(RAPID CITY, S.D.)—On July 16^th, five Rapid City high schoolers embarked on a ten-day odyssey across the Pacific Ocean. On an airplane bound for Japan, neatly folded up in a suitcase, was a red Rapid City Rush jersey.

Teenagers from right here in the Black Hills have been making summertime trips to Nikko, Japan for three decades. Nikko, along with Apolda, Germany, has twinned with Rapid City as its Sister City since 1994. Sister City partnerships have long served as effective tools for citizen diplomacy, where a country’s citizens turn into unofficial representatives and ambassadors as they build international relationships and make friends on the other side of the globe.

“I was born and raised here in Rapid City,” said Lorrie Knight, Treasurer of the Rapid City Sister City Association. “When I graduated from Central High School, I didn’t think I would see half the places I got to see being in the military. Japan was one of the cultures I got to see while on the USS McCampbell, and it was a very impressionable experience.”

This was no spur-of-the-moment trip, either. The application process for prospective travelers begins in the winter. Then, the five students—two from Central, two from Stevens, and one from Douglas in Box Elder—took a class on Japanese language, culture, and customs, taught by Yukari Tadano, the Japan Outreach Initiative Coordinator at Black Hills State University.

“My sister and I found out about this because our mom was telling us about it,” said Anna Boyle of Central High School before the trip. “We’ve both been interested in different cultures. We’ve always talked about going to different places and learning about differences between people. We then started taking classes with Yuki and learning simple phrases.”

Much like your typical exchange student program, students from both cities received the true immersive experience living with host families for ten days and seeing as much as humanly possible (School was still in session in Japan, which meant a brief departure from American summer vacation.)

So, what about the Rush jersey?

Rapid City and Nikko, as Sister Cities often do, share a similar profile. The two cities are home to about 80,000 people each, for starters. Both are also tourist destinations; Rapid City and the Black Hills see millions of visitors each year, while Nikko—nestled alongside a National Park—is a popular day trip from Tokyo with plenty of historic landmarks as well.

You’ll also find professional hockey in both cities. The Rapid City Rush, South Dakota’s first and only pro hockey team, began play in 2008 and are still standing strong 18 seasons later. Meanwhile, Nikko holds one of the longest-standing hockey foundations in all of Japan. The Furukawa Ice Hockey Club was officially established in 1925 as a corporate semi-professional club. After the team folded in 1999, the Nikko Ice Bucks took their place that year and have competed in the Asia League since 2003. Hockey is a niche sport in Japan, to be sure—the Ice Bucks are one of just four Japanese teams in the league. The country’s national team has competed in eight Winter Olympic Games, most recently in Nagano in 1998.

Here’s the fun connection: Tetsuo Setaka, who has served as Mayor of Nikko since 2025, is a hockey guy himself. If you Google his name, the first result is his Elite Prospects page. Setaka played for the Ice Bucks for six seasons (2007-13) out of his nine-year professional career as a center, then went on to become Mayor just over a decade later. What are the chances?

According to the International Ice Hockey Federation, there are more than 1.6 million hockey players globally. Every single one of them will accurately tell you, ‘Hockey is a small world.’ Every so often, a statistic, name, note, or anecdote turns up that proves that point, and this one was impossible to miss when it came across our desk.

For the first time in over thirty years of exchanges, hockey jerseys were involved. 5,608 miles later, the Rapid City cohort toured the City Hall of Nikko and met with Mayor Setaka to present him the Rush sweater. Setaka then grabbed a jersey of his own from his office and returned the gesture in kind.

“Since it was a surprise, I quickly gave them the ice hockey uniform of the Ice Bucks, which had my name and number on it, and they were very happy,” said Setaka, through a translated Facebook post. Talk about a one-of-a-kind souvenir.

When the students—along with their chaperone, Jeff Kaleda—returned stateside on July 27^th, they brought seven Japanese students back with them. The delegation spent the next ten days not only experiencing the South Dakota way of life with host families, but crossing every local attraction off the list. Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Air & Space Museum, Keystone, Deadwood, Spearfish, plus tours of Rapid City government buildings and a meeting with Mayor Jason Salamun. They saw more in a week-and-a-half than most of us do in a year.

“It is always interesting to us to see our community through the eyes of the international students,” said Jennifer Utter, President of the Rapid City Sister City Association. “I asked them, ‘What was surprising about America?’ They said, ‘The big cars and the big food. The speed on the highways. Everything is big.’ For our students here, (I take away) just how encompassing it is to experience another culture, not just read about it, but live it.”

The evening before our visitors left town, everyone got together one final time for a potluck dinner at Canyon Lake Park. The Rush front office, along with Head Coach Dave Smith and Assistant Coach John Mitchell, stopped by to take part in another exchange.

The Sister City Association presented the team with Tetsuo Setaka’s Nikko Ice Bucks jersey, which will be on display at the Rush office. As if this newfound connection couldn’t be more whole, the Rush met Nikko high school student Keitaro Hori, who has been playing hockey since the first grade.

Needless to say, he’s a Rush fan for life.

For the first time ever, the Rapid City Sister City Association welcomed visitors from both Nikko and Apolda in 2026. The group has organized exchanges with teachers, firefighters, police, city workers, and medical professionals in previous years, all with the goal of creating friendships between former enemy countries after World War II. Back in 2015, the city renamed sections of Rapid Street downtown to Nikko Street and Apolda Street. The cities celebrated the 30^th anniversary of the partnership with a renewal of vows in 2024.

Under an alternating-year schedule, the Sister City Association has been invited to Germany next summer.

In the throes of the offseason, our puck drop still two short months away, we are once again reminded how sports can serve as powerful universal connectors across cultural boundaries.

2026-27 Rapid City Rush season tickets, mini plans, and group experiences are on sale now! You can score the best deals on tickets and take advantage of exclusive perks, including season ticket holder-only events and discounts at the team store. Call the Rush office at 605-716-7825 or visit www.rapidcityrush.com to learn more and secure your seats today.