Messenger photo by Britt Kudla: Construction continues at the new Pavilion in Fort Dodge, located at the new Corridor Plaza. Basketball and volleyball courts are shown here.

Editor’s note: This is the second in a multi-part series examining the first-hand benefits of the new Pavilion complex at the Corridor Plaza in Fort Dodge. Here, Iowa Central head coach Sara Horn explores the growth the facility will offer the volleyball community.

I’ve been part of the Storm Volleyball Club Board of Directors since 2020. Back then, Storm had one team for every two grades, with a total of four or five teams.

There have been a handful of dedicated people who joined the Storm Board over the last five years. We have worked hard to expand and improve our club by recruiting knowledgeable parents and area educators to coach our teams and help our club grow. In doing so, we have been able to offer more and more community players the opportunity to play the game of volleyball.

This year, Storm has 21 teams, ranging from the 3rd grade to 12th grade level. Most of our squads have between 9-10 players. While the majority of our players come from our Fort Dodge schools, we do have some players from our surrounding towns as well.

With high school coaches not allowed to instruct their players in the offseason, we rely on parents and youth coaches to put in a lot of time and energy leading our area athletes. They have done an outstanding job of trying to give their players a great experience with Storm, while working hard to grow their volleyball skills and love for the game.

Scheduling local tournaments for our 21 teams is always a stressful and complicated process, with tournament offerings being both limited and quick to fill. Hosting tournaments is a lot of work, and it not only takes a large time commitment from the school and club, it also requires a certain amount of space to host a large number of teams and their fans.

In 2024, we were fortunate to host four home tournaments at the Fort Dodge Middle School. Each one sold out, as we were able to bring 30-40 teams into Fort Dodge.

In 2025, we hosted eight home tournaments. Not only did all of them sell out again, but we also had a waiting list for most of the events. We were able to bring 70-80 squads to Fort Dodge over the course of four weekends. If you drove by the FDMS, you could see a packed parking lot from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. most weekend days in February.

The many members of Storm Volleyball are committed to hosting more tournaments in 2026. Being able to play in our home town not only lessens the burden of traveling every weekend, it also gives our local players the opportunity to have extended family members and friends come watch them play.

We are limited with how many courts we can rent from the Fort Dodge schools, though, as many different teams and activities rent our gyms. The opening of the Pavillion will give us more opportunities to bring even more teams to our community.

While we were able to get all 21 teams one home tournament day this season, we would love to be able to keep our local players playing in Fort Dodge more than once per a season. The opportunities to host more events with bigger fields at the Pavillion is something that Iowa Storm is excited to pursue.