May 15—PARKSTON, S.D. — Something got into the water at The Pond last summer.
After going 6-6 through their first 12 games, the Parkston Rays reeled off a 14-3 record in the second half of the season en route to winning the 2025 Class B amateur baseball state championship in the club’s tournament debut.
This season, those Rays are determined to show they have staying power at the top of the Sunshine League and further establish the club as an emerging power within South Dakota amateur baseball.
“When they first organized the team (in 2023), they all came in hoping to have really good success, and it didn’t quite go their way,” said player-manager Doug Sudbeck. “All those kids knew that they were better than that, and finally, they kind of put it together last year, and we went on a run.
“Some of those guys stuck around when things weren’t going so good, and they’re still here to see some good times,” he added. “If we can keep that core together, that’s what it takes to have a successful team.”
Sudbeck credits the Rays’ core coming together to form a cohesive team as the biggest reason for increased success in 2025. The Rays went 20-9 last season, a huge turnaround from a 14-36 combined mark over their first two years as a club.
Compared to many of their peers in the Sunshine, the Rays’ roster is young, with much of it still well under 30 years old. Plus, last year, the club benefited greatly from an infusion of talent from the Parkston Post 194 American Legion squad.
“I think our talent is just as good as anyone in the state. We have a great bunch of guys who can play a lot of different positions, and our pitching staff is good,” Sudbeck said. “Day in, day out, our top 10 or 11 guys are just as good as anyone.”
Jake Helleloid, a former Mitchell High School standout who pitched at Northern State, was named state tournament MVP for the Rays. For the season, he posted an 8-0 record over 16 appearances with nine starts, a total of 79 1/3 innings. Along the way, Helleloid had a 1.235 earned-run average, .170 batting average against and 129 strikeouts, leading a Rays pitching staff with a team ERA of 3.31.
At the plate, the Rays owned a team on-base percentage of .382. A balanced lineup produced seven players with at least a dozen runs batted in, led by Dylan Soulek, another former MHS player who went to NSU, who had team-highs in RBIs (25) and home runs (six). Seth Muth, Tanner Dyk and Carter Sommer were the other Rays named to the all-tournament team last August. All of them are back on the roster for 2026.
Though a limited sample size so far this season, Caden Donahue and Ty Neugebauer are among the Rays’ leaders, combining for 12 RBIs in three games.
This spring hasn’t brought on quite the hot start the Rays were hoping for, as they’re 1-2 through three outings. They dropped their opener against Menno, beat the Hartford/Humboldt Gamecocks in a rematch of the 2025 championship game and, most recently, got clipped by Platte to start Sunshine League play.
But, according to Sudbeck, the Rays are still coming together this early in the season and getting settled in for the long haul.
“I think we’re excited to get together, and it’s just a matter of getting things put back into place so that we hopefully get going on the right foot,” Sudbeck said. “Having won last year, we’re kind of playing with house money, but we definitely don’t want to lay an egg either. We want to be competitive all the way through and, hopefully, give it a good run again this year.”
But Sudbeck, a longtime veteran of the league, primarily with Dimock/Emery, stressed that there is no straightforward path toward a potential repeat. Even with their strong showing last year, the Rays went 11-5 in Sunshine League action. That tied them in the final standings with Alexandria, who ultimately got the tiebreaker nod for the No. 2 seed in the district tournament.
As such, Sudbeck said the goal in focus for now is simply doing what it takes to make the state tournament field for a second time. Only then can concrete conversations about making another push through the bracket start.
“There’s no slouches right now in the Sunshine League, just a lot of tough teams, so there’s no guarantee that just because we won last year that we’ll even make it back to the state tournament,” Sudbeck said. “So every year you have that same goal. You want to get to the state tournament, then we can see how things pan out from there.”
