Sioux Empire Paddlers is a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization. Our goal is to increase paddling, paddling education and safety. Goals of our club are to provide opportunities for classes, events, paddling education, and recreation. A list of some of our future goals:
- Instructor Workshops – We want to host Kayak Instructor workshops to increase the local certified instructors in the area. We have hosted ACA Instructor workshops in 2016 and 2017 to provide our community with some great kayak instructors. We hope to do more workshops in the future.
- Kayaking Classes – We have collaborated up with The Sioux Falls School District to offer kayak classes through their Community Education Program. We believe in getting our community outside and on our waterways but we want to make sure they have the knowledge and some skills so they enjoy our waterways and they are safe about their adventures. In 2016, we were able to help teach 144 students paddling fundamentals and 182 in 2017. 2018 and 2019 we reached over 100 students each year.
- Free Kayak Classes for Members – Throughout the year we try to offer as many classes as possible to our club members. It is broken into two classes. First class is on flat water going over basic skills and rescues. The second class we go on a river and cover the following: Reading a river, rescues, eddy turns, peel outs, ferries, strainers, s turns and c turns. We provide gear for both classes to make sure each member is at the same level as one another.
- Pool Session – We offer pool sessions in the winter season to keep up on paddling skills, learn new skills, or just practice safety rescues in a safe environment. We prefer to host 4-6 pool sessions each winter at the Downtown Embe in Sioux Falls South Dakota. These classes are FREE to members of our organization. Sign up to be a member HERE
- River Clean Ups – Our organization believes a clean waterway will bring more people to it. We host regular cleanups in the summer on different sections of rivers.
- River Access – Sioux Empire Paddlers wants more people to get out and paddle. We recently worked with Garretson, South Dakota to get a kayak launch in their city park on Split Rock Creek. We hope to work with other counties and cities to increase and improve access points to paddle.
- Events and Trips – Our group wants to get paddlers together to make paddling trips down local waterways and out of city trips. Our hope is to get groups together to help each other out and explore more paddling opportunities.
- River Revitalization – Our local rivers are very important to us. Especially the Big Sioux River. We want to help as much as we can to keep it clean and improve the quality. Bringing people a sense of ownership is our number one goal to help make this happen. Our River Revitalization Project hopes to do this by making a fun, free, safe environment to use the river. This project will also modify a dangerous low head dam that already took two lives a few years ago. The project will also increase dissolved oxygen and improve fishing holes. One of the biggest items would be bank stabilization to prevent more sediment entering the river, which is a huge pollutant for our river.
Please check out more information for our River Revitalization Project HERE Our organization has some hefty goals but we have a great team of board members and club members. As a group, we will make paddling easier and safer for our paddling community.
