Star Tribune
Duluth to get ‘in your face’ arena football team in 2024
DULUTH — This city will again have its own indoor football team, scheduled to begin play in June 2024 in the old hockey arena at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC).
The Arena League, a new organization run by Heisman Trophy winner-turned Los Angeles Raider Tim Brown, announced its intent Wednesday to set up a team in Duluth.
Springfield, Missouri, was the first city named in early March, followed by a period of online voting to narrow the options. The league is expected to have four teams in its inaugural season.
“This gives us a good excuse to revive the old arena — which is still a beautiful space,” said Dan Hartman, executive director of the DECC. “This is a way more ‘in your face’ experience because you’re so close to the game.”
The teams will be made up of Division I athletes who weren’t drafted by NFL teams — or were drafted and then released.
“This is an opportunity for them to continue playing with scouts watching,” said Tommy Benizio, a consultant for the league. “We expect high scoring games, big hits, things people cheer for.”
Officials said they hope to draw locally known players as the league grow.
The Arena League plans to emphasize the highlights of regular football, with extra attention on the entertainment. Each team will have six players who play both offense and defense on a 50-yard field. There will be a quick-play clock and helmets are equipped with microphones so fans can hear all communication. Expect a high-jumping player to sometimes leap over the walls — hockey boards with padding — when making a catch.
Don’t like the referee? They can be ousted from future games via fan voting — one of several decisions The Arena League is leaving up to fans. It’s holding a contest soliciting ideas for the name, logo and team colors. Season tickets are available, including floor-level box seats that come with parking and a table-side server.
The Arena League team joins the Duluth Huskies, of the Northwoods League for college players, and Duluth FC, a semipro team from the National Premier Soccer League partially owned by Olympic curling champion John Shuster as summer spectator sports for the region.
Duluth last had an indoor football team in the early 2000s when the Duluth Lumberjacks played at the DECC Arena. Other cities still under consideration for the franchise include Rochester, Minn., Kansas City, Mo., Rockford, Ill., Dubuque and Waterloo, Iowa, Little Rock, Ark., Wichita Falls, Texas, and Oklahoma City, Okla.
DULUTH – The Minnesota and Wisconsin transportation departments will make upgrades to the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge in the summer of 2025, in preparation for the structure to become the premiere route between this city and Superior during reconstruction of the Blatnik Bridge.
Built in 1961, the Blatnik Bridge carries 33,000 vehicles per day along Interstate 535 and Hwy. 53. It will be entirely rebuilt, starting in 2027, with the help of $1 billion in federal funding announced earlier this year. MnDOT and WisDOT are splitting the remaining costs of the project, about $4 million each.
According to MnDOT, projects on the Bong Bridge will include spot painting, concrete surface repairs to the bridge abutments, concrete sealer on the deck, replacing rubber strip seal membranes on the main span’s joints and replacing light poles on the bridge and its points of entry. It’s expected to take two months, transportation officials said during a recent meeting at the Superior Public Library.
During this time there will be occasional lane closures, detours at the off-ramps, and for about three weeks the sidewalk path alongside the bridge will be closed.
The Bong Bridge, which crosses the St. Louis River, opened to traffic in 1985 and is the lesser-used of the two bridges. Officials said they want to keep maintenance to a minimum on the span during the Blatnik project, which is expected to take four years.
Red Wing will celebrate the grand opening of its first permanent set of pickleball courts next week with an “inaugural play” on the six courts at Colvill Park on the banks of the Mississippi, between a couple of marinas and next to the aquatic center.
Among the first to get to play on the new courts will be David Anderson, who brought pickleball to the local YMCA in 2008, before the nationwide pickleball craze took hold, and Denny Yecke, at 92 the oldest pickleball player in Red Wing.
The inaugural play begins at 11 a.m. Tuesday, with a rain date of the next day. Afterward will be food and celebration at the Colvill Park Courtyard building.
Tim Sletten, the city’s former police chief, discovered America’s fastest-growing sport a decade ago after he retired. With fellow members of the Red Wing Pickleball Group, he’d play indoors at the local YMCA or outdoors at a local school, on courts made for other sports. But they didn’t have a permanent place, so they approached the city about building one.
When a city feasibility study came up with a high cost, about $350,000, Sletten’s group got together to raise money.
The courts are even opening ahead of schedule, originally set for 2025.
REDWOOD FALLS, MINN. – A truck crashing into a school bus left nine with minor injuries Wednesday morning in rural Redwood County, a statement from the Redwood County Sheriff’s office said.
The bus driver, serving the Wabasso Public School District, failed to yield when entering the intersection of County Road 7 and 280th Street, the statement said.
Deputies received word of the crash around 8:15 a.m. and identified the bus driver as Edward Aslesen, 72, of Milroy.
The nine injured passengers on the bus were transported to local hospitals, the statement said.
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