CLEAR LAKE — Aidan Sievers’ athletic career includes a path you don’t see too often from a South Dakota athlete.

The Deuel junior is the starting quarterback for the Cardinals football team, but also spends his time on the water wakeboarding.

It’s a sport he picked up when he was 11 or 12 years old when his brother, Devon, had friends from college over at their house on Lake Cochrane.

“My brother wrestled at SDSU so he had his college buddies and we had a wakeboard at the time, and he and his buddies were trying to see who could land a flip the fastest on our lake and I thought that I could do it too,” Sievers said. “I ended up landing it pretty quick and it just snowballed from there.”

Sievers got wakeboarding lessons from his dad on his birthday with a coach in Wisconsin. After spending time there, Sievers' path down wakeboarding continued south to The Sunshine State.

“It kept snowballing, I kept getting better and then this coach from Wisconsin, he was on Team USA with another coach in Florida and he referred us to those guys and we just kept getting better and they told me that I should compete and it just went on from there,” Sievers said.

Photo of Aidan Sievers wakeboarding. (Courtesy Photo)

Sievers began training at the Freedom Wake Park in Orlando, Florida, before competing in contests.

Wakeboarding competitions are scored on three different categories, including how high you get in the air, how technically difficult it is and how well you land the trick, and it’s totaled out of 100.

Sievers went on to compete and win a national championship at the 2022 Nautique World Wake Association National Championships in Winter Haven, Florida, in the 10-13 boys division. Not bad for a kid who picked up the sport just a few years prior.

Sievers has continued to make trips to Florida to train at the Freedom Wake Park and will do so following the football season when he competes as a junior pro, but also throws in football training into his busy training schedule.

“I’d go down there like once a month to train and then I’d stay for like a long weekend or a week at a time and I’ve been going down there for a couple years now.

“I do wakeboarding a lot but I train for football year-round at Sanford Riggs in Sioux Falls. I go there all year, two times a week and I do Power there as well.”

He also attends 7-on-7 football camps with Sanford Sports in the offseason as well.

Sievers is the youngest of four kids who have all had exceptional athletic careers. On top of his older brother wrestling at South Dakota State, Sievers’ two sisters, Meaghan and Danielle, competed in gymnastics for Iowa State and Oklahoma, respectively, with Danielle winning three team national championships for the Sooners.

Sievers, a 6-foot, 190-pound junior, is in his second season as the starting quarterback for Deuel and has the Cardinals at 8-1 and the No. 4 seed in the Class 11B playoffs.

Aidan Sievers running out during starting lineups in a matchup with Clark/Willow Lake on Oct. 3, 2025, in Clear Lake. (Jon Akre / 605 Sports)

“I think it’s gone really great,” Sievers said. “I think we were together really well. Even if we get down, or behind in score, we work together really well and don’t get down on ourselves. Usually we respond and come out on top so I’ve been impressed, we rebounded from last year and we have most of the same guys so it’s been really fun.”

Starting as a sophomore, Sievers says he’s learned how to slow the game down in his head,

“I feel like I’ve become much more comfortable and confident as opposed to last year,” Sievers said. “Last year I felt like I rushed everything and felt like I made it too big of a deal. Now I’m just taking my time and playing one play at a time.”

Sievers and the Deuel Cardinals host No. 5 Wagner Thursday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m. in the Class 11B quarterfinals.