BROOKINGS — Another successful season has ended in disappointment at the hands of the Omaha Mavericks for the South Dakota State softball team.

The Jackrabbits once again won the regular season conference title and hosted the Summit League tournament on their home field, and once again came up short, as the Mavericks beat SDSU twice on Saturday to punch their ticket to the NCAA tournament.

The top-seeded Jacks entered the day needing just one win, but they fell 5-2 and then 7-0 to the Mavs and ace pitcher Kamryn Meyer. It’s the second year in a row the Jacks won the regular season title but were ousted by Omaha in the conference tournament.

“I’m definitely gonna be feeling it tomorrow,” Meyer said after working 14 innings in four hours. “But I was willing to do whatever I had to do for my teammates. It’s super special to be able to play with these girls. These seniors were going to put everything on the line, no matter what it took, and I’m super grateful for this opportunity.”

“What a performance,” said Mavs coach Mike Heard of his ace pitcher. “I’ve said for a couple years now, when she goes out there you just know what you’re gonna get. She’s that good. At a certain point you run out of adjectives to describe her. She’s incredible.”

Alex Olson’s grand slam in the sixth inning was the decisive blow in the first game, and they scored four in the first inning of the second game to take control they’d never relinquish under Meyer, the Summit League pitcher of the year.

The Jacks had chances to win the opener. They had seven hits off Meyer, creating constant traffic on the bases, but they couldn’t come through with the big hit with runners on.

Omaha had taken a 1-0 lead on a homer by Maggie O’Brien, but the Jacks answered with a solo homer from Mia Jarecki, the Summit League player of the year. The Jacks kept the pressure on Meyer from there, but as they failed to take advantage, the Mavs hurler eventually found a groove.

Jacks ace Tori Kniesche matched her until the sixth, when the wheels fell off.

Lynsey Tucker and O’Brien singled, and pinch-hitter Sammy Schmidt laid down a bunt the Jacks couldn’t turn into an out, loading the bases. Olson then followed with a long drive that just cleared the right-center field wall, blowing the game open.

Omaha chose to bring Meyer back into the circle in Game 2 while the Jacks went with No. 2 starter Shannon Lacey, who couldn’t get out of the first inning, allowing four runs to dig the Jacks a devastating hole.

Kniesche came on in the fourth inning with the Jacks down 5-0, and she allowed two runs in 3.2 innings before she was removed with one out to go in the seventh inning for a curtain call on a historic career that saw her win two Summit League pitcher of the year awards.

Meyer, meanwhile, kept on dealing, allowing just three hits in the complete game shutout, and fielding a comebacker for the final out. She improved to 25-4 on the season. The Mavs record heading into the NCAA tournament is 41-13.

The Jacks finish the season 33-22. The Mavericks were the only Summit League team to defeat them.

Matt Zimmer is a Sioux Falls native and longtime sports writer. He graduated from Washington High School where he played football, legion baseball and developed his lifelong love of the Minnesota Twins and Vikings. After graduating from St. Cloud State University, he returned to Sioux Falls, and began a long career in amateur baseball and sports reporting. Email Matt at mzimmer@siouxfallslive.com.

These are tough times for Kristi Noem. She’s frequently the butt of jokes from late-night comedians. She’s been lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” Her plight inspires memes on the internet: Run, Cricket! Run!

In one of the roughest book tours in the entire history of print, Noem finds herself defending the killing of a family dog — a story she included in her book to show she knows how to make tough decisions — and dodging questions about why she made up an anecdote about meeting the reclusive dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Un.

The book, ironically titled “No Going Back,” is just one of her latest efforts to ingratiate herself with Donald Trump as she competes to be his selection to serve as his vice presidential candidate.

Sure, Noem has no one to blame but herself for her current predicament. She sought to be a national leader and instead became a national punchline. Her current fate is made all the more bitter by the fact that it certainly didn’t have to be this way.

Go back in time to the pandemic when Noem was seen in some circles as a hero for keeping South Dakota businesses open. Journalists who pointed out that the state led the league in per capita COVID-19 deaths were dismissed by Noem’s office as fake news. However, people didn’t seem to want to know the facts. Sick of their own governments literally being in their face with mask mandates, they liked the notion that there was freedom in South Dakota.

At this point, Noem’s popularity exploded. If you doubt this, don’t go back and check old polls or look up what the pundits were saying then. All you need to do is ask your real estate agent, many of whom were getting calls from across the country from people intent on moving to South Dakota because of the example and policies set by Noem. These were people who were tired of being told by government how to live their lives, even if those instructions were for their own good.

Of course Noem’s growing popularity put her on Trump’s radar, and that’s when she started to make mistakes. During her dating years, Noem may have known the value of playing hard to get. During her political years, she forgot that tactic and threw herself into a process designed to make her Trump’s choice to be his V.P.

Should Trump be elected, his vice presidency is political gold. In four short years, Trump would be out of office and his vice president would likely have the inside track on getting the Republican nomination. Noem, like others competing in the veepstakes, saw a short-term chance to grab higher office.

Hindsight tells us that Noem would have been better off steering clear of the Trump circus and taking the political long view. Instead of panting after the vice presidency, the post-pandemic Noem should have split her efforts — nurturing her popularity by helping other Republican candidates while focusing on the needs of South Dakotans.

Noem could have strengthened her resume with an eventual run for the U.S. Senate or a Cabinet position in Trump’s administration or a high-profile job, perhaps leading the NRA. Any of that would have helped her be a better, more well-rounded candidate should she choose to run for the presidency some time in the future.

Instead, lured by the prospect of four years serving Trump and then a possible move to the Oval Office, Noem has recast her image. She’s Kristi the wartime governor. She’s Kristi the TV pitchwoman.

Certainly “No Going Back” was written to burnish her V.P. credentials in Trump World. It’s just too bad that in the rest of the world, her story has become a joke for some and a stain for others. The book and its fallout will haunt Noem if she tries to continue her political career.

Instead of taking her growing national popularity and forming a long-term political strategy, Noem chose to take part in Trump’s “Apprentice”-style tryout for vice president. Now she has the distinction of being the largest national political failure from South Dakota since Sen. George McGovern lost the presidency in a landslide to Richard Nixon. The difference between the two is that McGovern was the choice of his party, but Noem made her mess while trying to be the choice of one man.

The South Dakota Department of Transportation is celebrating “511 Day” today (May 11, 2024).

South Dakota’s 511 traveler information telephone service started as #SAFE (#7223) in November 1996, then became 511 in 2001. Now it also includes a website at https://sd511.org and a mobile app, SDDOT 511.

The free service provides real-time travel information, including incidents, road conditions, closures, construction and weather forecasts, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. As the SDDOT gears up for a busy summer construction and travel season, South Dakota citizens can continue to turn to SD511 for all of their traveler information needs.

Over the course of its 28 years, SD 511 has had:

• 25 million https://sd511.org website user engagements;
• Over four million phone calls to 511 South Dakota;
• Seven million SDDOT 511 mobile app user engagements;
• 325 thousand SDDOT 511 mobile app downloads; and,
• Three million My511SD alerts via email or text message.