its proximity to Division I hockey schools such as Mankato, Omaha, St Cloud, Denver, and North Dakota.
In recent years the NCAA has made a concerted effort to bring its championship events to new or "emerging" markets. In the last five years Omaha, Tulsa, Des Moines, and Greenville, SC have become first-time hosts for first and second round games of the lucrative Men's Basketball Championship. The Sports Authority is hoping to get a piece of that tournament as well in the next four years.
It isn't unique for institutions to team up with sites hundreds of miles away to host hockey events. Back in 2012 the University of Alabama-Huntsville hosted the Frozen Four in Tampa, Florida with the Tampa Bay Sports Commission.
The Men's Hockey tournament is broken down into five locations: four regionals of four teams each, with the winners advancing to the Frozen Four at another location. This year's Frozen Four was held in Chicago and hosted by the University of Notre Dame.
The 2018 Frozen Four will be held at the Xcel Energy Center in St Paul, home of the Minnesota Wild. We'll find out on Tuesday if the road to the X will run though Sioux Falls.