Jackrabbit baseball joins long line of successful SDSU programs

South Dakota State has had a lot of success since going Division I in athletics back in 2004. With the baseball team making the NCAA Tournament over the weekend, it got me thinking about the amount of success that the athletic department has had as a whole over the past decade.

It was the first time since 2013 that the Jackrabbits made the national tournament in baseball and they were looked at as sort of the red-headed step-sister of the team sports at SDSU due to their lack of play in the postseason.

Now that they're back on the national stage, I wanted to delve deeper into the success that SDSU has had as an athletic department as of late.

When doing that, you have to start with the top dogs in SDSU football and women's basketball. The Jackrabbit football team had what was thought to be a down year in 2025 and they still made it to the second round of the FCS Playoffs. They're the only team sport to win a Division I national championship, winning titles in 2022 and 2023, and will probably be the only team to do so as every other sport has to go against every Division I team.

However, the SDSU women's basketball team has seen a lot of success, without getting to a national title game. They made the NCAA Tournament for the 14th time this past season and have won six games in the Big Dance, including a Sweet 16 appearance in 2019. The Jacks also won the WNIT in 2022 and beat plenty of power conference teams en route to that championship.

SDSU wrestling has had a ton of success in Division I, including a solo national title from Seth Gross in 2018. Tanner Sloan also was the runner-up at the NCAA Championships in 2023 and the Jacks had the most national qualifiers in program history in 2025 when nine wrestlers participated in the NCAA Championships.

The Jackrabbit men's basketball team has made the NCAA Tournament seven times in the Division I era. They have not won a game in March Madness, but getting to the Big Dance is an accomplishment in of itself at the mid-major level.

SDSU soccer continued its solid run in the Summit League this past fall by winning the Summit League Tournament and qualifying for the NCAA Tournament for the third-straight year. It was the ninth time that the Jackrabbits have made the national tournament in soccer, but they are still looking for their first postseason victory in Division I.

The SDSU volleyball team broke back into the Division I postseason party in 2024 as they made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2007. The Jacks followed that up with another tournament appearance in 2025 and will look to make it three-straight postseason appearances for the first time since 2002 this fall.

Jackrabbit softball had back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Tournament in 2021 and 2022 and each year they won a game.

There was also success in the individual sports this school year as Cody Larson and McKenzie Mages each made national waves. Larson set the Summit League Cross Country Championship record this fall and then competed in the NCAA Cross Country Championship. Mages won the Summit League Tournament individually this spring and then competed alongside her teammates in the NCAA Regional.

When you talk to a lot of the players and coaches SDSU, they say that the success of other programs drives them to be successful. When I talked to head baseball coach Rob Bishop he said he is a Jackrabbit fan and loves seeing the other players and coaches have success, so for him to finally break through and get his team to the national tournament, it meant a lot.

When you go to the media days each year, each coach goes up and talks about their team to the donors and media that are there. When each coach does that, they make sure to congratulate the other teams on their success, and I think that is a good example of the culture that athletic director Justin Sell has developed at SDSU.

Everyone seems to be moving in the same direction and wanting others to succeed. There's no jealousy of other teams being more successful. Instead, the other teams push themselves to have the same amount of success.

The reason I wanted to highlight all of the success at SDSU is because I think sometimes Jackrabbit fans take for granted what Sell and company have built in Brookings. If you look around the Summit League and Missouri Valley, there aren't many other schools that can boast the resume that SDSU has as a whole. In fact, there might not be many athletic departments in the country that can compare to SDSU.

Obviously, football and basketball carry the weight in terms of popularity within the department, but take a minute to appreciate the success that the other programs have had, because it's pretty unprecedented.