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Gary Weckwerth, Part 2 - Canaries & Stampede launches, "Pheasants" name change, battling cancer, return to TV
Manage episode 493208920 series 3624102
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Maybe you know him as that guy that took over for legendary Sioux Falls sportscaster Jim Burt on the KELO-TV news in the 1980's.
Maybe you know him as the guy that teammed with Pat O'Brien — then, a well-established national broadcaster on CBS Sports — and Mark Ovenden for the broadcast of the first-ever Sioux Falls Skyforce game in 1989.
Maybe you know him as the guy that hosted the first South Dakota State football weekly TV show, starting in the 1990's with Mike Daly.
You most likely know him as the first managing owner of the Sioux Falls Stampede, which skated out of the gates to instead on-ice and box office success in the 2000's and won two titles during his time.
And you may or may not know him as the guy who, after he became the Sioux Falls Canaries' managing owner, changed the name to the Pheasants in the early 2010's, only to change it back to the Canaries after taking three years of public backlash for it.
Gary Weckworth has been at the forefront of almost every major new sports development in Sioux Falls the last 35 years, whether he was covering it, running it (like his gig as the first general manager of the Canaries when they were formed in 1992), or owning it.
And "Weck" has plenty of colorful stories to tell about all of it, starting with his days as an aspiring sportscaster at St. Cloud State University, where he droppped out a couple semesters short of his degree to take an on-air job at KELO-TV.
The rest is Sioux Falls sports history well lived, plus some bumps along the way — a sudden and unceremonious firing from the Canaries, the "Pheasants" pivot, his ongoing battle with cancer, and his return back to KELO-TV 30 years after he left it to get into the business world.
In part 2 of this two-part chat, you'll hear the story of how he helped start the Canaries, then the Stampede, and eventually own both. Plus, the cancer battele and return to TV.
Part 1 involves his upbringing into becoming a TV sports anchor at KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, which came with it so many stories about working with Burt, the Skyforce debut, and leaving TV to jump into the marketing and sales world of sports before coming back to TV to do the Mike Daly Show.
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