By Rich Winter

605 Sports

LEMMON — While in his first year as Lemmon boys basketball coach Tyler Kostelecky didn’t have to look far to know that the future of Cowboy basketball was coming. 

A talented group of sixth graders immediately caught Kostelecky’s eye and he remembers being in the locker room with five young men that were chomping on the bit to play basketball. 

“You could tell there were some athletes coming up and some fundamentals that we could work on,” Kostelecky said. “Their work ethic even as sixth graders was good and they opened some eyes here my first year and I knew they would have a chance to be special.” 

The five current senior starters Blair Ham, Arlus Yalowizer, Blake Drayton, Nathan Penfield and Jacob Sonsalla took their lumps as sophomores that saw plenty of playing time. Last season, the Cowboys won 18 games but suffered a 54-53 loss to Timber Lake in the Region 7B semifinals, in a game that would have sent the junior-laden squad to the SoDak 16. 

This season, the Cowboys are off to an 11-1 start and Ham, a 6-foot-2 forward, said Lemmon’s physicality has been the X-factor to the strong start. 

“One of our goals is to outrebound every team we play,” Ham said. “Boxing out is huge for us. That’s where we can get bodies on people and not get fouls.”

Ham is the leading scorer for Lemmon and recently went over 1,000 career points. He’s enjoying his senior season playing with guys he’s been playing with most his life. 

“We’re really having fun this season,” he said. “My teammates give me the opportunity to score and I wouldn’t be where I am without them.” 

Blake Drayton finds Arlus Yalowizer with the wrap around pass during a game against Timber Lake - Photo courtesy of Eric Sonsalla

Lemmon’s success on the court has powered the Cowboys to the current No. 4 seed (45.250) in Class B boys basketball. Lemmon is located in the extreme northwest corner of South Dakota. Their schedule features a number of top North Dakota schools that Kostelecky helped schedule to upgrade the degree of difficulty for his senior dominated team. 

“We’ve been playing some pretty good competition and this year we purposely tried to get our strength of schedule up,” Kostelecky said. 

The only loss of the season came on Dec.14 to Dickinson Trinity, North Dakota, 64-35. The night before the Cowboys defeated Timber Lake 64-62 in their season opener, a game in which they trailed by seven with 30 seconds remaining. 

“We just didn’t have any legs from the night before plus we were down a starter,” Kostelecky said of the loss to the North Dakota school. 

For a small town the size of Lemmon the Cowboys feature a big team with 6-feet-4 Sonsalla and 6-foot-3 Yalowizer doing most of the work down low. 

Drayton says having those big guys behind him is extremely beneficial.

“When I’m bringing the ball up and someone comes up to set a big hard screen that allows me to get downhill,” he said. “I know if I get beat off the dribble we have a couple of great shot-blockers behind me. They are such great rebounders and that allows us guards to leak out a little bit and get more fast breaks.”

The Cowboys play in relative anonymity out west but the team watches a lot of East River basketball and feel like they measure up to the best teams in Class B. Drayton said the one intangible the Cowboys have over other schools is their work ethic. 

“We definitely have a chip on our shoulder and our thing is no one is going to outwork us,” he said. “Most of us are ranch kids and we have that toughness about us. Even if we get down we use that toughness to crawl back into games.”

The Cowboys have three starters that average at or above 10 points per game. Kostelecky said another starter averages about eight points while the fifth starter is averaging just over five points per game. 

On any given night a different player often leads Lemmon in scoring. Penfield said that scoring punch and the diversity of the players make Lemmon a dangerous team. 

“I feel like of the starting five everyone can take care of the ball and that’s a huge asset for this team,” he said. “For me handling the ball if I get in trouble I know I can get it to any of these guys and we can still get in our sets.”

After losing to Faith in the finals of the 2024 LIttle Moreau Conference championship game, the five seniors knocked another goal off their season list when they defeated Timber Lake 66-53 on Jan. 25 to win their conference tournament. 

Penfield called that win the team's most complete game and best outing of the season. 

“We talked about it afterwards,” he said. “That has been a goal of ours for a while. We were very focused and knew what we had to do to get that win and then we went out and did what we needed to do.” 

The Lemmon boys won the 2025 Little Moreau Conference this season with a 66-53 win over Timber Lake - Photo courtesy of Eric Sonsalla

The Cowboys are riding a 10-game winning streak and Yalowizer said winning the conference championship only gives the team more confidence as they head into the second half of their regular season. 

Having played together since elementary school the five Lemmon starters have been dreaming about this season, and a state tournament run for a long time. 

“I feel like all of us have dreamt about winning a state tournament since about first grade,” Sonsalla said. “It would mean a lot to win it because we’ve put in so many hours over the summer to get better as a team.” 

Kostelecky put a point of emphasis on the physicality and defensive prowess of his team saying the Cowboys can run but haven’t done much of that year. What the Cowboys have done is hold their opponents to low shooting percentages in a grind it out style of play. 

With the season just past the halfway points, Kostelecky feels like the schedule softens a bit but notes that will not stop this year’s team from putting one foot in front of the other. 

“We really want to attach it to one game at a time,” he said. “We’ve got this 10-game winning streak but we know we are going to get everyone’s best shot.” 

The Lemmon boys last made the state tournament in 1990 while playing as a Class A school.