The Summit League

Worth pointing out that some of these mid-major teams are excellent as well.

Idaho went 17 and 1 in the Big Sky last year, got a 13 seed in the NCAA tournament South Dakota State got an 11 seed as the representative from the Summit League.

Uh, but here's the thing, North Dakota State actually won the Summit League regular season last year.

They went 15 and one.

They dominated the Summit League, but they lost to South Dakota State in the Summit League tournament, which is why the Jackrabbits got the bid into the NCAA tournament.

But both those teams are very good.

S- North Dakota State is typically known for football, but both North Dakota State and South Dakota State have consistently been very good at women's basketball, and Gonzaga very regularly has them on the schedule.

Oh boy, this conference continues to exceed expectations.

It is tough not to love the Summit League right now.

A lot of things to be proud of.

Let's go to the non-conference tracker sheet, where before the season, the Massey numbers have the Summit League winning 31 matches.

With 19 matches to go, the Summit League already has 37 wins, so now six more wins will guarantee the Summit League a winning non-conference record.

And we know the Power Four schools will put up a winning non-conference record.

But for the non-Power Four schools to have a winning non-conference record, that doesn't happen very often.

Right now, as of the moment, the Summit League ranks number seven in the country for win percentage when it comes to non-conference matches, and in the current rankings, the Summit is ranked as the 10th best conference in the entire country.

Testing 1, 2, 3.

Welcome back to another season of the Summit League segment.

Welcome back to another episode of the Summit League segment.

I'm Ryan Enerson, host of the Prairie Track and Field podcast, and we are so excited to partner with the Summit League once again to provide in-depth coverage of your favorite teams across the conference.

Year after year, the Summit League proves it's one of the best mid-major conferences in the entire nation, including last year, when UND's Jaden Keeler earned cross-country All-American honors and the league saw two men's qualifiers in Oral Roberts' Abraham Chillingham and South Dakota State's Cody Larson.

Not only can you be a part of the action with our show's student-athlete interviews each week, but you can also join us for the Summit League cross-country championships this fall.

The 2026 championships will be hosted by the University of St. Thomas and St. Paul for the first time in Summit League history.

On October 31st, you'll be able to watch your favorite teams and student-athletes race for a spot on the podium and the opportunity to reach the Summit.

and uh so before we we left for the break we talked about um you being student athletes which is my or student you know students uh which is my favorite part but of course everybody wants to hear about how the women's basketball team is going to do this year how the men's how the football team is doing and is going to do so avery The floor is yours.

Tell us about, you know, you're returning, I believe, four out of five starters to your regular season Summit League championship team last year.

So I'm assuming we got big, high expectations for this year.

Yeah, for sure.

You know, we got a lot of goals and we're coming off of a really successful season, but still a lot of work that we know that we need to do and a lot of goals that we still want to reach.

yeah returning that many girls not just starters but even girls off the bench too is going to be really really good for our team just building that experience and not having to like re-teach too much you know you're just kind of building off what we already had so we've got a lot of girls that are ready to step into bigger roles now and Um, you know, there's my classes, seniors, especially has been, you know, we've been blessed enough to play for the majority of our career.

So just having that, those years under our belt, you know, we've played in the summit league tournament championship twice and, um, have, you know, made a post-season tournaments every single year.

So experience with that and those type of situations is gonna go really well for us.

More on that story at ESPN.com. Let's move forward into some news from Brookings.

Sylvie Zaguntz was named, uh, one of the Summit League Volleyball Peak Performers of the Week, league officials announced on Tuesday.

She earned her seventh career offensive honor.

She totaled seventy-seven kills, thirty-four digs, an average five point nine two kills per set during the Jackrabbits' second weekend of the season.

It's match day.

We have one match in the Summit League today, and it's a good one between Oral Roberts and Tulsa.

I'll get to that preview in just a moment.

But before that, we have so many things to talk about in the Summit League, so many great things going on.

I'm going to talk about peak performers, some milestones, other miscellaneous information in the Summit League.

Let's start with the peak performers of the week.

The Offensively, for the second consecutive week, the peak performer goes to Sylvie Zonks of South Dakota State.

That included a double-digit effort against number one Nebraska.