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.