BROOKINGS – After winning the Summit League last year and returning to the NCAA Tournament, the South Dakota State soccer team starts its quest to repeat as conference champions on Thursday night.

The Jackrabbits will open the season at 9 p.m. Central time tonight at Arizona State. SDSU finished last season with an overall record of 17-4-1 and went 6-2-1 in the Summit League. The Jacks took down Denver in the Summit League Championship Game and won their sixth Summit League title before falling to No. 4 seeded Pepperdine. 7-1, in the NCAA Tournament.

SDSU returns 16 players that have started at least one game for them. SDSU head coach Brock Thompson, who is entering his sixth season at the Jacks’ head man, said he feels great about having so much experience on his team.

“We consider ourselves blessed because we have a lot of players who have been through a lot of different things. Some adversity, some challenging times, some great times. They know what it takes to win late in the year, but they also know that there’s a fine line and you can play really, really well and lose any given day. The hope is that that flattens out the roller coaster a little bit that happens in any season. I think that’s where the leadership will show up, in some of the challenging times” Thompson said.

One of the returning players is fifth-year senior midfielder Karlee Manding. Manding was tied for sixth on the team in goals last year with two and was fourth on the team in minutes played. She said that it’s easy to be a leader because everyone has each other’s backs.

“It’s not hard to be there for my teammates, because they’re awesome and they make it easy. I mean, the way we all rally behind each other makes it super easy for everyone to be a leader on the team,” Manding said.

SDSU was second in the Summit League in goals per game last season with 2.346, which was second best in school history. The Jacks had 52 goals last season and return their top-five leading scorers. Maya Hansen led the team with 14 goals and was second in the Summit League with that mark.

Thompson said he believes that his team’s offensive attack is a strength of the team, but can also lead to their weakness. 

“I think [the fact that we can score from anywhere] is a strength. I think our depth is a strength. The challenge is our ability to transition defensively once we lose the ball because we’ve had possession for so long in some of these games and in many of these games that puts a bigger emphasis on the moment we lose it in the defensive transition. But this is a really fun group and I think it will be a really fun group to watch grow throughout the season,” Thompson said.

SDSU has made the NCAA Tournament in two of the past three seasons. During that span the Jacks have gone 24-3-6 in the Summit League. Thompson said his team likes to take it game by game and wants to be playing their best soccer at the end of the season.

“… Our approach to the season is to always be playing our best soccer in October and late November, and to do that we have to have the right mindset in August and September, and that’s kind of the builder approach. To just focus on the performance and the process and not the outcome and the result. And it helps having an experienced team like we have right now,” Thompson said. 

SDSU will remain in the state of Arizona for the second and third game of the season. The Jacks will play at Grand Canyon on Sunday at 9 p.m. Central time before heading up to Flagstaff to take on Arizona State on Tuesday at 9 p.m. Central time. Thompson said the game against Arizona State has been in the works for a while now and him and his staff decided to make a road trip out of it, just like they did last year in Hawaii, when the team played three games on island.

“Arizona State came to play us in 2018 and [ASU head coach] Graham [Winkworth] has done a great job about wanting to schedule us. We owed them a return, and that return was actually scheduled in the COVID season, and got rescheduled into this one. … I love Arizona. I don’t know how much I love Arizona in August, but we’re about to find out. But I think the one thing that we learned last year when we went to Hawaii for three games is that some extended time away from campus is a great team bonding experience. We’re there to get better as a soccer team, but were also there to become closer as a soccer family and I think that time that this trip affords us will be pretty valuable too,” Thompson said.

SDSU will open its home schedule against Bemidji State on Aug. 28 at 1 p.m. The Jacks will then travel Northern Iowa on Sept. 1 before three-straight home games against Creighton (Sept. 11), Air Force (Sept. 15) and Kansas State (Sept. 18). SDSU then opens up its conference schedule with a home game against South Dakota on Sept. 24. 

The Jacks will look to extend their 32-match streak without a loss, which is ranked second in the country only behind Florida State. SDSU’s last home loss came on came on Sept. 7, 2018 when the Jacks fell to Thursday night’s opponent Arizona State, 2-0.

One change to the Summit League this season is the conference tournament. This year, there will be six teams in the conference tournament, while in year’s past there were only four. The top two teams will be the hosting the quarterfinals and semifinals Oct. 28-30 and the highest remaining seed will host the championship game on Nov. 5.