Watertown Shamrocks spark excitement in the city

WATERTOWN, S.D. (KELO) — For years, the city of Watertown has lacked any high level of competitive sports beyond high school varsity sports. Now, the town is gathering around a new team.

For Ryan Gingher, playing hockey is like second nature to him.

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“I started skating probably when I was two or three. So my dad played growing up. He’s a coach and it’s kind of just been in my blood. So it’s been a blast kind of my whole life,” Gingher said.

The 20-year-old is just one of 24 boys that make up the Watertown Shamrocks roster.

“So the Watertown Shamrocks are a new expansion team in the central division of the North American Hockey League. So that is an amateur junior hockey team that operates in North America. And essentially we prepare and develop players to go play collegiate hockey,” Watertown Shamrocks President Ryan Bisgard said.

“The purpose of is to to mature and develop one as a person and two as a player and then from there you would go on to college and play your potential, your four years there. And then hopefully in the right circumstances, you’re able to play professionally after that,” Watertown Shamrocks Head Coach Casey Kirley said.

The young team spends most of their days working on their hockey skills, however, when the players are off the ice, pouring into the community is something they’ve made a priority.

“We can go to elementary schools and play at recess. For some kids, we can help with the youth hockey stuff here, and we can also pack food for people that need or can’t afford food,” Gingher said.

“It’s always good to get out in the community and show people that we’re active. We’re not just here like leeching off of people. We want to do our part as well,” Kirley said.

While these 17 to 20-year-olds are excited to be playing in Watertown, it is something the city has been hoping for, for years.

“We contacted the league very early on and started talking to them. We showed them the blueprints of the arena. We showed them all the demographics of the community that they needed to be convinced that this was going to be a good community that they wanted to be in,” Watertown Mayor Reid Holien said.

“In the hockey world there were kind of whisperings of this awesome new arena being in the works that people from our league started hearing about,” Bisgard said.

Along with the pride of having an NAHL team in town, city leaders knew it was something the community would get behind.

“We wanted a franchise here because we knew what it would do to energize the community because we were not a community that has a large college like SDSU and there Jackrabbits or Sioux Falls, even Aberdeen. This is the largest sports franchise that we have in town and the community just loves to get behind sports,” Holien said.

And the city has definitely gotten behind the Shamrocks.

“I think the gameday experience has been nothing short of amazing. It’s we’ve already had a couple of sellout crowds and we’ve had to add more seating and we’ve had to get more, more beer and more concessions,” Bisgard said.

“So our restaurants are getting full, our bars are getting full, and people are coming to the facility literally 4 hours before the game to stand out in some I mean, granted, we’ve been benefiting from really nice weather, but it just shows that people want to make it not just a game day experience, but a full day family affair,” Holien says.

As the Watertown Shamrocks team breathes life into both the players and the community.

“Even the people who don’t like hockey, they’re coming out and watching it just because they are energized by the, you know, the excitement in the community,” Holien said.

“There’s not many guys that can kind of be on the first team of the shamrocks. So it’s cool to set the culture and kind of set the tone and lay the groundwork for others to come in and succeed,” Gingher said.

Click here for more information on the Watertown Shamrocks or to purchase tickets.