First Pitch Q&A: Wes Hall, Sports Authority director

Sioux Falls isn't resting on its growing laurels in terms of seeking out new sports hosting opportunities.

Last week, Sioux Falls Sports Authority director Wes Hall and Sioux Falls Convention and Visitors Bureau sales director Mattie Burnham attended Olympic SportsLink, an event aimed at bringing together National Governing Bodies and cities interested in bidding to host their championships. This was the seventh year of SportsLink, but the first time Sioux Falls sent reps.

Hall took some time Tuesday to explain the process and the feedback to Argus Leader reporter Terry Vandrovec:

Question: What sports bodies did you meet with?

Answer: Boxing, gymnastics, track and field, wrestling, curling and judo were the sessions I attended. (Burnham) tried to attend different sessions so we could double up the number of people we spoke to. Some of them were extremely intriguing. Boxing, for one, would be a very interesting event to have in Sioux Falls, to put something like that together at the Premier Center and potentially utilize the convention space to have some type of fan fest.

Really, as I talked to a lot of these groups they were intrigued quite a bit about the contiguous floor space we now have. We can host so many concurrent events. The only one that basically we're a little small for would be wrestling – they host some of their best events in Fargo because they can drop 22 or 23 mats in the (Fargodome). But they are looking at putting together a tour-style wrestling event where wrestlers could earn points and that would be on a much smaller scale.

Q: What sort of feedback did you receive?

A: It was more speed dating than anything else. I don't know how many cities were represented, and there's a finite number of National Governing Bodies there. You're trying to make the most of the time you have with them and trying to see what connections you had. With curling, there was an obvious connection with (Premier Center executive) Chris Semrau being from North Dakota. Whether or not we'd have the fans to bring in that event I don't know, but it was an interesting conversation. Gymnastics and boxing were two I spoke with that I could see we – in confluence with the CVB – would definitely pursue.

Q: You've already bid to host the First Four of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in future years, and reportedly are on the short list of candidates. Have you heard anything more on that?

A: I received an email from them last week, basically requesting additional information on some of our hotel properties and asking us to participate with a third-party hotel negotiator. It's a company we worked with through the Division II (bidding) process. I said all along if we heard anything from the NCAA before November, we're doing well so that was good to see. And now we know what we need to work on.