'A long winter': Blue Hawks eager for Rodeo

Mar. 30—BROOKINGS, S.D. — The Great Plains Region rodeo season resumes on Friday, March 30 and runs through April 1, 2023 with an event here, and the Dickinson State University Blue Hawks are perched on second place as the second half of the split season gets under way. The Blue Hawks women's team came out of last year with a significant, 400-point lead at 1,373.33 total points and first place in the region, while the men have scored 2,175-points — second only to Iowa Central Community College for the 2022-23 season.

The women's team is out in front of the competition with Black Hills State University sitting in second place, and the men's team has its work cut out for it as ICCC has posted a solid 3,155 points on the year.

Dickinson State University head rodeo coach Eudell Larsen is anticipating another solid season for the team the rest of the way, and says the squad is ready to get back to it. "Our men's and women's teams are both sitting good in the region ... after the fall season we're sitting in the top-three in both men's and women's and we're looking forward to having a good spring season," he said.

That said, the DSU men's team won last-year's South Dakota State University Rodeo event with 535 points, outdistancing second-place Iowa Central by 65, and the women's team came in second at that event with 290 to the University of South Dakota's winning total of 325. So that means this-year's event should be wide open as the season gets its restart.

The event calendar from there will be action-packed, as Iowa State University will play hosts on April 21-22 and the first of two Black Hills State University Rodeos will take place on the 27th and 28th of April, with the second half of that double-header rodeo event the nest two days on April 28-29. The season finale will be at the University of Nebraska on May 5-6.

The team usually is comprised of about 30 competitors, and there currently are 25 on the Blue Hawks, with quite a few who are standing out. Kailyn Groves, who is originally from Faith, SD, is leading the goat time on the women's team and Killdeer's Kelly Bang is sitting at third in barrel-racing, while Dickinson's Kiarra Reiss is fifth among barrel-racers. The men's and women's team-roping competitors also are performing well, with Chasyn Ystaas — who also comes from Dickinson — leading the team-roping category for the region as a header, and Jory Boote and Clay Gerhardt are both the top-10 for team-roping. Boote also is in the top-10 among tie-down ropers and bare-back riders Chance Isaak and Cayden Kling are both in the top-five in the region.

"We did well in the fall and we're looking forward to the spring," Larsen said. "We're excited to get back to rodeoing, it's been a long winter and we're looking forward to spring showing up and getting out there and traveling again."

All the remaining rodeos will be indoors, he added, so the weather will not be an issue as the team moves forward, but the annual Dickinson Rodeo is an outdoor event that will take place next season in late-September.

For more information about the Dickinson State rodeo team, please visit

https://collegerodeo.com/membership/great-plains-region/

or

https://www.dsubluehawks.com/sports/rodeo/index

.