SIOUX CITY -- When it comes to sports in Sioux City, perhaps no club can match the marquee names served up by the Sioux City Musketeers, a hockey staple in the Woodbury County seat for decades.
Head to the spacious, modern Tyson Events Center on a USHL game night and you're certain to see future National Hockey League talent skating from blue line to blue line and beyond. This year's team, for example, features the league's leading scorer in Bobby Brink, a talent whose draft stock has risen, play that has the University of Denver commit being mentioned as a first-round draft possibility this summer.
Brink's running mate in the familiar Musketeers green and yellow is Martin Pospisil, the USHL's second-leading scorer. Pospisil was drafted last summer by the Calgary Flames.
While those two represent future NHL ties, the bonds between Sioux City and the world's heavyweight professional hockey league show seemingly each night. Eeli Tolvanen, for example, a 2016 Musketeer, scored his first NHL goal in December as a member of the Nashville Predators.
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Need others? Try Ryan Carpenter, a Musketeer alum who played for the Las Vegas Knights in their inaugural Stanley Cup appearance in 2017. There's also Jake Guentzel, a Musketeer star six years ago, who led the Pittsburgh Penguins in scoring during their Stanley Cup conquest in 2017. Guentzel is featured on the top line this season with future Hall-of-Famer Sidney Crosby.
Neal Pionk, who logged extended time in Sioux City a handful of years ago, is now part of the ambitious remake of the New York Rangers. In mid-December, the Rangers featured Pionk in a video about the club's exciting progress.
Max McCormick and Chris Butler, recent Musketeers, are now skating on a daily basis with the Ottawa Senators and St. Louis Blues, respectively.
These recent skaters add lots of luster to an impressive roster of former Musketeers who made the NHL, a list at least a few dozen names in length. Among the most remembered might be Musketeer Ruslan Fedotenko, who starred in Sioux City in the 1998-99 season and went on to win Stanley Cup titles with the Tampa Bay Lightning (2004) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (2009).
Beyond seeing the "next level" in person, fans can watch a winner of a franchise take the ice. The Musketeers last reached the Clark Cup finals behind future Columbus Blue Jacket goalie, Matiss Kivlenkis, who set club standards for wins (36), goals-against average (1.85), save percentage (.932) and minutes (2,991). The aforementioned Tolvanen that summer became the Musketeers' first-ever first round NHL pick.
In addition to taking in USHL hockey, there are plenty of activities the City of Sioux City offers, some of which include:
* Looking for that perfect place to hold an event, volleyball game or practice, conduct a meeting, celebrate a birthday, gather for a wedding reception, or just get together with friends for a pick-up basketball game, or an afternoon of pickleball? You can find all this at the Long Lines Family Rec Center. In addition to sport courts, meeting rooms and a batting cage, the Long Lines Family Rec Center offers its Climbing Wall, the only one in the area!
* Located near the Lewis & Clark baseball park, Cone Park, one of Sioux City's newest amenities, offers a tubing hill, ice skating rink, an outdoor fire pit, and day lodge for warming, rentals, and concessions during the winter.  The lodge is used as a rental facility during the non-winter months and the ice skating rink converts to a free public splash pad in the summer. A 2-mile trail loop is also available connecting with Sertoma Park to the east.
The hill at Cone Park proved to be a resounding success last winter. With Mother Nature doing her part with about six inches of snow in early December (and an ensuing deep freeze) the tubing hill was a hit as the calendar turned to 2019.
* If ice skating if your thing, you can enjoy this sport at the new Cone Park outdoor rink, or take your blades indoors to the IBP Ice Center, often available for open skating and birthday parties. The IBP Ice Center welcomes a curling tournament, perhaps a first for Sioux City, March 15-16.
* From a fan's perspective, few can beat the thrills "Title Town" offers as Sioux City's Tyson Events Center again plays host to the NAIA Division II Women's National Basketball Championships in March. For 21 years (and soon to be, 22 years), the top teams in NAIA Division II have made Sioux City their destination in a 6-day classic that involves 32 teams from all over the country. Attendance totals for this classic regularly top 30,000.
The national tournament site in Sioux City represents the longest streak of any current championship host, according to the NAIA. Sioux City has previously hosted the national softball and wrestling tournaments, and still rolls out the Tyson Events Center red carpet for the NAIA Women's National Volleyball Championships each November.
* The bulk of Sioux City's expansive trail system is plowed and maintained in the winter, save for the Chautauqua Park Trail and the Bacon Creek Trail. That means runners, walkers, cyclists, in-line skaters and skateboard enthusiasts may enjoy 20-some miles of paved recreational trails, offering the natural landscape and breath-taking views of the Missouri River along the Riverfront Trail, a contrast to the urban experience found near the Perry Creek Trail in residential Sioux City.
* Hiking and exploring our natural settings can also help while away the time each winter in some, or many, of Sioux City's 59 parks. One of those parks, Leif Erickson Park, will soon have a naturally frozen ice skating rink for winter enthusiasts.
