SPEARFISH, S.D.- The Black Hills State Yellow Jackets (6-14 (2-8 RMAC)) head on the road to face Chadron State (4-16 (1-9 RMAC)) for the third time this season on Thursday Night in the Chicoine Center in the first matchup of the RMAC Power Pod. They will then face New Mexico Highlands (9-12 (4-6 RMAC)) in a neutral site matchup Friday night. It will be the second time they face Highlands this year. BHSU is looking to get back in the win column and finish the season strong after falling in a five-set match to Regis this past Saturday.
 
KNOW BEFORE YOU GO:
Date/Time/Location: Chadron State: Thursday, October 30, 2025, at 6 PM at the Chicoine Center in Chadron, Nebraska.
New Mexico Highlands: Friday, October 31, 2025, at 6 PM at the Chicoine Center in Chadron, Nebraska.
Tickets: Tickets for each match can be found at the link above.
RMAC Network: Beginning in the 2025-26 season the RMAC Network will now move to Pay-Per-View. Fans can purchase a single game ($10), monthly ($25) or annual subscription ($130). Individuals with bhsu.edu or yellowjackets.bhsu.edu email address can still take advantage of the Peak Pricing Promotion by using the code Y26-RMACEDU.
 
BLACK HILLS STATE STORYLINES

• Black Hills State is entering the RMAC Power Pod 6-14 and 2-8 in RMAC play after dropping a heartbreaker to Regis this past Saturday. The Yellow Jackets won two of the first three sets before dropping to the fourth and fifth to lose the match. It was the second time this year the Yellow Jackets lost in five sets putting their record at 2-1 in five-set matches this year.
• The Yellow Jackets top stat categories this year have been team attacks per set (35.03), blocks per set (1.71), team total attacks (2,557), digs per set (14.92), and team total blocks (125.0).
• Black Hills State was predicted to finish 15^th in the conference in the preseason RMAC Coaches' Poll after finishing 15^th in the conference last season. They are currently sitting in solo 12th after a 2-8 start in conference play.
• Libero Ellie Thomas has been the top Libero in the RMAC this year. She leads the RMAC in total digs with 354 and also leads in digs per set with 4.85 ranking 62^nd and 45^th in the country in each respective stat. She also has 12 aces including a career high five in the matchup versus Augustana. Thomas has had 15 or more digs in 12 of the 19 games and has reached ten in all of them. She is coming off one of the best weekends of her career where she had 6.29 digs per set and 44 total digs in only seven sets versus Adams and Highlands. She had 20 in the first matchup and 24 in three sets versus Highlands. The performance earned her a RMAC Defensive Player of the Week award and it was the first RMAC weekly award since week four of the 2020-21 season. She followed that performance up with 26 digs in the three-set win over Chadron which meant she had 8.6 digs per set. On Saturday versus Regis, she had 21 digs in the five-set win and finished second in the conference in digs and digs per set this past week.
• Emily Freeland is leading BHSU in kills this season. After tying her career high in kills with 20 in the season opener versus Augustana, Freeland has continued to pile on the kills. She currently sits at 201 kills. She also leads in kills per set with 2.75. Freeland has had ten or more kills in seven of the 20 matches this season. She also is second on the team in digs with 159 and is leading the team in receptions with 449 and 228.0. She had nine kills in the win versus Chadron with a .219 hitting percentage and 12 digs. She was huge in clutch moments for the Jackets in that game. She had seven kills and 14 digs in the game against Regis, but had a negative hitting percentage.
• BHSU is running a two-setter system, so Sydnie Tuioti-Mariner and Elena Atkinson are both taking on setting duties this year. Tuioti-Mariner had an All-Tournament honor in Minot after leading BHSU with 62 assists and also having seven aces including five in the game versus Minot State. Atkinson had 57 assists that weekend and is leading the season with 319 to Tuioti-Mariner's 260 combining 579 assists between the two of them. They have also combined 214 digs. Elena Atkinson had her weekend this past two games leading the team in assists with 28 to Tuioti-Mariner's 19 and had 17 assists in the game versus ASU. Atkinson followed it up with 23 assists in the matchup versus the Eagles, while Tuioti-Mariner had 13. On Saturday, they combined for 39 assists with Atkinson having 21 and Tuioti-Mariner having 17.
• Peyton McLeod and Jaeda Davis-Golliher have been a top middle duo for BHSU. McLeod leads the team with 50 total blocks while also having 43 kills. She has had a block in each of the last 16 games and has had multiple in each of the last nine games including a career high seven versus Regis. Davis-Golliher has 49 total blocks and has a block in all but three games this year. She has had three or more in four of the last five games and also has 114 kills with at least three kills in all but three games this season. McLeod had 13 total blocks this past week versus Chadron and Regis with at least six in each game. Davis-Golliher had seven total blocks with five against Chadron. She also had 16 kills and had a .300 hitting percentage or better in each of the two games.
• Head coach Grayson DuBose enters his first season with the Yellow Jackets but has 14 years of head coaching experience at the D1 level prior to joining BHSU. He was head coach at Utah State for all 14 years and has a 195-243 career record with two WAC Coach of the Year awards and one NCAA Division 1 Tournament appearance.

 
CHADRON STATE STORYLINES

• Chadron State sits at 4-16 and 1-9 in conference and have not been able to get a win since beating Western in late September and have now lost eight straight games and 15 sets in a row. Chadron is coming off two losses last week to Black Hills State and to South Dakota Mines where they went 0-6 in sets.
• The Eagles are ranked top 10 in the RMAC in three categories. They are ranked third and 31st in the country in team attacks per set (38.09), sixth in digs per set (16.16), and tenth in team total attacks (2,552).
• CSC was picked to finish 13th in the RMAC in the Preseason Coaches' Poll with 55 points, they currently sit in a 14th with a 1-9 record.
• Mataya Ward in the kill leader for CSC. The Belle Fourche product currently sits at 183 kills with a .230 attack percentage. She ranks sixth in the RMAC in kills per set (3.27), eighth in points per set (3.54), and seventh in attacks per set (8.91). Ward has only played 18 of the 20 matches and has ten or more kills in ten of them with 18 and 13 in their two previous matches versus the Yellow Jackets. This past weekend she had 20 total kills with 13 kills versus BHSU and a .235 attack percentage. She has not reached ten kills in four of the last five games.
• Jillian Donovan has been one of the best setters in the RMAC this season with 601 assists, which ranks third in the conference. As a freshman, she ranks fourth in assists per set with 9.11. She has had 20 or more assists in all but three games this year with a 56-assist game versus the Green and Gold. The past two games she combined for 61 assists with 39 against BHSU and also had a double-double versus the Yellow Jackets with 10 digs. She followed that up with 22 assists and nine digs versus SDM.
• Avery Lacy has been the top half of a solid digging duo. She leads the team with 231 digs and has ten or more digs in all but six matches this year with 20 coming in the win over Upper Iowa. However, she has fallen off a cliff recently with only 31 total digs in the past six games having lost the starting Libero job to a duo of Gibson Beckler and Josie Loosvelt, who have combined for 334 digs and 82 digs in the last six games. Lacy did get the majority of the work versus BHSU and had 19 digs in the previous matchup.
• This is head coach Jennifer Stadler's seventh year coaching the Eagles. She has a career 55-110 record in her career. She had a losing season last year after snapping a three-year winning season drought the previous year

 
SERIES HISTORY

• The Yellow Jackets are currently losing the series 27-16 to the Eagles. Chadron has won four of the last six dating back to 2022. This will be the 44th meeting between the two.
• BHSU finally snapped a four-game losing streak versus Chadron last time these two met earlier this year in A2 Arena. BHSU was down 2-0 and came back to win 3-2 in the reverse sweep.
• In that matchup, Randi Wellhoefer, Emily Freeland, and Carsyn Mettler each made it to ten kills, Tuioti-Mariner made it to 26 assists, and Freeland and Thomas each made it to 20 digs. Beckler had 23 kills, Lacy had 32 digs, and Donovan had 56 assists.
• The Yellow Jackets once again took down the Eagles this past week in a dominant three-set win versus Chadron, which was the first three-set win versus the Eagles since 2021. In that matchup, the Yellow Jackets had a season-high 11 blocks, Randi Wellhoefer led in kills with 15, while Thomas had 26 digs in three sets and Atkinson had 23 assists.

 
 
NEW MEXICO HIGHLANDS

• New Mexico Highlands is sitting in a tie for tenth place in the RMAC with a 4-6 conference record and has a 9-12 overall record. The Cowgirls have won five of their last eight matchups with their only losses coming in a non-conference matchup versus Eastern New Mexico, a three-set loss to SDM, and a five-set loss to Fort Lewis. Four of their five wins have come to the teams ranked below them in the RMAC standings.
• The Cowgirls have been exceptional at two categories this year, serves and digs. NMHU is ranked first in the RMAC in total service aces with 144 and second in aces per set with 1.82. They are ranked second in digs per set with 16.67 and third in total digs with 1,317. They are also ranked fourth in team total attacks with 2,857.
• New Mexico Highlands was picked to finish 14th in the RMAC preseason coaches' poll with 37 points just ahead of BHSU. They now sit in a tie for tenth with a 4-6 conference record.
• Becca Wiersema has been one of the top liberos in the RMAC this year. She sits third in the RMAC with 322, while ranking sixth in digs per set (4.08). She has reached ten plus digs in all but three games this year and has reached 15 11 times this season so far. She is coming off a 33-dig week where she had 19 versus Western Colorado and 14 versus Fort Lewis in ten sets averaging out to be 3.3 digs per set.
• Yuli Favela has been the top blocker for the Cowgirls this year. She sits at 50 total blocks and has had a block in 16 of the last 17 games. She is coming off six blocks over the past two games including five in the win versus Western Colorado. She had 11 total kills this past week as well.
• Senior setter Naya Dornic has been the top setter on the team this year with 338 assists this year and 4.33 assists per set. She has ten or more assists in all but three games this year and had 27 assists versus Westminster. She had 46 total assists this past weekend averaging 4.6 assists per set. She had 20 assists in each match including 25 versus Western.
• The Cowgirls have a duo of top attackers in Arianna Jamerson and Aziza Morris. The two have combined for 415 kills this season with Jamerson holding the slight 213-202 lead on total kills. Jamerson has reached ten plus kills in nine games this year and six of the last nine. She had 25 total kills this past weekend including 17 versus Fort Lewis and had a .342 hitting percentage in that game. With Jamerson catching fire, Morris has struggled as of late only reaching ten or more kills four times in the past 12 games while doing it in six of the eight games before that. She had 20 total kills this past weekend including 12 against Western but had a below .175 hitting percentage in each game.
• Meg Grose is in her second season at the helm of the Cowgirls after spending one season at D3 Lawrence. She has a career 19-55 record and a career 14-33 record for NMHU. She already has more wins this season than in any of the two years prior.

 
SERIES HISTORY

• New Mexico Highlands is the only team in the RMAC that the Yellow Jackets have a winning record against. The Green and Gold is 8-6 against Highlands in the matchup history but have lost four of the last five.
• NMHU was the only RMAC team BHSU has beaten in the last two years. They went 1-1 last season with BHSU winning the home matchup 3-1 before losing the road match in a five-set thriller.
• In their matchup earlier this year, NMHU destroyed BHSU in a three-set match in A2 Arena. They were out hit 47 kills to 30 and out-digged 73-56. Thomas had 24 digs which led to her RMAC Player of the Week, but no hitter had more than ten kills and the Yellow Jackets only had 28 assists.