2 minute read
SDPB Supporter Spotlight: Darla & Greg Toben, Clear Lake
by SDPB
Darla Toben, née Ruhd, grew up in Brandt and graduated from Clear Lake High School. Her family operated a locker plant and, growing up in the 1960s and 70s, Darla and her siblings helped butcher and package meat after school. Darla’s husband Greg, also a Clear Lake High School graduate, grew up on a dairy farm near Altamount. Like Darla, Greg worked on the farm before and after school. Today the Tobens grow corn and beans and run feeder cattle.
Because they were needed to help their respective family businesses, Greg and Darla were able to participate in one sport apiece during high school. Greg played football, and when Title IX finally brought women’s sports to South Dakota in 1975, coach Gale Lundberg recruited senior Darla to the freshly minted Clear Lake Cardinals girls basketball team. Darla remembers representing Clear Lake at the first girls state tournament. “It was really exciting, because we were from bigger families and so getting to play sports was a big thing! We had great fans that followed us to the Huron Arena, and there was a big celebration back in Clear Lake after the tournament.” The Cardinal girls took their first state Class B title in 1976, when Darla was in her first year studying at Black Hills State College with the help of the first women’s basketball scholarships. Darla’s parents Darrell and Annie Ruhd drove eight hours from Brandt to Spearfish to watch one of Darla’s games. Right after the final buzzer in Spearfish, the trio set out for Huron to witness Robin Anderson and the Cardinals win the title. “Then we drove back to attend the homecoming celebration in Clear Lake on Sunday, which was covered by the news media,” says Darla. “On my way back to Spearfish right after the celebration, I stopped to watch the coverage at a hotel lobby in Pierre.”
Greg coached the Clear Lake grade school boys basketball team, and with their three children, the Tobens attended many out-oftown games and tournaments for family entertainment.
Today they continue to follow South Dakota’s high school teams. “At the local level, you always know the kids,” says Greg. “You follow them through the papers and events. They’re good athletes and it’s a highlight when you get to see them play.”
During state championships, the Tobens set up multiple screens to watch all three classes simultaneously. “When it’s tournament time, it’s pretty exciting at our house,” says Darla. “We have one TV that might have the AAs, the computer has the As, and we have an iPad with the Bs. We watch all three of them at one time!”
Darla says that when her aging father was confined at home poststroke, they would watch the tournaments and talk on the phone. “Oh, he was waiting for those games to come on, and then we’d say, ‘So-and-so’s playing tonight! Did you see that play?’ It was fun growing up in a sports family. I just love the excitement the basketball tournaments bring to the sport, players, and fans. It gets in your blood and I continue to feel that way today. It really is a March madness kind of thing that never goes away.”
