Successful coaches exiting Brookings not a bad sign for SDSU men
AUGIE ALUM BUTE RISES FOR BEMIDJI STATE VOLLEYBALL
ALL-STATE PICKS ANNOUNCED FOR CLASS AA HOOPS
LENZ DRIVEN ON THE MAT FOR WILDKATS
Class AA Girls: Talented guards
6
Class AA Boys: All-state, player of the year
Lucas Lenz: Boys wrestler of the year 8
Erika Bute: Augie to BSU head coach
EDITOR
MARCUS TRAXLER mtraxler@mitchellrepublic.com
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
SARA LEITHEISER
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
JAMIE HOYEM
MOLLIE BURLINGAME
JEN PHILLIPS
MATT ZIMMER
ADAM THURY
TRENT SINGER
BLAKE DURHAM
LANDON DIERKS
NATHAN SWAFFAR
JUSTIN WICKERSHAM
MARCUS TRAXLER
Marcus Traxler is the assistant editor and sports editor for the Mitchell Republic. A past winner of the state’s Outstanding Young Journalist award and the 2023 South Dakota Sportswriter of the Year, he’s worked for the newspaper since 2014 and covers a wide variety of topics.
MATT ZIMMER
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.
LANDON DIERKS
Dierks covers prep and collegiate athletics across the Mitchell Republic’s coverage region area. He is a Mitchell native who graduated from South Dakota State University with his bachelor’s degree in journalism in May 2020. Dierks joined the Mitchell Republic sports staff in August 2021.
BLAKE DURHAM
Blake Durham is a Sports Reporter for the Mitchell Republic, having joined the newspaper in October of 2023. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in December of 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in Communications. Durham can be found covering a variety of prep and collegiate sports in the area.
TRENT SINGER
An Iowa native who grew up in the south, Singer is a 2012 graduate of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he received his bachelor of arts degree in photography with a minor in journalism. Singer was most previously the editor of high school sports at Just Women's Sports and, before that, was a sports reporter and editor at the Southeast Missourian and the Kentucky New Era, respectively.
BROOKINGS — Scott Nagy left his post as South Dakota State basketball coach in 2016 after 21 years, and the Jackrabbits are now on their third new coach in less than a decade since.
While this kind of turnover will probably never be easy for fans to get used to (especially the ones old enough to remember the Division II days), it really is a good thing for SDSU basketball.
It means they’re winning.
Henderson went 129-60, with two NCAA tournament appearances and four Summit League regular season titles, including three in a row after he took over for TJ Otzelberger.
It’s easy to forget now, but Otzelberger didn’t exactly leave Henderson a full cupboard when he migrated to UNLV back in 2019. Mike Daum, Skyler Flatten and Tevin King graduated and David Jenkins followed Otzelberger. The Jacks seemed destined for a rebuilding year. Instead, they went 22-10 and earned a share of the Summit League title.
Two years later, the Jacks went 30-5 (and undefeated in league play) behind Baylor Scheierman and Doug Wilson, and when those two both moved on, Henderson again reloaded and the Jacks finished second with a 19-13 mark the following year.
It was around this time that college basketball began to fundamentally change as we know it, with the transfer portal and later NIL doing for the sport what free agency did for major league baseball after Curt
Flood smashed the reserve clause in the 1970s.
Scheierman left for Creighton. Zeke Mayo took the Jacks to an NCAA tournament last year and then left for Kansas (Will Kyle headed to UCLA). Nagy and Otzelberger never had to deal with this during their stint in Brookings, and yet, Henderson once again rebuilt his roster this season, building a team of underclassmen around transfer center Oscar Cluff and winning 20 games.
Only two NCAA tournament appearances in six years probably feels a tad disappointing given the expectations of the program when ‘Hendo’ took over, but the consistency the Jacks enjoyed in his tenure is more impressive than it appears at first glance, and a big reason Drake focused their search on him after Ben McCollum resigned to take over the Iowa Hawkeyes.
You still occasionally hear Jackrabbit or Coyote fans lament that ‘there’s no loyalty’ or wonder why coaches don’t stay in South Dakota for decades like John Stiegelmeier and Dave Boots did, but the truth is this: If you’re at the mid-major level and your coach is sticking around for a decade or more, you’re probably not having a lot of success.
Drake might not feel like a significant step up from SDSU, and in some ways it’s not. Henderson is going from one one-bid league to another. There isn’t a huge difference in talent between the Jacks and Bulldogs most years. Wright State wasn’t really a step up from SDSU when Nagy left, either. But Wright State doesn’t have football and Drake’s program is non-scholarship. They invest (read: pay their coaches) more in basketball, because they can.
And the big reason Henderson would be interested in Drake, of course, is that the last three Bulldog coaches are all in the Big Ten now (Darian DeVries at Indiana, Niko Medved at Minnesota, McCollum at Iowa). If Hendo wins in Des Moines, he could be making seven figures in a major conference gig sooner than later.
Again, all of this is good for SDSU. The Jacks are a known mid-major contender, and while promoting from within to assistant Bryan Petersen made sense, they would’ve had an impressive slate of candidates to choose from had they opened up the job. Petersen’s charge will be not just to keep the Rabbits in NCAA tournament contention, but to keep the program at a place so that he leaves for a better job, too, and another up-and-coming coach steps in to replace him. If Petersen is still here in a decade, he was probably the wrong choice.
BY BLAKE DURHAM Mitchell Republic
Three girls basketball standouts were repeat selections to the Class AA all-state first team, as picked by the South Dakota Basketball Coaches Association.
The six-member Class AA first team includes Brandon Valley junior guard Alyvia Padgett, Rapid City Stevens senior guard Taaliyah
Porter, O’Gorman junior guard/forward Sydney Terveen and sophomore guard Ruby Moore, Pierre senior guard Lennix DuPris and Sioux Falls Jefferson sophomore guard Brinley Altenburg.
Padgett was selected as the Class AA player of the year as the top vote-getter from the coaches voting on the all-state honors. It makes her the second Class AA player of the year in three seasons from
Brandon Valley, joining Hilary Behrens from 2023.
Padgett, a 5-foot-7 junior, earned her second consecutive all-state first-team nod after leading Brandon Valley to the champion-
O’Gorman’s Ruby Moore attempts to make a dribble with the ball while
defends in a girls basketball game on Friday, Feb. 28, 2025, at the Corn
ship game two years in a row. She averaged 19.3 points, 3.3 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game as a junior for the Lynx. Padgett is a pledge to play college basketball at Minnesota State Mankato.
Rapid City Stevens senior Taaliyah Porter and Sioux Falls Jefferson sophomore Brinley Altenburg are also repeat first-team selections from 2024. Porter, who netted her third all-state honor, averaged 21.7 points and 6.7 rebounds for the Raiders, also breaking
the all-time scoring mark in school history on Feb. 7. Porter is the first back-to-back firstteam all-state selection for Stevens since Kyah Watson in 2019 and 2020.
Altenburg, who has picked up plenty of Division I interest as a college basketball recruit, averaged 17.4 points and 4.4 rebounds for the Cavaliers. Altenburg is the first twotime all-state first-team selection in Jefferson history, while the Cavaliers have had an all-state caliber player in
each of its first four seasons as a program.
O’Gorman junior Sydney Terveen (15.1 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 2.7 apg) and sophomore and South Dakota State-commit Ruby Moore (14.3 ppg, 3.3 rpg, 71 steals) represented the state champion Knights, who finished 24-0 for the season and ran their win streak to 50 games with a comeback win in the state title game 47-46 over the Lynx in Rapid City. O’Gorman has now had a Class AA first-
team all-state pick in eight straight seasons.
Pierre senior Lennix DuPris (18 ppg, 6.6 rpg, 4.8 apg, 68 steals) rounds out the firstteam selections. DuPris was a second-team selection in 2024 and cleared 1,000 career points in March.
Sioux Falls Washington senior Grace Peterson (11.5 ppg, 7.2 rpg), junior Dana Harpe (13.2 ppg, 6 rpg, 2.6 apg), Aberdeen Central sophomore Lauryn Burckhard (15.1 ppg,
7.8 rpg), Spearfish senior Mya Kochuten (15.1 ppg, 2.6 apg), Brandon Valley junior Gracie Salter (11.2 ppg, 9.4 rpg) and Rapid City Central sophomore Leah Landry (16.3 ppg, 10 rpg) were named to the Class AA all-state second team.
Out of that group, Peterson was previously selected to an all-state team the past two seasons and was the Class AA Spirit of Su award recipient.
BY LANDON DIERKS
Mitchell Republic
MITCHELL — A trio of Mitchell Kernels landed spots on the Class AA boys basketball all-state teams, as announced Tuesday by the South Dakota Basketball Coaches Association.
Markus Talley earned top honors as the Class AA player of the year on the all-state first team, while Gavin Hinker and Colton Smith each earned a place on the second team. Mitchell and Sioux Falls Lincoln led the way with three all-state picks each, making up almost half of the 13 total honorees between the two honor squads. No other school had more than one player selected.
One of two repeat first-teamers this season, Talley posted 17.9 points, 4.6 rebounds and three assists per
game as a senior. The Augustana-bound lead guard was a driving force in Mitchell advancing to a third consecutive state title game and finishing with a 20-4 record.
“Markus’ ability to affect the game on both ends of the floor helped establish him as one of the best players in the state,” said MHS coach Ryker Kreutzfeldt. “He controls the game offensively, guards the opposing teams best perimeter player each night and always stayed composed even in the tensest of moments during the season. We are incredibly proud as a program to have him recognized as the Class AA player of the year, as he is very deserving of that award.”
Talley was joined on the Class AA all-state first team by Huron’s Blake Ellwein, Brandon Valley’s Landon Dulaney, Sioux Falls Lincoln’s Sam DeGroot and Sam Ericsson and
Rapid City Central’s Gilbert White Jr. Ellwein, the other repeat first-team honoree, powered Huron back to the state tournament on the back of 21.4 points, 7.2 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game. The 6-foot-9 junior swingman paced the state in free throws made, tossing in 124 makes from the stripe at a clip of 77%.
Dulaney, who was honorable mention last season, took a leap to lead the Lynx to the state championship as a senior. A future wide receiver for South Dakota State University’s football program, the 6-foot-2 guard put up 14.6 points, 6.4 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game.
DeGroot, a 6-foot-6 junior forward, offered 15.1 points and 7.3 rebounds per game for the class-leading 22-2 Patriots. Meanwhile, Ericsson, a 6-foot-3 junior guard, contributed 12.7 points and 2.8 rebounds per game, as the sharpshooter led the all-state team with 54 made 3-pointers.
The leading scorer in Class AA this season, White poured in 21.8 points per game for the 8-13 Cobblers. The 5-foot-11 senior guard added six rebounds and 2.5 steals per contest.
“Markus’ ability to affect the game on both ends of the floor helped establish him as one of the best players in the state,” — MHS coach Ryker Kreutzfeldt
On the Class AA all-state second team, Hinker and Smith were joined by Lincoln sophomore Brody Schafer, Tea Area sophomore Grifin Wiebenga, Harrisburg senior Nolan Krull, Sioux Falls Washington senior Tommy Hoffman and Spearfish senior Dylon Doren. Of note, Hoffman was a second-team selection last season, as well.
Pierre’s Luke Olson, O’Gorman’s Nyun Dut and Austin Terveen, Sturgis’ Ryan Heinert and Rapid City Stevens’ Dayler Segrist, all seniors, were honorable mention picks. Heinert added to a second-team selection from last season, and Segrist was a repeat on the honorable mention list.
KWLPG’s Lenz finishes 43-0 season, career with elusive state title
BY BLAKE DURHAM Mitchell Republic
KIMBALL, S.D. - Little has stood in the way of Lucas Lenz from wrestling. For the little that has, Lenz had big hurdles to overcome.
A sledding accident at age 8 while beginning to get acclimated with the sport resulted in both a lacerated kidney and spleen, requiring multiple surgeries. A wrist injury as a sophomore from football delayed the beginning of his wrestling season for Kimball/White Lake/PlatteGeddes until there were three weeks before the state tournament, only to injure it again once he qualified.
Lenz has also wrestled the last two state tournaments with heavy hearts following his aunt Tara’s death in February 2024 after a three-year battle with ovarian cancer and his uncle John’s unexpected death in January.
Even in dual matches, Lenz battles a multitude of nerves felt before stepping on the wrestling mat, regardless if he wrestled well the match before. In a competitive Wildkats wrestling room, one constant pushes Lenz to perform at his best: the support of his family.
“I’m doing it for my family,” Lenz said. “I didn’t always have the most motivation in wrestling. My brothers were probably the ones who overall convinced me to do wrestling. … They like to see me be successful.”
Following in the footsteps of older brothers Carter and Caden, both former KWLPG wrestlers, Lucas established his own path in the sport, finishing his six-year prep career with a 166-41 match record and three podium finishes at the Class B state wrestling tournament. Over his last three seasons, Lenz was 94-9 and finished on the podium twice at state, wrestling at 165 pounds in both instances. From the start of the 2024 state tournament, where he finished as the runner-up, Lenz won 46 of his last 47 matches.
This year included a championship, in dominating fashion. Completing a 43-0 senior season and closing his prep career with the Class B 165-pound title, Lucas Lenz was chosen as the 2025 Mitchell Republic boys wrestler of the year, receiving all four first-place votes. The award was selected by the newspaper’s sports staff via a point-based voting system that awards five points to the top wrestler, four points to second on the ballot and so on.
Other wrestlers receiving consideration were Winner teammates Apollo Willuweit and Karson Keiser, Wessington Springs/Woonsocket/Wolsey-Wessington’s Holden Havlik, Wagner’s Gannon Knebel and McCook Central/Montrose’s Landon Flogstad.
As Lenz began to understand the intricacies of wrestling, he didn’t quite grasp the technical aspects of the sport right away
Throughout his middle school years, Lenz found himself competing for a varsity roster spot on the Wildkats during the season and often found himself wrestling in junior-varsity matches when possible to gain experience. When taught a particular move or set of moves during practice at the time, recalling instruction proved to be difficult.
“I know being in practice with the older kids helped, but I would struggle to pick up on moves,” Lenz said. “We’d get taught a move and I’m back to work on it with my practice partner and I wouldn’t know what I was doing. It was freshman and sophomore year when I really picked up on this sport.”
The competition also taught Lenz how to be mentally tough in a sport as physical as wrestling, knowing each match comes down to how he executes his best moves against the opponent’s best. Seeing KWLPG’s success as a team on the mat along with teammates’ individual accomplishments spurred Lenz on to keep marching forward.
“You can always do more and that’s kind of how practices have to go. For practice, conditioning or whatever we’re doing, you actually have to be pushing yourself and don’t look like you’re doing something.”
LUCAS LENZ
“I think having the competition around him made him better,” KWLPG head coach Thomas Konechne said. “The combination of having successful teammates and the big brothers in the wrestling room is what really drove him in my eyes. He saw a lot of success and it maybe drove him to ultimately be a state champion.”
With all the planning and work Lenz did during practice, he still had to fight a multitude of nerves before and during matches depending on how they played out, regardless of who he was facing. As success started to come, the nervousness stayed as he continued to wrestle, making Lenz find ways to cope while also trying to execute his game plan. Once he started running up the score on his opponent, it made him more comfortable on the mat.
“I focus on what moves I’m going to do in the match and that kind of helps zone that part out,” Lenz said. “I’ll have nerves all the way up until the final whistle, but if I’m up and know I’m most likely going to win, then the nerves kind of go away for a while.
On his way to becoming a state champion in his senior season, Lenz has had his share of heartbreak, both on and off the wrestling mat.
Lenz’s season as an eighth-grader ended with a tough loss at the Region 3B tournament despite having the ability then to make it to the state tournament, according to Konechne. Reaggravating his wrist injury as a sophomore while wrestling in the consolation bracket at state, Lenz attempted to forge ahead, but having his match end injury default left him devastated.
With each loss, it’s helped Lenz grow himself to be a better person, learning about
how wrestling is more than a sport. The losses also began to fuel his desire to end the season on the top step of the state wrestling podium, finding the motivation to perform for those who give him the most support each day.
“As long as they have a close, tight-knit group around them, that’s what builds character,” Konechne said. “He’s learned from the heartaches, he’s been able to make himself better … dealing with those tough situations over the course of his career, he was determined from day one this year and wanted to finish on top.”
Following the loss of close family members for Lenz along with teammates and cousins Johnny and Vincent the past two years, each season was put into perspective, learning a valuable lesson transferable to the wrestling mat, regardless of the outcome of the match.
“I learned that I could work harder,” Lenz said. “You can always do more and that’s kind of how practices have to go. For practice, conditioning or whatever we’re doing, you actually have to be pushing yourself and don’t look like you’re doing something.”
Lenz focused this season on taking advantage of the new takedown and near-fall scoring rules, using his hips for leverage and to stay upright against an opponent who tried to cut underneath at the legs to attempt a takedown. He’s also used the pressure to wear down his opponents, leading to results.
Over the season, Lenz recorded 87 takedowns against only being taken down twice, attributing both instances to “silly” mistakes on his end. Lenz also recorded 26 pins and seven wins by technical fall wrestling to his style of feeling out opponents
at the beginning of matches, establishing control of the match.
“It sounds weird sometimes, but you just have to feel it out and you can get people reacting and your shots are going to be there,” Lenz said. “If you can control people on their feet, you can make them move where you want to go without muscling them.”
Despite Lenz’s accomplishments on the wrestling mat, a state championship eluded him, finishing as the runner-up in 2024 at 165 pounds. Focusing on his side of the bracket after qualifying for the state tournament, Lenz needed a first-period pin, a 12-1 major decision and a third-period technical fall to reach the championship match.
Facing region adversary Wyatt Anderson of Parkston, Lenz used his own feelings as a junior a year ago in the same spot to take advantage of how Anderson was feeling this season. Knowing he had to give the match everything, Lenz secured the first takedown en route to an 11-3 major decision, achieving his goal of winning a title.
“It was a great feeling knowing that all the hard work had paid off and falling up short is one of the worst feelings ever,”
Lenz said of his reaction after the match. “I didn’t want to feel that again. This year definitely felt a lot better than the year before.”
“Everything he’s achieved, he’s earned,” Konechne added. “He’s been a leader for us in our program and hardly ever missed a day working on forearms, grip strength and other extra stuff before practice. He understood what’s expected of him and I’m very proud of him.”
Lenz’s wrestling days are now behind him, as he’ll study to become an electrician at Mitchell Technical College beginning in the fall with the plan of staying in the Kimball area longterm. He also envisions himself returning to the sport in a different capacity down the line.
Not lost on him are all the memories made throughout his time spent on the mat, taking away strong lessons that will help him march forward, wherever the path takes Lenz.
“You can take away the mental strength of wrestling as far as staying disciplined in your life,” Lenz said, “And just knowing I can take out of it all the friends I’ve made and the relationships I’ve kept with people is nice.”
Erika Bute is entering her first season as the Bemidji State volleyball team’s head coach. Bute was hired on Feb. 7, 2025, less than a year after she finished her playing career at Augustana.
ANNALISE BRAUGHT / BEMIDJI PIONEER
BY JARED RUBADO
The Bemidji Pioneer
BEMIDJI, Minn. — When Erika Bute was called into the office of Bemidji State director of athletics Britt Lauritson on Oct. 29, 2024, she knew what was imminent.
Bute was about to be named the BSU volleyball team’s interim head coach.
The Beavers started the 2024 season with Kevin Ulmer at the helm. He was hired in 2016 and coached the program for nine seasons. On Sept. 17, Ulmer died after a threeyear battle with cancer.
Assistant coach Steph Remley was promoted to interim head coach. Remley routinely filled in for Ulmer’s gameday head coaching duties while he was hospitalized.
In late October, however, Remley resigned from her position. The Beavers had one coach left.
Just 388 days after Bute helped lead Augustana to a 3-1 win over Bemidji State as the Vikings’ fifth-year libero, she was given roughly 30 hours to prepare for her first match as a head coach without any hired assistants.
“I felt like I didn’t have time for my emotions to play a huge factor,” Bute said. “I could relate to our team so much — not in the sense of what they’re going through, but I was just a player a year ago. I couldn’t imagine be-
ing a player in that situation, so my focus shifted toward the things I could do for them at that time. I wanted to make it seamless.”
Bute took the Beavers to Crookston, Minnesota, to play the Golden Eagles a day later. They suffered a tight 3-2 loss, as UMC pulled away in the fifth set.
Three days later, Bute got her first win. After falling behind 2-1 against Minnesota State Moorhead, Bemidji State staged a 3-2 comeback victory.
The Beavers finished their season two weeks later with an 8-18 record, tallying the second-most wins of any BSU volleyball team since 2011.
After a long stretch of turmoil, Bemidji State had the option to start fresh with an outside hire as its 15th head coach. Instead, BSU opted to put the whistle around Bute’s neck, giving the program reins to a coach less than a year removed from graduating college.
Bute’s story isn’t one of circumstance but rather one of merit.
“Through an incredibly competitive applicant pool, Erika consistently demonstrated the composure, the empathy and the passion to lead the next generation of Beaver volleyball,” Lauritsen said in a press release on Feb. 7. “Her accolades as a student-athlete, her connections in
Former Augie standout takes unconventional path to becoming Bemidji State head coach
our region and her incredible volleyball mind will allow her to hit the ground running.”
After Bute’s initial promotion in October, she sat in Lauritsen’s office to compose herself. She decided to make two phone calls.
"The first was to my college best friend," Bute said. "She works remotely at BSN. I told her I needed help for the last three weeks of the season. She drove up a few days later and helped with practices and games."
Piper Asche spent five seasons at Augustana with Bute as a middle blocker. Once she got to Bemidji, she was officially rostered as a volunteer assistant.
"When she got here, she joked that when I’m a head coach again in 10 years that I should hire her as an assistant," Bute said. "I said, ‘Well, maybe we can try in three months.’"
Bute’s second call was to Jennifer Jacobs, her head coach at Augustana.
"After I told her, I said something about us having a game tomorrow and if there’s any little things I need to know about the head coaching side of things before I go into it," Bute said. "How do I put my lineup in? It was all stuff like that. She just kept saying, ‘This is so crazy. This
is so crazy.’ I’m like, yes, I know it’s crazy, but it’s what we’re doing."
Jacobs and Bute go way back.
Bute, an Alden, Minnesota native, played club volleyball for Northern Lights. Jacobs was her head coach before taking the Augustana job in 2017.
Throughout Bute’s decorated collegiate career — American Volleyball Coaches Association All-America honorable mention, two-time Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Libero of the Year, four-time NSIC All-Conference, NSIC Outstanding Senior of the Year and College Sports Communicators Academic All-America — Jacobs saw what Ulmer and BSU eventually saw when she applied to be the Beavers’ second assistant coach.
"I was trying to keep her here," Jacobs said. "I was pushing really hard to open a position for her to keep her with us. She knows what she’s doing, but Kevin was adamant that she went to Bemidji. And I know why. She’s earned the respect around the league, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders."
Bute wrapped up her fifth and final collegiate season as a player in the fall 2023. She stayed for an extra semester to get a second master’s degree. After finishing her bachelor’s degree in marketing, Bute got her sports administration and leadership graduate degree and an MBA.
With two masters in her back pocket, she didn’t need any more schooling, effectively eliminating her from any graduate assistant positions as a coach. However, she found a similar position as a second assistant at BSU.
"It was kind of backward how I went into it," Bute said. "It was similar to a GA, but it was actually paid. I applied, and Kevin reached out immediately. I’m just super grateful for it. I wouldn’t say I was panicking, but I probably didn’t need to stay in Sioux Falls the spring of my fifth year."
The decision to stick around for her final semester led Bute to apply for Bemidji State’s open position last spring. Immediately, Ulmer was enamored with her potential as a coaching candidate.
Bute grew up in a coaching household. Her mother, Jolene, is the longtime head coach of the Alden-Conger volleyball team.
"I went to her practices when I was growing up before I was her player," Bute said. "It kind of made me view the game from a coaching perspective, but I wasn’t set on coaching going into college. I just knew I loved athletics."
Bute started coaching club volleyball in Sioux Falls while attending AU. She also took the lead on several Augustana volleyball camps toward the end of her collegiate career.
When Bute approached Jacobs as an upperclassman asking if she should get into coaching, Jacobs felt her choice was obvious.
"She’s always been a leader," Jacobs said. "She was always that player who could navigate the go-between from the players to the coaches. She did a good job of upholding team standards while also giving the coaches the truth on things that we wouldn’t get. It was a no-brainer when she told me she wanted to get into coaching."
reports. Players in that situation didn’t have to respond like that, but they did."
Next on the list for Bute is rounding out the coaching staff. Bemidji State is in the hiring process for an assistant coach, and Bute said she wants it to be extensive, valuing the right fit over an immediate one.
"She’s got good people around her, and she’s always got me," Jacobs said. "She’s earned the respect from the coaches and programs around the conference, and our conference coaches are pretty close. She can do the Xs and Os, she can do the grinding. She just has to figure out who she wants to be as a head coach, and that takes time for anybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re 21 or 45."
Asche ultimately turned down Bute’s pleas to apply for the open assistant position, saying she didn’t want to "live in the North Pole."
Along with a new-look coaching staff, Bute will also have fresh faces on the court. Bemidji State has 15 underclassmen on its 20-player roster.
Despite having had three head coaches in less than two months for a program that hasn’t finished above .500 in conference play since 1999, no BSU player entered the transfer portal.
Bute admitted she had trepidations about being a college-aged collegiate coach heading into her first season with the Beavers.
"I was very confident in my ability to play, but how am I going to teach somebody else how to do it?" Bute said. "The players were so close in age to me, and you never really know how that’s going to go. I have to give a lot of credit to the team. They didn’t care that I was a year older than them. ... They get a lot of credit for respecting and accepting me."
Bute also commended Ulmer for his guidance during their time on staff together. He encouraged her to voice her opinion on program operations, validating her status with his players.
When Ulmer’s health declined, Bute’s role increased. When he died, she was elevated to the top assistant just months after playing her final collegiate game.
"In the moment, you don’t really have time to think about how crazy it is," Bute said. "It was all about what the team needs, what’s next and how can we keep this season afloat. We had eight freshmen, and the rest were basically upperclassmen. It was very different how those two groups handled the situation with Kevin.
"It was kind of hard for me to relate to the ones who were older, but I think it was nice for them to have somebody who was like, yes, I am grieving with the situation, but somebody needs to do the things we have to do to move forward right now. There’s no right answer to that process, but I'm so grateful to have had those girls."
When Bute was given the interim tag, she leaned on her players even more while offering them the foundation to lean on to get through the rest of the season.
"Of course, I had doubts in myself, but I didn’t need to say them to the team because they didn’t need to hear that," Bute said. "After our first practice, the players told me that if I needed anything, I should let them know. They really helped me take care of the nitty-gritty things like food for the bus, what we’re wearing, all of that side of things. They were very prepared with their scouting
"Not only is everybody on our current team staying, we had seven commits all sign their letter of intent," Bute said. "It’ll be a young team, but I feel like they’re really bought into the changes that were made.
"The team right now is already chasing for it. If you’re a .500 team in the NSIC, it’s a good season. Longer term, obviously, the goal is much higher. At .500, it usually puts you in a conference tournament spot, and that’s the goal right now. You can be eighth in the NSIC and be ranked nationally."
As for goals in the short term, Bute wants her players to garner a more confident competitive mindset day to day.
"My biggest challenge from the coaching side of it is getting them to learn how to win," Bute said. "I feel like I can relate to my experience. At Augie, we were a conference tournament team every year but were still in the middle of the conference. It wasn’t like we were dominating; we still felt like we were going to win every night."
Bute got a different perspective on success in the NSIC in her first season at BSU.
"It’s a different level of (competitiveness), but it’s a lot of hoping they can win every night," she said. "I have to figure out how to make that shift so they can go into games with an attitude that they know they’re going to win."
As for collegiate coaches around the Midwest, there was some confusion surrounding Bemidji State’s hiring of Bute. Jacobs did her part to put those concerns to rest.
"When I see people while I’m on the road recruiting who don’t know my connection to (Bute), people will ask about who Bemidji hired," Jacobs said. "I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know her really well, and she’s good.’ It’s not that shocking to me, it’s just not. It was only a matter of time before she became a head coach, so why not do it now?
"Bemidji deserves a lot of credit for choosing her. It’s rare to see these days that a school can see the good things in her and just go with it."