By Rodney Haas 

605 Sports 

MITCHELL — It was 30 years ago this month when Mitchell native Toby Kippes was crowned a state wrestling champion while leading the Kernels to their first of four-consective titles in the 1990s. 

For Kippes, it was the mountain top he had been working toward since he started wrestling at 5 years old. 

After high school, Kippes went on to wrestle at Northern State University in Aberdeen. However, he quickly realized he was burnt out from the sport, and quit. 

Kippes dropped out of college and moved to Minneapolis, where he tried selling security systems for a company he said turned into being a scam. 

 “I had trouble with that,” he said. “Then I started working for a rigging company where I started at the very bottom sweeping the floors, cutting firewood for the stove, cleaning up, washing trucks, and doing all the grunt work.”

Through his hard work, Kippes would eventually work his way to a crew leader position. At this time he met his wife and started a family, but soon realized he was done living in the city and turned his attention back to South Dakota. 

Kippes would make some calls and eventually found a position with a construction company in Sioux Falls that promised an opportunity of possibly owning it one day. 

“I bought into all that,” he said. “I did that for 12 years and was really crazy successful. The problem with being successful in that realm, I didn't have a balance in my life, and I started to neglect my wife and kids.”  

Soon, Kippes became tunnel-vision and increasingly focused on what needs to happen to make this company succeed, and to one day get the ownership he was promised. However, when the owner died and since the agreement was not specified in the will, he soon found himself on the outside. 

Although knocked down, Kippes picked himself off the mat and turned his attention toward a new path and starting his own business, Orion Rigging Company.  

“I worked for them for a year while building my company and flying to Chicago to buy equipment and doing all this stuff under the cuff,” he said. “After a year, we launched Orion Rigging Company and took a good portion of the employees, took a large portion of the business and built it into a successful company. After about three years, we were doing $4.5 million to $5 million a year at a 40 percent profit margin.” 

Kippes was on top of the mountain. After all the hard work, the perseverance and determination, he was at the pinnacle of his life. 

However, when he looked around, there was nobody to share his success with. 

A few years prior, the imbalance of work and family had taken its toll and Kippes and his wife divorced. 

It was a divorce that turned ugly according to him, in which the kids were thrown into the middle of it.   

“I just buried myself in building this business, and that's what I did, and in doing that, I pretty much shut everything else in my world off,” he said. “I achieved all the goals that we had set when we started the company. I started doing a self-evaluation of what my life was worth. I was miserable. I had money. I kind of had a relationship with my kids. My ex-wife wanted to gut me. I'm not blaming her for that. I understand.” 

To cope, Kippes began abusing alcohol, and when alcohol wasn’t doing the trick, he turned to cocaine.  

“I started using cocaine regularly, and then when we couldn't find cocaine one weekend, I started using meth,” he said. “The first time I did it, I was like, ‘This is it. This solves the problems. This does all the things.’ So for three and a half years, it was ugly — disastrous carnage like a tornado went through your life.” 

Hitting rock bottom 

For Kippes, Oct. 12, 2019 is the day he will say was the day he hit rock bottom. It was the day he was staring at the barrel of a Glock40 handgun being held by a young Sioux Falls police officer, who Kippes described as having very, "shaky hands.” 

A few days prior, Kippes had led Sioux Falls Police on a chase that culminated in him crashing his truck after crossing the intersection of Spring and 12th Street. 

“Anything that you needed to script a bad situation was all there,” Kippes said. “I ran and I got away.” 

In the meantime, Kippes’ name and picture were everywhere and he was on South Dakota’s Most Wanted List. 

“The next thing you know, I did a big old blast of drugs because I had a car coming, I had money coming, like, I’m getting out of Dodge. I looked out of the window and three minivans pulled up and outflowed all these guys in flackjackets with machine guns. They weren't messing around. Like this isn't a joke. This is a real thing.” 

For Kippes, three days on the run from the cops had finally caught up to him and now a sense of panic started to set in. He had gone from being a wrestling state champion 20 years ago, to building a successful company, to being hunted by the cops like a dangerous criminal. 

“I didn't understand what the word surrender meant,” Kippes said. “I was always operating under the understanding that I created my own destiny. No matter what. If I just work hard. If I go and work as hard as I can, I can achieve anything I set my mind to. I literally have proven that to myself over and over when I was a kid and through my adult business life.”

Kippes’ drug addiction began in 2016 and was hardcore everyday. He said he would back his camper into his shop, do meth and work for 24 hours —  three — four — days straight.  

He recalled getting sick from withdrawals. Instead of seeking help, Kippes decided to start buying it in kilos and break it up and hide it around the house so he never ran out. 

“What I should have been doing was after I had a 10-hour day, I should have been home doing the things I needed to do at home,” Kippes said. “Because no matter what you do, there's always going to be another day and no matter how much you get done in a day, there's always going to be more to do tomorrow.” 

Life in prison 

By the time of his arrest, Kippes had already sold his company to his silent partners after they saw the destruction he was going through.

Kippes was sentenced to five years in prison but only served three and half years. He said he got 50 percent of it knocked off for being a first-time violent offense, and got more time knocked off for being a model inmate, maintaining a prison job and taking classes.  

Kippes described his time in prison as being the only place he’s experienced where everyone is on the same social grip. Everyone wears the same clothes, the same shoes. Everyone gets the same amount of money in their commissary fund, and everyone has the same amount of stuff.  Everyone is on the same level. It's a level playing field and because of this, the gangs start to rise. Because according to him, at the end of day, somebody has to be superior. 

“It comes down to a carnal experience of physicality and fights and brutality. If you mess with my guy, we're all coming to get you,” Kippes said. “That was different because the world's not like that. The world doesn't accept that. That is how things happen.”

When Kippes first arrived in prison, he was assigned to the maximum-security Jameson Annex section of the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. 

He said he would have his mom send money and he had all the things he needed. However, that wasn’t always the case for others. 

He recalled how these young Native American kids tried to piece him up.

“I'd get up and I said, ‘Oh, sorry, I'm not very good at hearing. I didn't hear that,’ and just went (SLAP),” Kippes said. “I threw them all out (of his cell) and into the hallway and the guards would come down and shine their light in. 

‘Everything all right there?’ 

‘Yup.’ 

‘What's going on with these guys out here?’

‘I don't know. They came in here and thought they were gonna take something that wasn't theirs.’ 

‘OK.’” Kippes said.  

According to Kippes, his time at Jameson lasted nine months of him sitting in the hole. Eventually he was later transferred to Springfield where he served out his time. 

“You don’t meet any state champions in prison,” Kippes said. “We don't meet successful business owners in prison. You meet guys that were like me that made it to the top and lost their grip. That's exactly what happened to me. I lost my grip.”

Kippes added that life behind bars gives you a lot of time to think about what you're missing. When he was locked up at the Minnehaha County Jail, his daughter was born.  

“I was fighting off the shame and the guilt of, you know, ‘I'm a dad. I'm not even there to support her. What kind of a piece of s*** have I become,’” Kippes said. 

Kippes recalled his last days of freedom were spent trying to hit a vein when he looked at himself in the mirror and asked himself, “How did you get here?” 

“How did I get here? You're holding a syringe full of drugs and you're trying to push it into your vein. You used to be a champion. You used to be a leader. You used to be somebody that a lot of people looked up to. How did you get to this point?” Kippes asked himself. “ I never just shook it off, looking at myself. ‘Oh well.’ And that's a scary place. That's a really scary place. It's a place that I won't go back to, no matter what.” 

Toby Kippes and his girlfriend Kate watch Ethan and Hamlin play in a girls basketball game during the Hoop City Classic Monday, Dec. 30, 2024 at the Corn Palace in Mitchell. (Rodney Haas / 605 Sports)
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A second chance and finding religion 

For Kippes, his sobriety is the most important thing to him right now. He says he has a better grasp of his life now than he ever has.   

He added how he doesn’t think of himself as an addict, but someone who self-medicated problems that medications couldn't fix.  

“Honestly, I would still struggle with it if I wouldn't have found Jesus,” Kippes said. “Jesus Christ and my relationship with my Lord and Savior is 100 percent what cured me. It didn't cure my addiction. It cured the problem that I was using the addiction to mask.”

Growing up, Kippes’ mother was Lutheran while his dad was Catholic. He said it was his mom who wanted him to get confirmed, but with three weeks left in confirmation, he began to question the logic.  

“I remember raising my hand up and saying, ‘Would God rather have me be down in this basement, trying to memorize words I don't even know what they mean, or would he rather have me sitting in my boat out in the lake, catching fish and having a conversation with him?” Kippes asked the pastor. “The pastor looked up, he said, ‘He'd rather have you in a boat, having a conversation with him.’ I got up and I walked out of there and I never got confirmed and it irritated my mom for her whole life.”

Call it an act of defiance for Kippes at a young age, but today he said he has constant conversations with God and always looks to him for guidance. He said he trusts his wisdom and trusts the path the good Lord has for him, even if he thinks he’s not qualified.  

“From a worldly standpoint, I'm not qualified to go and to speak at churches,” Kippes said. “I just got out of prison. I was addicted to drugs and here I’m speaking at churches from a five-state area. I don't even know who these people are, and they're like, ‘Hey, could you come here and speak to our church on this date?”’

When Kippes was in prison, he said he promised God if he calls, he would answer, even if he’s afraid, even if he’s in fear, even if he feels he’s not qualified. 

“That's the one thing that I tell myself every morning when I wake up, this is your second chance. Don't waste it,” Kippes said. “Because you know what, we can get hung up in our feelings, we can get hung up in our distress. I was hung up for six months coming out of prison thinking that everybody was looking at me. In actuality, that wasn't really happening. That was just my brain trying to keep me in a place where I couldn't do my purpose.” 

Giving back to the sport 

After being released from prison, Kippes moved back to Mitchell to help his dad after his mom died while he was locked up, also because he had no other place to go. 

He currently works as a maintenance tech at Entertech Global and is a traveling evangelist. He and his girlfriend Kate have been dating for a couple of months and he has a relationship with his youngest daughter. As for his other kids from his marriage, he said he’s just surrendered it to God and he will let the good Lord work on that problem.  

“Once I allowed Jesus into my heart, I allowed him to come in and repair things,” Kippes said. “It's so hard because people always ask me how do you do that. What do you mean, you let him in and fix you? I don't have an answer for that. I just know that the Holy Spirit came over me and I literally felt it physically. I was overwhelmed. I remember going to my knees. Once I was able to get a hold of that and then start reading the word and start applying the different things that are written in the Bible to my life. I decided to get fixed.”

When Kippes got out of prison, one of the things he was looking forward to doing was getting back into the Mitchell High School wrestling room and giving back to a program that meant a lot to him. However, MHS couldn't allow a convicted felon back into the program. It was a hard pill to swallow, Kippes said, but he had to trust his faith that other opportunities would come.    

“I said, ‘Lord, I guess that's what it is,’” Kippes said. “Then out of nowhere (Dakota Wesleyan University athletic director) Ross Cimpl called me up and he said, ‘Hey, what do you think about being our PA announcer for men's and women's wrestling?’ Yeah done. It was like, ‘Oh, you don't wanna think about it?’ No. I'm good.’”

For Kippes, being back around the sport has been a blessing. He said he understands what’s going in the wrestlers minds and he knows the hard work they put in, despite having just 10 to 15 people in the stands. 

“Even though there's not a lot of people there, they still put the work in. They're coming here to perform.”

Kippes was behind the PA mic on Feb. 8 when Dakota Wesleyan hosted the GPAC Duals, informing people of the scores from the three mats, and matchups for the next round. 

It’s a full-circle moment for this former state wrestling champion, who reached the mountain top of being a state champion and a successful business owner. But fell from grace when the imbalance in his life led him to being estranged from his wife and kids, and led him to a path that would take him to the depths of hell.  

So what's your message for high school seniors right now who are in your shoes today that you were 30 years ago? 

“Stay focused. Keep your life balanced, and slow down enough where you can enjoy the moment that you're in right now,” Kippes said. You're going to grow up and it’s going to start to go really really fast. Pretty soon you're going to be in my shoes with kids that are in their 20s and it goes and it goes so fast.” 

He added to invest in your faith and find balance in your life and just go out and enjoy what you do. 

“Money can be your best friend and it can be your worst enemy,” Kippes said. “The understanding of how that operates and and if God blesses your life there is a purpose for that. It's up to us to make sure that we see that purpose. In order to do that, you have to be focused, you have to be squared up and you have to have an understanding that it's all about him.

Trust the path that you are on? 

“He'll show you.”