Happy Hour with John Gaskins

Cliches become cliches for a reason.
 
They're usually true.
 
In sports, two of the oldest cliches are "never give up" and the underdog story.
 
Both the University of South Dakota softball team and the Sioux Falls Stampede are living those cliches after performances over the weekend that their players, coaches, and fans will never forget.
 
The Coyotes played in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in the program's 48-year history. Arriving in Lincoln with the worst record in the 64-team field (20-34-1), USD didn't just show up. The Yotes showed out.
 
Against host Nebraska on Friday, USD turned the scene in Bowlin Stadium from a rollicking party for the No. 1 ranked team in the nation and its 3,000 fans into a nervous library for a couple innings, leading the Huskers 1-0 going into the bottom of the fifth.
 
The Big Red put on a big charge led by the defending National Player of the Year, Jordy Frahm, who not only started the three-hit parade that led to a 2-1 lead that inning, but then pitched three innings of stifling shutout relief to shatter USD's upset dreams, 4-1.
 
But the Coyotes were far from done making noise. They beat the ACC's Louisville for USD's first NCAA tourney win on Saturday, then took Grand Canyon into extra innings for the right to play the Huskers in Sunday's region championship round.
 
In the top of the seventh, down 2-0 and down to their final two outs of the season, the Yotes had two runners in scoring position when junior college transfer Katie Hofmann stepped up to the plate. She had mustered four hits all season. Four hits in 57 games. 
 
Hofmann ripped a line-drive single to centerfield, plating two runs to tie the game, which went into extra innings. 
 
Associate head coach Shannon Pivovar, the first base coach, walked up to Hofmann, looked her dead in the eye with a smile and said "I'm so proud of you."
 
Hofmann burst into tears of joy.
 
The ESPN cameras caught a close-up of the encounter. The video spread like wildfire on social media as a testament to the power of empowerment and positivity in an age with cynicism swirling in the NIL era of college sports.

Well over a million people have viewed the clip. It has turned "Coach Piv" into, dare we say, a viral social media superstar— something the former SDSU assistant and University of Sioux Falls head coach would never have imagined. 
 
"What's crazy is I wasn't doing anything I don't normally do," Pivovar told the Happy Hour host in a 45-minute interview about that moment, the Yotes wonderful weekend, USD's wild and improbable joyride the last couple weeks, and her own softball journey.
 
USD lost that game 5-4 in eight innings, but Piv's mark had been made, allowing her to be the latest to tell the Coyotes' Cinderella story.
 
Meanwhile, the Sioux Falls Stampede have been writing their own underdog history in the USHL Playoffs.
 
A team full of "dawgs" as labeled by coach Ryan Cruthers, the Herd have several players who were cut by other teams. They have used that as fuel to march through the regular season with the second-most wins in the league and then go 4-0 in elimination games in the playoffs.
 
They took a 2-0 series lead on defending champion Muskegon in the PREMIER Center over the weekend with 3-1 and 3-0 wins in front of over 6,000 rowdy fans both on Friday and Saturday.
 
The Happy Hour host uses that as fuel to describe the kind of electricity and euphoria a team can bring to a fan base and even an entire town when it makes a title chase.
 
For the city of Sioux Falls, it's been a long time.

The Sioux Falls Stampede have been writing their own underdog history in the USHL Playoffs.
 
A team full of "dawgs" as labeled by coach Ryan Cruthers, the Herd have several players who were cut by other teams. They have used that as fuel to march through the regular season with the second-most wins in the league and then go 4-0 in elimination games in the playoffs.
 
They took a 2-0 series lead on defending champion Muskegon in the PREMIER Center over the weekend with 3-1 and 3-0 wins in front of over 6,000 rowdy fans both on Friday and Saturday.
 
The Happy Hour host uses that as fuel to describe the kind of electricity and euphoria a team can bring to a fan base and even an entire town when it makes a title chase.
 
For the city of Sioux Falls, it's been a long time.

USD's "Coach Piv" — Softball Associate Head Coach Shannon Pivovar on her viral moment and Yotes' inspirational showing in NCAA Tournament

At first, a small town the size of Brookings is not what a Minnesota "Mr. Football" finalist from just outside of Minneapolis had in mind for college football.
Then Jake Wieneke met South Dakota State coach John Stiegelmeier on his recruiting visit in January 2013, and everything changed on a dime.
All Wieneke's decision to become a Jackrabbit led to was catching more dimes for more yards and more touchdowns than anyone in the history of the program and the Missouri Valley Football Conference.
The 6'4 speedy wideout burst out of the gates and finished runner-up for the Jerry Rice Award (top freshman in the FCS), then teammed with quarterbacks Zach Lujan and Taryn Christion and offensive coordinator Eric Eidsness to re-write SDSU record books and elevate the Jacks from a Top 20 program to a Top 10 juggernaut, a stretch that included SDSU's first MVFC title in 2016 when Wieneke was a junior.
Now a missionary for athletes at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Wieneke looks back a career that helped transform SDSU into the powerhouse it is today and shares stories about those prolific quarterbacks and future NFL teammates like Zach Zenner and Dallas Goedert.
His stories are vivid, real, and raw: The Jacks' landmark win at North Dakota State in 2016 — including his game-winning touchdown catch on the second-to-last play of the game — to his career ending in a nightmare loss at James Madison in the FCS semifinals (after which he had perform a random NCAA drug test that dragged out a while), to the moment he decided to retire from football after a few years in the Canadian Football League.
The hour-plus conversation starts with the good-natured Wieneke catching us up on how he got started in his current profession and ended up in Lincoln. The chat ends with how he applies all his athletic experiences to the athletes he now mentors.
Before all that, Happy Hour host John Gaskins provides a John-o-logue...
There's a classic Seinfeld episode (Season 8, Episode 22) where, after the New York Yankees fired him but offered a three-month severance package, George Costanza relishes having an entire summer off and proclaims, "The Summer of George!"
All Wieneke's decision to become a Jackrabbit led to was catching more dimes for more yards and more touchdowns than anyone in the history of the program and the Missouri Valley Football Conference.
The 6'4 speedy wideout burst out of the gates and finished runner-up for the Jerry Rice Award (top freshman in the FCS), then teammed with quarterbacks Zach Lujan and Taryn Christion and offensive coordinator Eric Eidsness to re-write SDSU record books and elevate the Jacks from a Top 20 program to a Top 10 juggernaut, a stretch that included SDSU's first MVFC title in 2016 when Wieneke was a junior.
Now a missionary for athletes at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Wieneke looks back a career that helped transform SDSU into the powerhouse it is today and shares stories about those prolific quarterbacks and future NFL teammates like Zach Zenner and Dallas Goedert.
His stories are vivid, real, and raw: The Jacks' landmark win at North Dakota State in 2016 — including his game-winning touchdown catch on the second-to-last play of the game — to his career ending in a nightmare loss at James Madison in the FCS semifinals (after which he had perform a random NCAA drug test that dragged out a while), to the moment he decided to retire from football after a few years in the Canadian Football League.
The hour-plus conversation starts with the good-natured Wieneke catching us up on how he got started in his current profession and ended up in Lincoln. The chat ends with how he applies all his athletic experiences to the athletes he now mentors.

No, things are not entering the "sleepy summer" phase in our South Dakota sports scene. 
These days, there really isn't one. The Stampede are playing for the Clark Cup (USHL title). USD softball and both Augustana softball and baseball won league tournaments last weekend and are dancing in the NCAA Tournament this week.
The Sioux Falls Canaries open their 2026 "run it back to the championship series" campaign in Lincoln this weekend and start their home slate with a week-long homestand at The Birdcage on Monday.
And in the exciting yet turbulent — and uncertain, to put it lightly — world of modern college football, FCS football is becoming a year-round conversation.
The foremost full-time FCS national analyst Sam Herder of HERO Sports joined "Hot Mic with Dom Izzo" in Fargo this week with news and views about FCS schedules as teams look for new ways to beef up their playoff resumes.
That chat is part of this week's "South Dakota Sports Lounge," a weekly show that features the most compelling stories from three daily shows in our region that focus on sports stories affecting South Dakotans.
Also featured this week:
Happy Hour with John Gaskins — South Dakota Coyotes softball coach Robert Wagner on his program's first NSIC tournament title and trip to the NCAA Tournament and how his program has steadily grown over his decade at the helm.
The Nate Brown Show (Rapid City) — Minnesota Vikings writer and podcaster Thor Nystrom (SKOR North) on that club's Draft, their salary cap situation and the overall state of the roster.
Feature story on Augustana baseball & softball NSIC titles from Midwest Sports Plus reporter Zach Borg. Both Vikings had dramatic championship games, but one title was more surprising than the other.
These shows, and Zach Borg's features on local teams and athletes, can all be seen on your television set via the Midwest Sports Plus app. To subscribe and download the app, go here.