April 26: The SDSU baseball team defeated Nebraska 8-3 in Lincoln, the Jacks first win over the Cornhuskers in baseball in 52 years. Will Kent (Rosemount, MN) got the win for SDSU on the mound while Dawson Parry (Highland, UT) and Drew Beazley (Johnston, IA) each had three hits while Jess Bellows (Miles City, MT) added four RBIs. SDSU ended a 13-game losing streak to Nebraska as the Jacks last beat the Huskers 10-5 on April 12, 1971. In that 1971 game, Rick Heard (Austin, MN) was the winning pitcher for the Jacks while teammate Dave Sletting (Aberdeen) got the save and Dean Krogman (Lismore, MN) blasted two doubles and a single.

May 1: ESPN college football analyst and former Penn State All-American tight end Adam Breneman came to Brookings on Dec. 3, 2022, to call the FCS second-round play-off game between SDSU and Delaware (42-6 Jackrabbit win). Breneman, who retired from football at age 22 due to injury, said of all his travels in 2022, Brookings was his favorite college football town of the season for the enthusiasm and support shown for the Jackrabbits.

May 1: It has been a tough year for gymnastics in South Dakota. Limited budgets lead the Rapid City public schools to cut gymnastics and the Sioux Falls schools look to be headed down that same road. Also, Corn Palace officials in Mitchell declined to host the state gymnastics tourney in 2026 because the dates of the two-day event conflicted with the dates of the more-attended two-day DWU Classic for boys’ and girls’ high school basketball teams.

May 1: Bon Homme senior shortstop Riley Rothschadl had four home runs and 11 RBIs in his high school baseball team’s 20-1 win over Centerville. The Augustana recruit is hitting .700 (14 for 20) so far this season.

May 3: Former Augustana and St. Thomas More standout Aislinn Duffy will play pro basketball in Belgium. Duffy, the 2023 Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference South Division Player of the Year, is believed to be the first women’s basketball player from Augustana to turn pro.

May 4: Selby Area siblings Tray and Taryn Hettick won medalist honors during the Yellowstone Trail Conference golf tournament in Eureka. Tray, a senior, shot a 73 to win the boys’ title by eight strokes. Taryn, an eighth-grader, shot a 90 to edge teammate Maize Baumann by a single stroke, helping to power Selby Area to the girls’ team crown.

May 4: Erin Skinner of Presentation College was named the North Star Athletic Association softball coach of the year. In her first and last season with the Saints — the college will close later this year, she coached PC to a 11-27 overall record and a 7-17 mark in the conference.

May 5: The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and chairman Ryman LeBeau formally recognized 2023 NFL draftee Tucker Kraft (Green Bay in the third round) for his outstanding contributions to the area and his hometown of Timber Lake. The letter, in part, read: “You have exemplified that growing up in a small reservation town has no limitations and that you can achieve anything you set your mind and heart to do. You are a role model to many, especially the youth.”

May 5: Tori Kniesche (Wayne, NE) pitched the first perfect game in SDSU softball history, beating rival USD 8-0 in five innings in Brookings. She faced 15 batters, striking out 12 and getting the other three out on infield pop-ups.

May 5-6: Myah Selland of Letcher played 3:08 in her first pro game, a WNBA pre-season game where her Minnesota Lynx defeated Washington 72-69. She was one of 12 players to see action, but the former SDSU star did not record any stats. The next day, she spoke at her graduation ceremony in Brookings.

May 5-6: A record 32 records fell at the 98th Howard Wood Dakota Relays in Sioux Falls, including a pair by one of the state’s greatest high school distance runners in Simeon Birnbaum of Rapid City Stevens. On Friday, he beat a talented field in winning the 800-meter run in a record time of 1:50.37. On Saturday, Birnbaum broke the Relays’ oldest record in winning the 1,600 meters in 4:04.05. Jim Reinhart of Sioux Falls Lincoln set the old record of 4:09.74 in 1973. Meanwhile, the Colman-Egan sprint medley relay girls’ team of Daniela Lee, Lanie Mousel, Josie Mousel and Reese Luze broke Burke’s 45-year-old Class B record. Colman-Egan ran it in 4:10.01 while on May 5, 1978, Burke won the sprint medley in 4:14.44 with Carol Bailey (now Ivy), Lori Ulmer (LaBahn), Brenda Heyden (Schaefer) and Julie Tolstedt (LaFleur) running. Burke (Sue Smizer, Bailey, Ulmer and Heyden) still has a 1978 record standing from their girls’ 1,600-meter relay team (4:03.94).

May 6: Presentation College, which will close due to long-term financial and enrollment issues later this year, played its last athletic contest. The Saints’ baseball team lost to Mayville State in the North Star Athletic Association Tournament to close out its season 0-46. PC, a private Catholic institution founded in Aberdeen by the Presentation Sisters in 1951, started an athletic program with men’s and women’s basketball in 1995 that grew to double-figure athletic teams including football over the years. The college started in 1922 in Mitchell as Notre Dame Junior College, established by Mitchell’s Holy Family Church pastor the Right Rev. Monsignor J.M. Brady. In 1951, Brady gave sponsorship of the school to the Presentation Sisters, who focused on training women nurses to fulfill its mission of rural health care. The college began accepting male students in 1968. PC’s peak enrollment was 821 students in the fall of 2016.

May 6: The SDSU (35-15) softball team defeated USD 10-1 to complete a 17-0 Summit League season and win the conference title. It was the seventh undefeated season in Summit League history with the last team to do so being the 2016 NDSU Bison. It was the third Summit League softball title in a row for the Jacks, who have gone 56-3 in the league and 119-36 overall in the last three seasons.

May 7: SDSU added to its collection of Mr. Basketball winners as Joe Sayler of White River won the award. Later this month after graduating, Sayler will join the SDSU men’s team and teammates Kalen Garry (the 2022 winner) and Matthew Mors (2021 winner). The South Dakota Ms. Basketball winner was University of Sioux Falls recruit Kami Wadsworth of Hamlin. The first Mr. Basketball was Barry Glanzer of Armour in 1978 and the first Ms. Basketball winners — a tie — were Kris Holwerda of Brookings and Ann Pancoast of Sioux Falls Washington in 1980.

May 8: Scott Berry retired after 42 years as the head baseball coach for Mayville State. His teams went 1,196-696-1 from 1982-2003. Berry, who grew up in LaMoure, ND, was a former standout player at Mayville as well in the 1970s. Berry has won more than 40 coach of the year awards and his teams have won 24 regular-season conference titles, 25 conference tournaments and played in 30 NAIA national tournaments, placing fifth in the 2002 NAIA World Series. Berry is the brother of NSU head baseball coach Dean Berry. Mayville has had only two head coaches for the last 75 seasons as Scott Berry took over for Al Meyer (33 years at Mayville) in 1982.

May 13: Former USD standout wide receiver and team captain Caleb Vander Esch (San Jose, CA) helped the Arlington (TX) Renegades defeat the D.C. Defenders 35-26 to win the XFL championship. The eight-team XFL got back on the field this season after the pro football league last played in 2001.

May 14: Minnesota waived former SDSU standout Myah Selland. The Letcher native played in two WNBA pre-season games for the Lynx.

May 16: Marlene Hagge-Vossler, a Hall of Fame player and the last surviving founder of the LPGA Tour, has died at 89. Marlene Bauer was born in Eureka and learned to play golf at Lee Park (then Hyde Park) in Aberdeen where her father Dave Bauer ran the course and the family lived in the clubhouse. Hagge-Vossler won 26 LPGA Tour events, including the 1952 LPGA Championship, and she was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2002. At age 15, Marlene was named the 1949 Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. The following year in 1950, she and 12 other women — including her older sister, Alice Bauer — founded the LPGA Tour. 

May 17: Former SDSU and Timber Lake standout Tucker Kraft and the Green Bay Packers came to terms. The rookie tight end and 78 th overall pick of the 2023 NFL Draft will earn $5.54 million over four seasons plus he got a $1.27 million signing bonus.

May 17: Rapid City surgeon Dr. Jacob Weasel became the first Native American to reach the 29,032 summit of Mount Everest in Nepal. The 36-year-old member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe is an experienced climber. He has scaled Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet) in Tanzania and came within 1,000 feet of the top of Alaska’s Denali (20,310 feet) last year before Hurricane-force winds forced him off of the mountain. Weasel’s goal is to scale the Seven Summits of the Seven Continents: Denali, Kilimanjaro, Mount Everest, Aconcagua (22,838 feet) in Argentina, Mt. Elbrus (18,510 feet) in Russia; Vinson Massif (16,050 feet) in Antarctica and Puncak Jaya (16,024 feet) in Indonesia.

May 19: Sioux Falls Lincoln dominated the State AA boys’ tennis championships by winning eight of the nine titles with five single championships and all three doubles’ titles. It was the ninth straight team title for coach Tom Krueger’s Patriots.

May 19: O’Gorman tennis coach Don Barnes retired after completing a coaching career that has spanned five decades. Barnes and wife Kate (the OG assistant for more than 30 years and a former head coach for the OG girls who also is retiring) were honored at the State AA tourney in Sioux Falls where their Knights finished second. Barnes started his career in Woonsocket in 1970. He came to O’Gorman in 1972 (he left for the private business sector for a few years but returned). His teams have won more than 1,000 matches and 17 state titles. He was the national high school boys’ tennis coach of the year in 2005.

May 21: A 70-year-old South Dakotan from Junius (near Madison) started his 51st season of dirt-track racing at Huset’s Speedway in Brandon. Sprint car driver Chuck McGillivray has raced all over the state for the last half century.

May 22: Roslyn native and Webster graduate Logan Storley (14-2) will fight Brennan Ward (17-6) Aug. 11 in the main event for Bellator MMA 298 at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls. Storley is a former welterweight Mixed Martial Arts world champion.

May 25: Conner Tordsen (Fairmont, MN) of Dakota State won the discus event with a throw of 177 feet, 7 inches at the NAIA National Track and Field Meet in Marion, IN. He is the first outdoor national champion in DSU track history.

May 27: Simeon Birnbaum won his last high school race in South Dakota as the Rapid City Stevens senior won the State AA 1,600-meter run in 4:02.78, breaking the state meet record of 4:09.8 set by Huron’s Rod DeHaven in 1984. Birnbaum won all four of his events (800, 3,200 and anchoring the RCS’s winning sprint medley relay team). In his career, the University of Oregon recruit won 10 state track titles and two state cross country titles.

May 27: The Sioux Falls Christian boys’ and girls’ track teams dominated the state track meet as each team won State A titles by scoring more than twice as many points as the runner-up teams. Of the 10 state titles in relays (five each for girls and boys), the SFC Chargers won nine of the relay titles with the SFC boys finishing second only in the 400-meter relay.

May 27: The state record holder in girls’ shot put and discus, Gracelyn Leiseth, won both events at the State A track meet. The Hamlin senior’s teammate and classmate, Kami Wadsworth, finished second in both events. Leiseth will compete in track at the University of Florida in the fall while Wadsworth will compete in basketball and track at the University of Sioux Falls.

May 28: Hall of Fame coach Bob Schroeder of Miller died two weeks after he turned 100. Schroeder, a Miller native who was a standout athlete at Miller and USD, coached and taught at Miller for 41 years (1944-1985). His football teams had eight undefeated seasons, including a 29-game winning streak, and his 1946 Miller team was considered one of the best in the nation. His 1949 Miller basketball team won a state title with an undefeated season. Schroeder coached numerous state track champions as well at Miller. He helped start the Miller golf and wrestling programs.

May 29: The Miami Heat advanced to the NBA Finals with four Sioux Falls Skyforce alumni on their roster: Nikola Jovic, Omer Yurtseven, Gabe Vincent and Duncan Robinson.

May 31: Former SDSU standout golfer Teresa Toscano qualified for the 2023 U.S. Women’s Open Championship on July 6-9 at Pebble Beach (CA) Golf Links. The 2021 SDSU graduate won the two-day Open qualifier tourney at Ohio State by shooting a 6-under 138.

May 31: Within three days, the community of Miller lost two long-time coaches and educators (see the Bob Schroeder item on May 28). Gerry Hunter, 76, died after spending 41 years (1968-2009) as a Miller coach, teacher and administrator. Hunter, a De Smet native who ran track at SDSU and Huron College, coached a number of sports at Miller as well as serving as the school’s athletic director for more than a decade.

Email us at dave@sdsportscene.com if you think we missed something or if you have an event you would like us to consider for this feature.