Freeman High School sophomore Emily Mendel delivers a serve on the first day of volleyball practice Thursday, Aug. 11 inside the district's auxiliary gym. The Flyers and other teams across the state are taking to the court one week after football practices began in preparation for the fall prep sports season to come. The first team to actually compete this month will be the Freeman/Marion/Freeman Academy Phoenix and Jim River Trappers football teams, which are both in action Friday night, Aug. 19. The Phoenix are at Burke and the Trappers are at Sioux Valley.

Construction workers set concrete panels in place to form the walls of The Hangar, Freeman Public's new wrestling/multi-purpose facility being built east of the Freeman Elementary gymnasium. Each panel includes a concrete exterior with a foam and rebar core, and a crane helps guide each one into the precast footings. The $1.1 million project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

A worker from Superior Sawing and Sealing, a Mora, Minn.-based company, works Monday to blast out dust and other debris that had settled into the joints on the new Main Street roadway in preparation for an asphalt sealant that will be installed in the incoming week. Meanwhile, progress on the sidewalks and extended curbs has been delayed as general contractor Reede Construction waits for the arrival of the crew charged with that task.

Jamison Kleinsasser delivers a pitch for Menno as the Mad Frogs take on Flandreau in their opening game of the State Amateur Baseball Tournament at Mitchell's Cadwell Park. It ended up being the final game for the Menno as the Lakers came away with a 7-2 victory.

Jake Weier, player/manager for the Freeman amateur baseball team, lays down a bunt in State Amateur Baseball Tournament action at Cadwell Park in Mitchell Saturday night, Aug. 6. Weier and the Blacksox held a slight advantage over Lake Norden through the first part of the game, but the Lakers scored four runs in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings to come away with a 5-3 win. Weier reached base four times for Freeman. Menno's town team plays Flandreau Sunday at 11:30 a.m.

This undated photo was taken inside Huber Motor, which was located in downtown Freeman for much of the 20th century, and appears on the website freemansdhistory.com. It is accompanies by a brief description of the business and identifies those pictured as follows: Don Mick, Harlan Dubs, Bill Lukens, Orville Huber, Lavern Dubs and Delmar Walter.

Here's a Friday look back at the original, 16-bed hospital in Freeman that was dedicated in 1952. Talk of a hospital being built in Freeman had been ongoing since the 1940s and its opening the following decade sparked major growth in local health care. Multiple expansions took place in the years and decades that followed 1952, and assisted living became part of the Freeman Community Hospital and Nursing Home's (FCHNH) system in the 1990s. FCHNH was renamed Freeman Regional Health Services in the early part of the 2000s.

This is what work on Main Street in Freeman looked like almost 100 years as men are shown setting light polls in this 1914 photo.

This photo of United State Representative Dusty Johnson working the beer tent alongside members of the Menno Fire Department is included in this week's coverage of the 2022 South Dakota Chislic Festival. Readers will find a recap and photos in the Aug. 4 edition of The Courier available online later today and in print tomorrow. Watch for even more coverage of this year's festival in a multimedia presentation being put together that will be available on this website next week.

What had been an abandoned elevator in disrepair was reduced to a pile of rubble Monday afternoon after Kelly Knodel and Knodel Contractors took down the structure that has been known as Shanard's Elevator since at least 1914. Actually, the Shanard's operation was established in the late 1800s when George H. Shanard entered the grain-handling business in Yankton before quickly expanding across Eastern South Dakota.