BROOKINGS — The Brookings Cubs have played two games in the amateur baseball season and have already seen the construction of their roster pay dividends.

The Cubs have plenty of returners from last season but have also added some power in their lineup and more arms to their pitching rotation.

Brookings opened the season with a 9-5 win over Dell Rapids PBR on the road on May 12. The Cubs then had their home opener on May 14 and beat the Volga Cormorants 14-4 in seven innings.

Cubs general manager Aaron Jorenby said he is expecting a lot of success from this team in 2025.

“This is probably one of our most talented teams that we’ve had in a number of years,” Jorenby said.

Brookings added eight guys to its roster as well. Arlon Peters and Colin Gibson from South Dakota State. Isaac Bonner, who was one of USF’s top hitters this past season. Logan Anderson, who is one of USF’s top pitchers. Myles Rees and Lincoln Vasgaard, who are both from Sioux Falls. The Cubs also added a couple players who played for the Brookings senior legion team last season in Nolan Miles and Zach Struck.

Jorenby said he is most excited about the pitching staff.

“We’ve had more pitching than we’ve had in a long time. Jake Amann, Logan Anderson, Zach Shastay, Arlon Peters, Jackson Krogman, Lincoln Vasgaard, Myles Rees and Tucker Wookey are all capable starters. We’ve had one guy that we could turn to over the past five or so seasons but we haven’t had a deep rotation. This year we not only feel like we have multiple guys we can turn to, but a deep rotation that doesn’t see a drop off from the top guy to the next guy down,” Jorenby said.

The Cubs are in the Sioux Empire League. The league consists of Brandon, who the Cubs will play on Thursday, Baltic, Renner, the Sioux Falls Brewers and the Sioux Falls Squirrels. The newest member of the league is the Harrisburg Woodies. The Woodies were in Class B and in 2019 they were told that they needed to move to Class A. The members of the team didn’t want to do that but now they are back and expected to be a real threat to win the Class A title.

Brookings has nine more home games, nine more road games and three neutral site games. The neutral site games will be a tournament in Arlington, Minn., June 7-8. There are eight teams in that tournament and the Cubs are the only team from South Dakota.

The Cubs will be hosting the North District Tournament July 31-Aug. 3. The first weekend of the State Tournament will be in Aberdeen Aug. 8-10 and the final weekend of the tournament will be in Brandon for the first time ever Aug. 15-17.

The Cubs went 15-7 last season. They lost to Renner 4-1 in their first State Tournament game and then beat the Rapid City Diamondbacks 13-6 to advance to the second weekend. In Brookings’ first game of the second weekend they fell 13-6 to the Sioux Falls Brewers.

Brookings has not won a State Tournament since 2002. The Cubs made it to the championship game in both 2020 and 2022 but came up short both times. Jorenby said he thinks this team has what it takes to bring home a State title for the first time in 23 years.

“We haven’t had this much pitching since the early to mid 2000’s when those Cubs teams were really good and had tons of pitching. We have that this year. With our offense, when you add a guy like Bonner who hits clean-up for USF and hit nine or 10 home runs and batted nearly .400 in the NSIC, that’s huge. Especially to throw him into an already deep lineup, we feel good. This lineup from one to nine, there aren’t many holes. If there was ever a year to break this 23-year streak of not winning the State title, this would be it,” Jorenby said.