Ryan Bozer:
There are certain signs of spring, birds chirping, flowers blooming, lawnmowers starting back up, and spring athletes out and training for their sports. To bring Your Morning in Play today I'm sitting down with our sports and recreation reporter, Nate Wek, to discuss a spring sport in its second season. Nate, thanks for joining us this morning.
Nate Wek:
Hey, Ryan, how are you?
Ryan Bozer:
Good, man. So I grew up with a sister who played a lot of softball, so I remember springtime for me also meant I was sitting around some sort of ball diamond. But I'm understanding, here in South Dakota, high school softball is still relatively in its infancy. Am I correct that it's only its second year for the sport?
Nate Wek:
Yeah, on the sanctioned side of high school softball, this is just the second year. So it's still, I think, the format, with it being in the spring, because club high school softball was in the fall. Now, with it being sanctioned and it having a spring season, I think there's obviously some challenges. You look at some of the heavy rains that we've had over the last week. Sometimes, there's snow storms and stuff that leak over into the spring. But your state championship is in June. Your bulk of your schedule is going to be played in May. So the hope is that the weather cooperates in the month of May, as you get closer to June. And that's where they sat at with the spring schedule. And being in its second year, I know there was some schedule stuff with weather last year, and I know there's been a little bit this year as well. But I think if you look at it from the overall perspective, I think you can say that it's worked pretty well so far.
Ryan Bozer:
What's the benefit of a sport being sanctioned?
Nate Wek:
There's obviously funding and stuff like that that's involved. But it's also a way for the state association, the high school activity association, to recognize the sport, and to also then have an official state tournament. And last year, it was new to a lot of people, especially when you get to some of the smaller schools. There was maybe kids that were trying the sport that had never played before. It's been a new opportunity for some districts that maybe didn't offer softball programs in the past, even at that club level.
Ryan Bozer:
I think you're alluding to here then going from the first sanctioned season, you had some brand new teams. How about year two? Are we getting more teams, more growth? Did we lose any teams?
Nate Wek:
Yeah, so I think, last year, I think there was 52 teams that signed up originally that were like, "Yep, this is something we want to do." Obviously, there's certain things with budget. And when you're trying to start a new program, sometimes things don't align. And so I believe it was around 46, 47 teams ish. Maybe I'm off on one number there on either side of that, but around that 46, 47 team mark a year ago. So I did ask Jo, I said, "What can you be encouraged with going into year two?" And here's what Jo had to say.
Jo Auch:
We ended up, I think, with 12 or 13 new schools this year. I think we're up to 59, almost to 60, which I'm super excited about. We had a gain of seven schools in Class B, a gain of four in Class A, and a gain of one in Class AA.
Ryan Bozer:
So some significant growth then. That shows that it's something people want. It's something that people are interested in trying, or that the kids are interested in giving a shot, or getting to have the opportunity to do and maybe not having to travel so far to have to do it, right?
Nate Wek:
Absolutely. And I think the other thing that got mentioned to me too when I was talking to Jo is, I did ask too about, what about the participation numbers? I know we know that the teams are going up, so obviously those participation numbers are going to also increase. But has there been any increases as far as maybe teams having more kids that had a program last year, are they seeing an uptick? And she didn't have the official numbers because those don't get submitted until the end of the school year from each school. But what she did say was what we're starting to see more of pop up on the schedule this year, especially with some of the bigger districts, is a freshman team, the C team, the JV teams. So when you start seeing more of these teams popping up and fielding teams that are populating on the schedule as well, that shows that there's also participation numbers increasing amongst some of these districts as well that may be already had a team. So that, too, is encouraging. There's a couple tiers to it, obviously. But that's one thing that we're seeing is, not just teams increasing, but I think we're going to see that the participation numbers, even amongst schools that already had a team last year, are also seeing a potential uptick as well.
Ryan Bozer:
That seems to imply that the interest is there then for the sport, right?
Nate Wek:
Absolutely, yep.
Ryan Bozer:
So it's been a successful first year and seems to be off to a great start for a second year for softball. What's it looking like for baseball? I know baseball, right now, is not yet a sanctioned sport for the high school association. But is that, potentially, in the works at some point then?
Nate Wek:
I've been here what, 12 years now, and I think I've been hearing things about baseball, "Will baseball ever get sanctioned?" For quite a while. And I was always like, "Yeah, maybe. Who knows?" Once softball got sanctioned, I think some of those conversations, and maybe some of the desires by certain districts to maybe sanction baseball, maybe upticked. And I did ask Jo about that too, because there was a board of directors meeting, there was a couple of them last week where baseball did come up. There's been a couple of formal letters that have been submitted to the association, regarding the potential of baseball maybe being sanctioned in the future. And she did say there is buzz because of softball. And there's some people asking questions, "If we can do it with softball, can we do it with baseball?"
So there's obviously going to be some deeper conversations with baseball because there's the American Legion. And American Legion in South Dakota is very successful. American Legion baseball is pretty successful on the national scale as well. So there are conversations that are taking place, especially among the American Legions that are like, "Well, wait a minute, if there is a sanctioned baseball season, what season will it be in? If it's in the spring, into the late spring, potentially early summer, will that eat into our Legion schedule?" So there's some concerns there.
Right now, there's also the South Dakota High School Baseball Association, which has two classes. So there is already a high school realm baseball league in South Dakota. It's a club sport, so it's not sanctioned. The money works differently, a little bit, with the club than it would under the sanctioned thing.
So I think where you really have to look at it is look at some of the smaller schools that maybe currently don't field any sort of a club baseball team. They're looking at softball saying, "This has been great for our girls. Maybe there's an opportunity now for the boys as well." And I do want to reiterate, we are in the very, very, very, very early stages of this baseball conversation. Basically, what they've done at this point is just agreed to put a committee together, which will begin to have conversations with both the American Legion in the state and the South Dakota High School of Baseball Association to come up with some sort of a rough plan of what a sanctioned baseball format might look like in South Dakota. So, eventually, there will come a time where they'll probably reach out to the schools and say, "Is this something that you guys would want, yay or nay?" Look for that probably at some point here in the next year. But, right now, I do want to reiterate, we are in the very early stages when it comes to baseball.
Ryan Bozer:
But it's already a reality for softball. Softball season is kicking off soon. Nate, what things do we have to look forward to this season with softball?
Nate Wek:
Yeah, so softball season's actually going on right now. You've got games being played. The state tournament will be the last weekend in May, that bleeds into June. So I believe the May 30, it's the weekend after Memorial Day, is when the state softball tournament will take place. It'll take place up in Aberdeen again. All three classes will be held in Aberdeen. Northern State will be hosting the AA tournament on their stadium field with the turf and stuff like that. And then there's another park in town that has a conglomerate of fields. It's called the Players Park Complex. And that will be which houses the Class A and Class B tournaments. They did that last year too. So it's really for people that understood it last year, it's going to be the same exact setup that it was last year going into this year.
South Dakota Public Broadcasting, of course, will also be, with a partnership with Game Changer, streaming all of the games from all three tournaments. And then, as far as our television coverage goes, we will be televising the third place and championship game for AA on that Saturday of that weekend.
So it's the same exact format that we ran last year for softball. It's going to be the same thing we do this year. Is there a potential that softball maybe gets split up in the future? I think there are conversations being had that maybe the three classes will potentially split up in the future. But, right now, the conversations have been halted. They're just looking at this year, and Aberdeen will host all three this year. So it'll be a lot of fun. It was a blast last year. Weather was, for the most part, pretty great. So it'll be great again this year. And, again, it's a great opportunity for the kids, to seeing those inaugural state champions being last year with Castlewood, West Central, Sioux Falls, Lincoln, just a lot of joy. Because anybody can be second, but to be the first of something is special. So especially for those schools that won state championships last year, it was definitely a very special experience for all of those kids in those programs.
Ryan Bozer:
Absolutely. But new teams joining this year, so we'll see if they get to keep their titles year two, right?
Nate Wek:
Yeah, exactly. You know what? Every year's new. You got new kids jumping in, new kids graduate. That's the joy of high school sports is every year kids graduate and you got new kids coming in. So it's what makes it a lot of fun.
Ryan Bozer:
Sweet. Well, thank you so much for joining us this morning, Nate, to explain more about year two of softball and give us an idea of where baseball's currently sitting at. It's always great to chat with you first thing in the morning, man.
Nate Wek:
All right, well, I appreciate it, Ryan.
