Storm Lake, Ia (Northwest Iowa Now) – With the 2024-2025 Iowa High School Sports season winding down, we continue our series of the best teams from the past sports year in the KICD 9-County Area.

Expectations were high for the 2024-2025 Storm Lake Tornados Basketball Team. A ton of returning talent, including the top recruit in the State for the 2026 class, Jayden Coon, had the Storm Lake Community with State Tournament aspirations.

The Tornadoes got off to a 6-0 start despite 5 of those 6 contests being on the road. At the turn of the Calendar, a big stretch against Conference foes loomed, but Storm Lake stumbled at home against Carroll 57-53. That was only one of 2 games during the regular season where Storm Lake scored under 70 points, the other being a running clock drubbing of Estherville Lincoln Central in late December.

The Tornadoes came back with a fury, beating their next 12 opponents by an average of 30.75 points. A much-anticipated February 18th game at home against East of Sioux City was canceled due to weather, and Storm Lake closed out the regular season with a 72-64 win against Humboldt.

Storm Lake took the #1 seed into the Class 3A Substate 2 Tournament where they handled Denison-Schleswig 78-36 for the quarterfinals and avenged their only loss of the season against Carroll in the Semifinals 66-61.

The Tornadoes hosted Gilbert for the Class 3A Substate 2 Championship game in front of a sold-out crowd in Buena Vista’s Siebens Fieldhouse. A dramatic, back and forth game saw Storm Lake come out on top, qualifying for their first Basketball State Tournament since the 90s.

In the Class 3A State Quarterfinals, The Tornadoes would play their 3rd straight Racoon River Conference opponent in Adel-DeSoto-Minburn.

Storm Lake had the edge at half by 1, but a rough shooting 3rd Quarter dropped them down 8 going into the 4th quarter against the Tigers. A high scoring 4th quarter wasn’t enough to get within arm’s length of ADM, and Storm Lake’s historical season wrapped up with a 59-53 loss in the Quarterfinals.

Storm Lake averaged 76 points per game that season, shooting over 50 percent from the field.

Jaidyn Coon was about as close to unstoppable as a player comes in Iowa 3A Basketball. The Junior boasted 23.9 points per game, 9.3 rebounds and 3.1 assists to go with countless rattled rims across northwest Iowa from his vicious dunks.

Coon was complimented well by Junior Cam Boyd who averaged 14.5 a game with 4.3 assists. 5 other Tornadoes averaged over 6 points per game.

One of the best parts about the 2024-2025 season, is that everybody comes back except for Senior Charlie Dvergsten. The expectations for the 2025-2026 season will be as high, but likely higher for Storm Lake as they look to get back to the State Tournament.

The KICD Team of the Year series continues with the Spring Sports Season next.