DSU Notebook

Coach search has only begun

Dickinson State Athletic Director Roger Ternes said he's impressed with the number of applications the school has received for the vacant men's basketball coach position.

"We probably had between 30 and 40 e-mails, phone calls, faxes," Ternes said.

The advertisement for the position was put on the Internet immediately after Scott Berry resigned Feb. 19.

However, Ternes said that the school will wait until mid-March to pare down the list into a small group of candidates.

"Our search is probably going to continue through the 15th of March, only because a lot of coaches are still coaching," Ternes said.

"I'm anticipating we're going to have 75 to 100 applications by the time we get to that point."

Ternes said there have been no in-house applications, nor has there been interest from area high school or college coaches. Instead, coaches from around the nation - from all levels of coaching - have applied for the job.

"You still have to weed through them all," Ternes said. "It takes time."

By the end of the search process, Ternes said the school hopes to have a handful of strong candidates to interview.

"I'm pretty confident we'll have four or five who are going to stand out from the rest and that can do the job extremely well," Ternes said. "I'm not even really worried about who applies and who doesn't. I think the pool we're going to get is just going to be outstanding."

Young distance runners making long strides

The young DSU track and field team is coming along faster than coach Pete Stanton anticipated.

The Blue Hawks qualified 22 athletes - 15 men, seven women - for the NAIA Indoor Championships in Johnson City, Tenn., over March 8-10.

It's the most athletes DSU has ever qualified for the national indoor.

"We were very excited about our performance, extremely pleased with the effort on both sides for the men and the women," Stanton said.

Stanton believes one of the Blue Hawks' biggest boosts this season has been the performance of their distance runners.

For years, Black Hills State dominated the men's distance events.

However, DSU turned the tables on the Yellow Jackets at the Dakota Athletic Conference indoor meet last weekend when junior Sergio Jiminez won the mile and juniors Porfirio Parra and John Kungu finished first and second in the 5,000-meter run.

The distance wins helped the Blue Hawks distance themselves from Black Hills State and win their second consecutive conference title with 265 points. The Yellow Jackets were second with 202.5.

"It was just a real gutty performance by our distance runners," Stanton said.

On the women's side, Rose Jepkiroi broke through the Black Hills State-dominated distance field and won the 5,000 with a time of 18 minutes, 17.39 seconds - more than 13 seconds faster than the second-place finisher.

Jepkiroi's performance helped the Blue Hawk women come within 16.34 points of DAC champion Black Hills State, which had 212.5 points. DSU had 196.16.

"It was the highest point total we've had," Stanton said.

Baseball team will have few home games

By the time the DSU baseball team plays its first home game, the Blue Hawks will be well into their season.

DSU plays a 52-game regular-season schedule, but is scheduled to play only 12 games - six doubleheaders - at Southside Ballpark.

DSU's first games in Dickinson are during a doubleheader against Jamestown College on March 24. By that point, the Blue Hawks will already be 16 games into their season.

Coach Duane Monlux and his players said they aren't troubled by the scheduling.

"I usually never like think about it as home and away," DSU returning All-American outfielder Ed Warren said. "It does help to have the home crowd, so hopefully we can overcome that."

Dustin Monke is the Sports Editor at DSU reporter at The Dickinson Press. Read his blog at www.areavoices.com/monke .