Bemidji schools and BSU reflect on storm recovery efforts

A 4:30 a.m. text message sent Bemidji High School activities director Kristen McRae scrambling from a graduation party in the Twin Cities as the June 21, 2025, storm tore through the area before dawn. One year later, McRae and Bemidji State athletics director Britt Lauritsen were still looking back on a week that forced school and college sports to keep moving while fields, facilities and routines were being rebuilt.

The National Weather Service later estimated peak winds at 120 mph in a 10-mile swath of destructive straight-line winds that hit between 12:40 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. CDT. Beltrami County Board Chair Craig Gaasvig declared a state of emergency that same day, and the City of Bemidji did the same as crews dealt with widespread tree damage, road blockages and long-duration outages affecting more than 50,000 reported accounts in the Bemidji area. The damage survey found no fatalities or injuries, but it identified structural damage at Bemidji State University and Sanford Center Arena.

At BSU, the storm’s impact reached far beyond a single facility. Media reports said 90 percent of the university’s buildings suffered some form of damage, and the loss spread into the athletic footprint that student-athletes depend on every day. On the city side, soccer, baseball and softball fields at Bemidji City Park and near Bemidji Middle School were destroyed, leaving school officials to piece together practices, games and access around sites that could no longer be used as scheduled.

Gov. Tim Walz toured storm-damage areas in Beltrami County on June 24, 2025, and said the state disaster assistance contingency account could reimburse 75 percent of public infrastructure repair costs under certain conditions. By July, the county estimated $9.7 million in damages to non-insured public infrastructure and extended its emergency declaration for another 30 days, underscoring how long the recovery would run. For Bemidji schools and BSU, that meant athletics had to be treated as infrastructure, with calendars, travel plans and facility use all adjusted while damaged spaces were restored.

The recovery carried into the 2025-26 school year as both programs kept adapting to changing conditions. What began as a summer storm became a long stretch of maintenance, relocation and financial strain, with the same disaster that knocked out power and blocked roads also reshaping how Bemidji keeps school and college sports alive when the next disruption hits.