It has been almost two years and the Coyotes have played 68 games since they last competed on their home turf at Nygaard Field. That streak ends Friday at noon when South Dakota opens Summit League play by hosting North Dakota.
 
The Coyotes and Fighting Hawks will play a doubleheader Friday and another Saturday that starts at 11 a.m. All four games will have live stats. A free live stream is available for Friday's doubleheader only.
 
The series comes at the perfect time for a South Dakota team needing a clean slate. The Coyotes enter with a 5-24 mark in a season filled with craziness including ice storms in Louisiana and a COVID-19 case in South Carolina. The team has yet to compete with a full roster due to travel restrictions, and hasn't played consistent enough to produce wins.
 
North Dakota is paddling a similar boat. The Hawks were 7-17 a season ago and are 10-19 this year. They had lost seven in a row before pitching a pair of shutouts to salvage a four-game split with Omaha last weekend. The only runs UND scored in the 1-0 and 2-0 wins were on throwing errors. The Hawks had just one hit in their 2-0 victory.
 
As a team, North Dakota is batting under .200, but its pitching, led by graduate transfer Adrianna Dilal, who boasts the Summit's second-best ERA, and defense has kept the Hawks within striking distance.
 
The last time South Dakota started a home series, the Coyotes stood atop the Summit with an 11-1 record and had won 11 consecutive games at Nygaard. That was two years ago. USD is hoping to regain some of that swagger, but it will take improvements on all three levels to get there. The Coyotes are batting .237 as a team, have a .924 fielding percentage and a 6.72 staff ERA.
 
Center fielder Camille Fowler enters the series with 224 career hits. One more would put her in the top five of the program's all-time list. Seven more runs would give her 140, which also rank in the top five.
 
Because of knockouts due to contact tracing and travel limits, just five Coyotes have started more than two-thirds of the team's games thus far. Fowler, Lauren Wobken and Lauren Eamiguel – all all-Summit performers – are the only players who have started nearly every game. Wobken and Eamiguel lead the squad with 17 and 16 RBIs, respectively.