Ron Riherd of Rapid City and Larry Toft of Sioux Falls have been selected as South Dakota's winners of the National High School Basketball Coaches Assocition's Wooden Legacy Coaching Award. The award is given in honor of legendary UCLA men's basketball coach John R. Wooden.

LARRY TOFT

In 37 years of coaching, Toft has put together an impressive resume. He has been named the SDBCA Assistant Girls Basketball Coach of the Year three times SDBCA Head Girls Basketball Coaches of the Year once. In 2017, he was a finalist for the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Assistant Coach of the Year for girls sports.

Toft is a 12-time state champion as an assistant coach in South Dakota. In the final 22 years of his career, he was part of 11 girls' state basketball championships and three runner-up finishes. Toft assistant four head coaches at two schools. He was a part of the Sioux Falls Roosevelt dynasty that has been well documented in South Dakota history. In 2008, Larry moved over to Sioux Falls Washington. The Warriors had not been in a championship game for nearly 30 years, something they did six times in the next 10 years with Toft on the sideline.

RON RIHERD

has been a member of South Dakota High School Coaches Association (SDHSCA) since 1970. He is past president of both the SDBBCA and the SDHSCA.

Riherd coached both boys and girls basketball at Yankton and Rapid City Stevens. He was an assistant boys and girls coach at Yankton from 1970-1980. In the fall of 1980, he became the girls head coach at Stevens. He remained the head girls coach until 2001. He continued to assist in boys basketball and then headed the boys program in 2014.

At Stevens, his girls teams competed in 15 state tournaments, finishing third through seventh for most of those years. Riherd was named the 1991 and 1994 Region IV Girls Coach of the Year and also the Region IV Assistant Boys Coach of the Year three times.

Riherd was selected to coach the first Wyoming-South Dakota All-Star girls basketball team in 1993 and the South Dakota All-Star Games girls basketball coach in 1995. He was the recipient of the SDHSCA Max Hawk Award in 2002 and the Region IV Head Boys Basketball Coach of the Yea in 2014. He is a member of the Rapid City Officials (2013) and SDHSCA (2015) halls of fame.

Ron and his wife Gloria live in Rapid City and are both retired teachers. They have two daughters, Jill Deckert of Brandon and Jody Riherd Corcoran of LaCrosse, Wis.