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Sioux Falls Storm On Solid Ground

After a disastrous 2009 season, new owner Tryon has helped Storm redeem themselves

matt zimmer • mzimmer@argusleader.com • July 16, 2010

It was dubbed "The Season of Redemption" for obvious reasons.

After winning four consecutive indoor football championships, the Storm had their chances for a fifth taken away last year when the Indoor Football League forced them to forfeit five wins for failing to secure proper workers' compensation insurance. Those five "losses" dropped Sioux Falls' record from 11-3 to 6-8, and kept the team out of the playoffs. The Billings Outlaws went on to win the league championship.

An off-season of uncertainty followed, as team owner Kent Vucurevich got into financial and legal trouble and ultimately turned the team over to Todd Tryon, the man behind the Tryon Gym franchise and a former Storm player and coach.

Tryon convinced coach Kurtiss Riggs to stick with the team - most of the team's veteran players following suit - and now the redemption is nearly in hand. The Storm have gone 14-3, won their division and conference, and will once again play for the championship when they visit Billings on Saturday.

For most of the year, the redemption theme was largely a marketing campaign, as players, coaches and front office folks largely avoided talk of last year, or any thoughts of payback or revenge against what they thought was an unfair punishment from the league. And no one is in any hurry to rest on the laurels of what's been accomplished this year.

But with a fifth title one win away - One for the Thumb, some are saying - it's fair to say the Storm are back.

"Winning solves a lot of problems," says Tryon. "It feels good to be here, no doubt about it, but the bottom line is that our coaching staff has done a great job to keep this thing successful. They deserve the credit."

In turn, the coaches and players credit their new owner with laying the groundwork for the team to get back to business as usual.

"Todd really worked a lot of magic to get the team out on the field, and I hope people are appreciative of the work he did," says Riggs, a close friend who actually was the one who recruited Tryon to take over the team from Vucurevich. "He brought us the stability we needed."

Adds defensive lineman Cory Johnsen: "He's done an A-plus-plus job. We just don't question anything he says or does. He's a man of his word and he makes things happen."

Taking over

It hasn't been easy. Tryon actually joined the organization last year around the time the league sanctions were handed out. He was named CEO of the Storm and tasked with getting the house in order. He was essentially brought in to put out fires, and it was one blaze after another.

"If I knew exactly what the job entailed - everything I would have to go through financially, emotionally, I probably wouldn't have taken it," Tryon says. "I didn't really realize how tough it was going to be. I've got three little kids, a wife and other businesses, and I kind of had to check myself out of all of those things to save this. I just had faith that what I was doing would pay off in the long run, and at the end of the day I think it will."

Tryon admits that the self-inflicted mistakes made by the previous owners had consequences. They lost sponsors. They lost season-ticket holders.

Attendance this year, at least in house, is down notably. But he also says Vucurevich deserves credit for having laid a solid foundation.

"They made some mistakes last year, and it's too bad that's what they'll be remembered for," Tryon says. "They built a great organization with a lot of great pieces. It was just kind of flipped upside down. I just had to come in and kind of put the pieces back into place."

That meant winning back the trust of sponsors and fans, as well as marketing the team. Tryon says that he failed at the latter, but he looks forward to a full off-season with a year of experience under his belt. He also cut back on the amount of tickets that the team would give away on game day.

"We (used to) give away too many tickets," Tryon says. "But I felt like maybe I took too many back this year. You want to have seats available for people to walk up to the game and go, and that was the problem when you're giving them away. You need to have some walk-up sales."

Attendance figures for this season were not immediately available, but Tryon acknowledges the Arena was not as full this year. He does point out that the Storm played an unusual home schedule, with games on a Sunday, Monday and four holiday weekends.

For the fans

When complaints about the IFL sanctions are brought up, the players are typically cited as the victims, but the fans suffered just as much, if not more. This season has been as much about winning back their trust and paying them back for their support and loyalty during tough times.

At a recent taping of the Kurtiss Riggs Show at a local sports bar, dozens of fans packed the room during the broadcast, and several stepped forward to thank Riggs, Tryon and the players on the air for restoring their faith in their team.

"You really get a sense of how much this means to them, as much as it does to us," Riggs said. "I had so many people come up to me in the off-season and talk about how cheated they felt. They're a part of it, too. They've supported us through some tough times, and now I think they see that Todd has this thing moving in the right direction again, so they're excited."

With that being the case, the Storm have reasserted themselves as one of the pre-eminent destinations for minor league football players looking for work.

Tryon and Riggs both say they are constantly bombarded with calls, texts and phone calls from players who want to wear the Storm's colors.

Rich Roste, the team's radio voice, says that's because Tryon and Riggs have unprecedented respect and credibility within the sport.

"Todd was a player, a coach and a sponsor, and he's a successful business owner who started out with nothing," Roste said. "The guys have a tremendous amount of respect for that. Once he gets people here, Coach Riggs takes care of the rest. You couldn't find a better pair of recruiters for the organization."

An intimidating presence in person, with bulging, tattooed biceps tucked under a tight T-shirt, Tryon is soft-spoken, thoughtful and loathe to talk about himself in person. But he lights up and his voice grows louder when asked about the future of his team.

"I feel so good about the future of this team," he says. "We hit bottom, now we're on our way back up. I was so naive about a lot of things when I took over, and sometimes you have to go through things yourself before you can delegate. We were behind the 8-ball because of the situation we inherited, and because we didn't really know what we were doing. I knew we'd have to take a step back to take two steps forward, but we can be much more proactive now. I look at it like we'll be a second-year team next year. Our first year we made the championship game, hopefully we'll win it. And it's just going to keep going up from there."