These students from Freeman and Menno are taking part on the South Dakota All-State and Orchestra festival in Sioux Falls this weekend. Students gathered on Friday and will rehearse again today in preparation for the evening concert at the Sanford Premier Center. The 7 p.m. performance will air live on South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

With the exception of this approach and several others, the concrete work on Main Street has been completed. This photo is looking south from the North County Road. Curbs and sidewalks are also being poured on the side streets with pavement work expected to begin next week.

The campus of Freeman Academy is pictured on a wet and colorful fall day.

This always-changing display of skeletons outside the Freeman home of Shelly Anderson on Juniper Street offers a chuckle this Halloween season.

JEREMY WALTNER - EDITOR & PUBLISHER For those who enjoy this type of thing, last week’s Oktoberfest in Menno was a good-news, bad-news situation. The good news was that the longstanding celebration of German-Russian heritage was back after a Covid-related two-year hiatus. The bad news? A city/school auditorium that had been set up to accommodate a full house was half empty at best.

Concrete work on the city of Freeman's Main Street project is drawing to a close. Paul Korn of Sayre Associates said Monday was a "milestone" day as all curb and gutter and other paving on Main Street itself finished up. Workers are now focusing on pouring concrete for the curb and gutter and sidewalks on the side streets — one block of third and fourth streets on either side of Main, which have been closed to traffic for several weeks. After that is completed in the next week to two weeks, pavement will be installed on the primary roadways.

The Freeman Academy/Marion boys cross-country team and its coaches are pictured after receiving the third-place plaque at the 2022 State Cross-Country Meet in Huron on Saturday. Pictured are, from left, coach Suzanne Koerner, alternate Armando Miller, Seth Balzer, Jayson Allison, Hayden Schmidt, Tavin Schroeder, Finley McConniel, alternate Camdyn Preheim and coach Billy Beseman. The Courier is bringing its readers full coverage of the 2022 state meet in this week's edition.

Sarah Bauder, a volunteer at the SoDak Stamm's Oktoberfest, serves up fruit salad at the traditional event that celebrates the German-Russian heritage in Menno Saturday night, Oct. 22. While attendance wasn't what organizers had hoped — the city/school auditorium set up for a full house was about half full — those there enjoyed the meal that also included sausage, hot German potato salad, sauerkraut that had been slightly sweetened, and kuchen before being entertained by the Leo Lonnie Big Band Orchestra, a nine-piece ensemble that plays a variety of big band/polka music.

This is Jada Koerner as a seventh grader competing at Hart Ranch in Rapid City in the 2017 State Cross Country Meet — the first of what has been an outstanding prep career. Koerner, now a senior at Freeman Academy, will run in her sixth and final state meet at Broadland Creek Golf Course today; the Class B girls will run at 1 p.m. Koerner is one of a number of local athletes running in the boys and girls 5,000-meter races today. The Class B boys race is set for 2:30 p.m.

Dustin Tschetter, head coach for the Freeman/Marion/Freeman Academy football team, visits with his players at halftime of Thursday night's playoff game against Florence/Henry. The Phoenix led 30-14 at the half but gave up two touchdowns in the second half to set up a dramatic finish. That came on the final play of the night when, with three seconds to play, quarterback Riley Tschetter found tight end Evan Scharberg for a 39-yard touchdown pass that gave F/M/FA a wild 36-30 win on a perfect night for football.