The South Dakota Music Education Association held their Freshmen Festival on Tuesday, November 12, 2024. Elk Point-Jefferson’s Veronika Norby was nominated and attended the day-long festival in Salem, South Dakota.

Katy Brown, of Jefferson, lives with a family of runners. Her two sons, Jack and Cole, were both 2024 cross country state medalists for Dakota Valley. The two can be seen often jogging throughout the local area. Her husband, Shawn, has run marathons, and Brown herself stays active by running. In late October, she decided to put the good habit to even better use in order to help a flood victim from McCook Lake, SD.

More than just an election was happening in Union County on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Local schools, Dakota Valley and Elk Point-Jefferson, both welcomed a guest speaker in retired professional football player Andre Fluellen. He spoke at DV in the morning and EPJ later that day.

The Panther varsity football season came to an end on Thursday, October 31, 2024. Dakota Valley had a strong season and advanced to postseason play as the #7 in Class 11A for South Dakota. A loss to Dell Rapids in the 1st round of playoffs ended DV’s bid to make it to the state finals on November 16, 2024.

After a sweep performance on the road to Waterloo, Sioux City Metros outplayed the newest team to the Midwest High School Hockey League, Boji Mammoths. Numerous teammates contributed to the barrage of points. Heelan’s Karson Fitch (Sr.), South Sioux City Ryan Hedquist (Sr.), and DV’s Jax Trosper (Jr.) led the way with hat tricks. Goaltender Cameron Patrick, Sergeant Bluff (Jr), added a shutout to his statistics. Varsity ends the game with a 15-0 win.

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Voter turnout was a common theme reported on across the nation for Election Day, on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. And in Union County, there was no exception. Per the South Dakota Secretary of State’s election result website, there were 436,478 cast out of the 624,186 registered voters in South Dakota. This amounted to an almost 70 percent voter turnout in the Mount Rushmore state. For Union County specifically, 8,895 ballots were received out of 12,617 potential voters with registrations.

Vehicles filled the parking lot and extended out to the street as volunteer parking attendant Tom Jacobs directed traffic for the annual Christmas at the Homestead. The event ran from noon to 4 pm on Saturday, November 9, 2024, at the Adams Homestead and Nature Preserve. Rainy drizzle and cooler temperatures did not deter the crowd and it was a well attended event in McCook Lake.

On November 4, 2024, the Jefferson City Council convened for its regular meeting at 7:00 p.m. at Jefferson City Hall. The session was attended by council members Paddy Rigg, Tony Boulware, Jason Casper, John Lokhorst, and Michael Stokely, along with Tom Johnson, Sabrina LaFleur- Sayler, Michealeen Roark, and Dustin Sharkey.