The South Dakota State athletes are on campus in Brookings and engaging in practices that are affected to a degree by the pandemic, even in the home state of the Sturgis motorcycle rally.
"We've been working in small groups with a social distancing element, and also a lot of individual work,'' women's basketball assistant coach Carissa Thielbar said. "We won't know until mid-September, at the earliest, what the Summit League might be planning for our schedules this season.''
As all committed promoters of Jackrabbits basketball should do, Carissa asked: "Have you seen our basketball facilities here?''
The Twin Cities reporter was able to confirm he had seen the treasures attached to Frost Arena — duplicate huge gyms and team areas for the men's and women's programs.
The Jacks' assistant coach played basketball as Carissa Nord at UW-Superior. She was a graduate assistant and then assistant at South Dakota State from 2011 to 2015. She spent two years as an assistant at Bucknell, one at Colorado State, and then returned to work for coach Aaron Johnston as a Jackrabbits assistant in 2018.
Carissa had been married since October 2016 to Caleb Thielbar, by then a pitcher 17 months removed from the major leagues and destined to return to the St. Paul Saints (after being released by Miami) for the small wages of independent baseball for a second straight season.
As Caleb moved into his 30s, were there discussions as to how long the baseball quest should continue?
"We would talk about it, but he really believed in himself,'' Carissa said. "He supported me so strongly with my coaching career … we were just in everything together.