The Scouting Report: A weekly digest

Expensive football, world record running, national origins, Oahe Habitat

Scott Waltman, one of our friends at The Aberdeen Insider, made a recent observation on Facebook ahead of South Dakota State University’s Hobo Day game that tickets on the secondary market were selling for $116 or higher. 

“But you can get a ticket to the Vikings next home game against San Francisco for less than $80,” Waltman wrote. The prices are a reflection of the football those teams are playing, although the middling Vikings actually won that game against the Niners.

Prices on the secondary market got even steeper ahead of No. 1 ranked SDSU’s Oct. 28 clash against No. 2 University of South Dakota. Single tickets a few days before the game were $359, although there pairs were also available for $299 each. Meanwhile, the Vikings surprise win over the 49ers might have juiced their ticket prices: Seats for the next home game against New Orleans jumped to a minimum of $115 following the victory.

In SDSU’s Nov. 4 game against the North Dakota State Bison, the least expensive single ticket was $129 more than a week and a half out from the game. 

In other sporting news, 2003 Roosevelt High School graduate Amy Duba and her husband, Garret Lee, appear to have set a Guinness World Record for the fastest aggregate time by a married couple in a half marathon. Their combined time in the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon was 2:32:12. The record before that was 2:36:58.

Duba, the daughter of state Rep. Linda Duba, ran the 400- and 800-meter events in high school, as well as cross country. She lives in Denver. She grew up in a running family – Linda Duba was an avid runner who coordinated the Girls on the Run program.

Linda Duba says her daughter met Garret while he was shopping for a pair of running shoes at Runner’s Roost, where she worked. The two were married this past summer.

Lee is running in the elite division of the New York Marathon on Nov. 5, and has qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team Marathon Trials.

Going into the Toronto race, Linda Duba said the couple knew the time they needed to break to get the record. Lee’s time of 1:05:33 was fourth fastest in the event. Duba’s time of 1:26:39 earned her 28^th among women.

“He’s pretty fast. So is my daughter,” Linda Duba said.

The new world record will be confirmed with information sent to Guinness by the race organizer. Linda Duba also sent in videos. They weren’t the only two members of the family to run in the event. Garret’s brother ran the marathon, as did Duba’s other daughter, Alli. Meanwhile, Duba’s son is a runner who works for Nike.

Photo by Jane Palash on Unsplash

In related news, researchers at Vrije University in Amsterdam have concluded that running could be as effective as antidepressants at relieving depression. Individuals in the study were placed in two groups. One group was prescribed Escitalopram and the other group was put into teams that ran two or three times a week for 45 minutes.

Both groups showed similar levels of improvement over 16 weeks.

The benefit of running, however, had other positives, and university Professor Brenda Penninx said they wanted to measure the effects of antidepressants and exercise both on mental health and general health.

“Both interventions helped with the depression to around the same extent,” Penninx said in a release. “Antidepressants generally had worse impact on body weight, heart rate variability and blood pressure, whereas running therapy led to improved effect on general fitness and heart rate, for instance.”

The running group did have one drawback. More members dropped out of the study.

For the first time, the 2020 Census allowed respondents to offer more detail about their race by indicating national origin or origins. The bureau recently released data on people who identified their race as white. Those who identified themselves as English alone or some combination of English and another origin was the largest segment of the white population. The English, German and Irish origins comprised half of the people who identified as white, which also included Italians, Palestinians, French Canadian and other nations.

In all, more than 235 million people reported they were white alone or in combination with another racial group.

“As our country’s demographics change and the nation becomes more multiracial, it’s important to understand the composition of the race alone and race alone or in any combination populations,” the bureau noted.

English was by far the largest national origin in the United States. But the Midwest was an exception to the dominance of English blood. White South Dakota respondents cited German as the dominant background. That was true of most counties in the Upper Midwest, although some counties in North Dakota and Minnesota were majority Norwegian, and Sioux County, Iowa, was majority Dutch.

Word comes from the Pierre/Fort Pierre area that Oahe Habitat for Humanity is holding an event Nov. 6 to discuss the details of a project set to take place next year to provide a family with a new home in the area.

The event will take place at 5:30 p.m. at the Missouri River Event Center.

“This special event is organized by the Advisory Board Members of Oahe Habitat:  Dylan Gerlach, Gloria Hanson, Marcia Hultman, Ross Julson, Jennifer Soma and Don Zeller,” says an announcement from the group.

Since 1995, Oahe Habitat has built 10 homes, performed three rehabs and completed 12 repairs in its service area, which includes Stanley, Sully and Hughes counties. Oahe Habitat is one of 11 affiliates for the Habitat for Humanity program in South Dakota and is assigned to the Brookings Division.

The 2024 build project will get administrative support from MaxStrat of Pierre. While volunteers provide labor to build homes, the recipients are expected to put in hundreds of hours of “sweat equity” for their new home. “A two adult household is required to perform a minimum of 500 hours and a single adult family is required to complete 300 hours. A portion of these hours can be completed by family and friends and all hours must be completed before the family can purchase the home.” 

“Qualified Habitat homebuyers are identified as households who are in need of better housing and are able to pay an affordable mortgage payment,” the group says.