South Dakota
The story of South Dakota’s most important road trip
The South Dakota women’s basketball team had a wakeup call that blurred the lines between early and late a few weeks ago. The Coyotes hosted UC Riverside in the WNIT opening round home game that tipped at 7 p.m. local time in Vermillion on Friday, March 22. With adrenaline still running high after a 15-point win, a bus left campus at 2:30 a.m. for a trip that was entirely voluntary.
But in the middle of the night, the entire team was on that bus – and for good reason.
In a time of year full of college basketball travel, the Coyotes set off on arguably the most poignant trip of any around the country early that morning. Shortly before the Summit League Tournament, in early March, Coyotes junior Kendall Holmes received heartbreaking news that her father had passed away.
“She received the worst phone call she’ll have her entire life,” said USD head coach Kayla Karius. “Her entire world had been flipped upside down. When you talk about having 17 players on a roster, plus staff, and put all those people together, life happens. This was an example of that.”
Holmes, the team’s second-leading scorer, returned to the Chicago area to be with her family. The loss resonated with her teammates, who honored Holmes by wearing her father’s initials on their jerseys as they advanced to the semifinals of the league tournament and nearly knocked out heavy favorite South Dakota State.
The team accepted a bid to the WNIT after a resurgent season (21-13, 9-7) that saw it return to a more familiar spot at the upper tier of the Summit. The players, however, had something on their mind as practice kicked off for the postseason.
They wanted to be there for their teammate as details of services in the Chicago area for Holmes’ father were being finalized.
“Players after practice would come up and ask if it was possible for us to go, and I even think they meant they themselves would figure out how to individually get there,” Karius said.
From the beginning, Karius and her staff had such a trip on their radar. The second-year coach said a similar situation happened to a teammate of hers when she played at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and remembered how much it meant to her teammate that the entire team showed up for the funeral. Those services, however, were near Green Bay. Getting the Coyotes from South Dakota to Chicago, all while they were in the midst of a postseason tournament, would pose a different type of logistical hurdle.
Yet, they were able to thread the needle.
Karius credited her staff, especially director of operations Liz Oswald, for cobbling together a plan that would work. It started with a 6 a.m. one-way flight from Omaha, a two-hour drive from Vermillion to Chicago the morning after the UC Riverside game so the team could make the funeral. Getting to Omaha, however, proved to be a challenge, as there just weren’t many busses, vans or car service companies available on short notice.
Ultimately, the team was able to secure a bus from Clark, S.D. – nearly three hours north of Vermillion – to get the team to its crack-of-dawn flight. They were also able to find a bus company in the Chicago area willing to take the team back on the one-way trip to Vermillion, over eight hours away.
The trip – which was first reported by MidCo Sport’s Jay Elsen – would happen regardless of how the UC Riverside game played out. When it was pitched to the team, nobody balked.
“We didn’t want to force anyone to go. It was completely up to them and says a lot about our team that every single player wanted to go,” Karius said. “It was not convenient, it wasn’t an easy trip on their bodies and minds, but all of them chose to go.”
Karius was unable to go, as she had given birth to a baby boy on March 4, returning to the sidelines for the Summit League Tournament before handing gameday duties to assistant Mike Jewett for the WNIT. She had given Holmes and her mom a heads up that the team was coming and the reports she received about the moment the team arrived were heartwarming.
“It’s hard for me to exactly share with you how she looked when the team walked in, but she was so thankful,” Karius said. “They told me when the team walked she was pretty overcome with emotion.”
The wins and losses seem trivial in a situation like this, but the Coyotes did have a game to play just a few days after their whirlwind trip. Nonetheless, they notched a 79-65 win over Northern Arizona that featured a 34-point outburst from star junior guard Grace Larkins.
They would fall in their next game at Wyoming, but Karius called the postseason experience invaluable as she continues to build her version of one of the Summit’s premier programs. The team dominated the fourth quarters of both games, breaking open tight contests in a pair of win-or-go home situations.
“It gave these players a taste of what postseason basketball feels like,” Karius said “When you look toward your offseason and are trying to stay motivated to be the best person or player you can be the next six months, those are the feelings you just don’t forget.”
And in the midst of it, the team and staff went out of its way to support a teammate in need. More than the wins and losses, that’s what USD’s 2024 postseason will be remembered for.
*Editor’s Note: Kendall Holmes entered the transfer portal this week.
See video of Devil’s Gulch, chosen as a day trip for USA’s 250th
See a video of Devil’s Gulch Park, a great day trip with a storied past in South Dakota to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday this year.
Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson said he does not know what’s next for him after his failed bid for South Dakota governor, and while he’s helping one of the remaining Republican candidates, he does not plan to make a public endorsement unless he’s asked.
South Dakota Searchlight sat down with Johnson for an interview in Sioux Falls. He did not say which of the remaining candidates he’s assisting.
Johnson said his campaign was affected by a political environment hostile to candidates with experience in Congress.
“It’s not a good time to be connected to Washington, D.C.,” Johnson said.
He finished third in the four-way June 2 Republican primary behind Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden and Gov. Larry Rhoden, who will face each other in a July 28 runoff election. Johnson finished ahead of state House Speaker Jon Hansen. The spread between first and last place was 10 percentage points.
Johnson will remain a U.S. representative until January. He has no specific plan for his future after that, other than remaining in Mitchell, where his wife has a business and one of their three sons is still in high school.
He did not rule out a return to politics, but said his “heart isn’t set on that,” adding that his motivation has always been “to do something” rather than “to be something.”
“It’s about the impact,” he said.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What happened with the SD governor’s race?
Well, it’s not a good time to be connected to Washington, D.C. Nine of my congressional colleagues have lost in the last year. When running for higher office, that’s an unusual number.
It used to be thought that being in the U.S. House was a good place to run for the Senate or for governor from. That’s really not the case anymore. Clearly, there’s a lot of dysfunction in D.C., and particularly if you are a more Reagan-minded Republican, a more establishment-viewed Republican, that can be hard to overcome in a primary.
And I’d note, we were ahead the whole race — three weeks out, four weeks out, we were 16 points up.
It was really the negative ads calling me a “RINO” [Republican in Name Only] or a liberal that, in those last two weeks, just cratered our numbers. And we saw that in our polling. People were increasingly saying, when we were asking them why they were voting for somebody else, “Well, you know, Dusty’s a liberal. Dusty’s a RINO.” And we probably did not do a good enough job of combating those negative ads. They really, really worked.
Why didn’t you target Doeden for criticism during the campaign?
Early on, particularly, it showed that there wasn’t a lot of overlap between Doeden voters and Johnson voters. If people were thinking about voting for me, they were also thinking about voting for Larry.
Now, that changed as the campaign went on. And indeed, as the negative ads against me in the last two weeks worked and took 10 points off our number, overwhelmingly, those people moved to Doeden. And that would have been fine if we would have made the runoff, but we fell just a couple thousand votes short of making the runoff.
I would have felt great about our chances against Toby in the runoff. But in the end, that’s not what happened.
Do you regret the votes you took in Congress that your opponents alleged were out of step with President Trump?
Number one, to the extent that they were principled votes, I don’t think you can ever regret your principles, right?
I mean, voting to certify the 2020 election was what the Constitution, the plain and clear reading of the Constitution, demanded of me. And so my political life might have been a little easier if I would have ignored the Constitution, but I’m just not capable of doing that.
The interesting thing is the attacks that had the most negative effect on me weren’t even the votes where I deviated from the party norms.
I mean, one attack that was really effective was saying Dusty Johnson voted with Ilhan Omar — that’s a liberal congresswoman from Minnesota — to defund ICE. It took us the longest time to figure out what they even meant by that. And that was an attack that Larry and Toby were making.
Near as I can tell, I voted against a Joe Biden spending package. I thought the Joe Biden spending package was too liberal. I voted against it. They’re, as a result, alleging that I voted to defund ICE. Ilhan Omar voted against that package because it wasn’t liberal enough for her.
I voted with the overwhelming majority of Republicans and all conservatives, but that clearly conservative vote was still distorted, and I’m not complaining about it. I mean, I think we all know that goes on in politics. I have no bitterness. I don’t have any regret.
I mean, at some point, we know that these primaries are going to be hard-fought. I’m not a sore loser. Toby and Larry won, and I didn’t.
And I think one of the reasons that I can handle the loss so well is that my motivator has never been to be something. It’s always been to do something. And we still have an opportunity to work together to improve South Dakota education, improve South Dakota public safety.
I don’t have to be governor for our state to make great things happen. And we deserve a great state. We deserve a great governor. And I’m committed to those things even if I’m not going to be the guy.
Rhoden and Hansen supported new laws that fund homeowner property tax reductions with higher sales taxes. Your campaign messaging criticized them for the sales tax increases. Was that not effective? What was the feedback?
That messaging was fantastically effective.
I mean, the campaign started with Larry and Dusty in a statistical tie at 29%. And once people understood more about the three sales tax increases, Larry went down to 23. We went up to 33. And Larry never fully recovered from that. Rather, I think he finished at 25.
And so the idea that the sales tax increases weren’t an effective differentiator isn’t supported by the data.
And indeed, I think that was part of what caused Toby’s run-up — the outside advertising, particularly. It was far harsher on Larry and Jon than anything we had designed or approved.
[The sales tax messaging] put a lid on Larry and Jon’s support. They just couldn’t get above 23 or 25 points. And when the negative ads calling me a liberal took 10 points off me, those voters couldn’t really go to Larry and Jon because they didn’t trust them on taxes. And so they were willing to go to Toby, who they viewed as a guy talking about big vision in the same way that our campaign was talking about big vision.
I don’t think that necessarily means that Toby Doeden’s going to be a great governor. I just think the voters in a multi-candidate field were having to figure out who they could vote for, as they were learning things about the other candidates they didn’t like.
Who will you vote for in the runoff?
Well, there has been a bit of a controversy this campaign season about people being endorsed by folks they didn’t want to be endorsed by. And so no candidate has asked me to publicly endorse them.
I’ve had multiple conversations with both Toby and Larry. When they’ve asked, I provided them my honest feedback.
One of the campaigns has asked me to help in some other ways, and I’m doing that. But I’m not going to announce that publicly unless they ask. I think it would be unfair to them.
Again, I called and reached out to both Toby and Larry and congratulated them because, again, they’re winners and I don’t have any intention of being a sore loser.
Listen, this is politics. We’ve all won in life, and we’ve all lost. Winning beats the heck out of losing, but I still know South Dakota has got great opportunities in the future.
You and your team worked hard, including using money from your political action committees, to get legislators elected that align with your agenda. That happened, but you lost. Isn’t that ironic? How does that happen?
Because the Republican primary electorate is hardwired to view attacks like “career politician” and “RINO” as radioactive. And although we certainly talked a lot about, I think, the unfortunate tax increases that Jon and Larry put into place, we were trying to make an argument about policy, right?
My differences with them were policy. Those were very different than the insults that the other candidates leveled at me, and just honestly, their negative ads were more effective than anything the outside groups were running on my behalf.
But no, I don’t think there’s any irony that Larry and Toby will have a more functional Legislature because of my hard work. I want South Dakota to have a good Legislature, regardless of who was governor.
I’m not interested in a functional South Dakota only if Dusty Johnson’s governor — I love the state, regardless.
Is there room for bipartisan “workhorses,” rather than “show horses,” in today’s Republican Party?
Certainly, election results from the last year have shown that it is really hard to get elected if you focus on common ground building.
Again, nine of my colleagues in the House have lost their runs for higher office just in the last year. And that’s much higher than has historically been normal.
But I still think honest people, principled people, are still going to do the right thing, even if maybe the political marketplace doesn’t reward them for it.
Did you seek President Trump’s endorsement? Would it have made a difference?
I think we’ve seen, like in Iowa with Randy Feenstra — also a very hard-working, policy-focused member of the House, a close ally of mine — he received the Trump endorsement and lost his governor’s race.
And I think it just goes to show that even with the Trump endorsement, if you’re viewed as somebody who’s more interested in working together than fighting, the race is going to be a little different. And we knew that going in.
Within the “America First” movement, we’re now seeing more influential figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens break with President Trump. What do you think is going to come of the Republican Party?
It does seem like both parties are being led by ever angrier and louder voices. That is not going to make for good outcomes in this country. But the fever will break.
I mean, we have been here before.
You look at the turn of the last century where you couldn’t find a newspaper that wasn’t a party organ.
I mean, it was the Mitchell Daily Republican — that was the name of the paper, literally. Hundreds of papers had partisan names and thousands of them were party organs, even if not by title.
And frankly, Americans had segregated themselves into ethnic and ideological ghettos — very, very tribal. And then something happened, the fever broke, and Americans decided to have more of a common identity. And they sought out platforms that were more interested in facts than in spin.
And I think the yellow journalism of the early 1900s was every bit as dangerous as the yellow journalism of today’s cable news. I think they’re both toxic to the healthy functioning of a free society.
But the fever broke then, and the fever will break now.
The good book says that the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night. And I don’t know when that happens, but I’m a believer in American exceptionalism. I don’t think these things happen by accident. I don’t think this is just another country.
I think if good people continue to stay engaged, the fever will break, and we’re going to get back to the kind of country that my kids deserve.
Do you regret any of your positioning in regard to President Trump, either being too aligned or not enough?
Well, I supported President Trump when I thought he was right.
There were certainly disagreements he and I had on things like invading Greenland, the Qatari jet, and certifying the 2020 election. But, I mean, at some point, if you’re not going to be authentic to your views, then why run, why serve?
Certainly, the president and I agreed far more than we disagreed. And we never had any particular problem. I mean, he knew that I had different views on trade, that we have different views on NATO and on the role of free trade agreements and security agreements. That never bothered him.
This was a guy who invited me to Mar-a-Lago. He had me over to the Oval Office. We had lots of productive meetings because we were both focused on getting things done. And no two people agree on everything.
I think that’s one reason that he was reluctant to endorse an incumbent governor in this race. And it is unusual that he did not endorse an incumbent governor, and I think part of that is because he and I had such a good working relationship.
What do you plan to do next?
I don’t have any idea. I love this state. My wife’s business is in Mitchell. We’ve got a 14-year-old in Mitchell schools, and our oldest is at South Dakota State University. Our middle child’s at the University of South Dakota. And so South Dakota’s home.
Votes that cost Johnson in the primary will stand up well to the scrutiny of history
I want to lead a life of consequence. I want to have an impact. I want to do things to improve this state.
Of course, you can do that in the private sector. You can do that in business. You can do that in nonprofit. You can do that in government.
I don’t have any idea what’s next, but I know leaders eat last, and we’ve got a lot of really talented professionals who are on the campaign, who love this state, and they want to find a job here, and I’m working hard to make sure that they can find a job.
And then we’ve got an incredibly talented and committed team on the official side, who work for the United States House, our office. They’ll have jobs through the end of the year, but they are so talented that, I mean, I’ll feel duty-bound to try to make sure that some great enterprise is able to hire them so that they can keep making the state great.
Does Dusty Johnson have a political future?
Oh, it’s so hard to say.
I think two weeks after an election is the wrong time for me to decide. We don’t even have all our highway signs down yet. And so I don’t know what the future holds.
Certainly, there are many examples of successful elected officials, such as John Thune and Bill Janklow, coming back after a loss. But my heart isn’t set on that.
Again, I’m more focused on doing things rather than being things. It’s about the impact. And so I don’t know.
If you told me that in my 70s, I was on the school board or in the state Legislature, I wouldn’t be shocked at all.
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
South Dakota
Rounds, Office of the Inspector General requesting first-hand accounts of poor mail service in South Dakota
google-site-verification: google9919194f75dd62c5.html
-
Michigan2 minutes agoMichigan’s single-stair reform gains as housing package languishes
-
Massachusetts9 minutes agoGas prices in Massachusetts dip below $4 a gallon for first time in 2 months
-
Minnesota12 minutes agoMinnesota sends time capsule photos to US Capitol for America’s 250th birthday
-
Mississippi17 minutes agoWhere to see fireworks and celebrate Fourth of July in, near Jackson
-
Missouri24 minutes ago
Missouri Lottery Powerball, Pick 3 winning numbers for June 24, 2026
-
Montana27 minutes ago‘Hannah Montana’ Alum Mitchel Musso Reveals Why He Missed 20th Anniversary Special With Miley Cyrus
-
Nebraska32 minutes agoScattered severe storms bring large hail, heavy rain to parts of Nebraska
-
Nevada39 minutes agoNevada Secretary of State calls court ruling on Trump election order a ‘big victory’
