Halvorson the Hog: Slugger Left Home State for SEC Country

Cylie Halvorson wasn’t looking to leave. In fact, she was content and happy where she was.

A native of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Halvorson made a name for herself through her first three seasons of college softball, a number that includes 2020’s abbreviated showing. Playing at South Dakota State, a program located roughly an hour from her home town, Halvorson was the Summit League Player of the Year in 2021 and hit 40 home runs during her time as a Jackrabbit.

Halvorson’s work ethic is unmatched – or, at least, that’s what she strives for. Crediting a detailed and lengthy practice plan during her travel ball days for instilling “the grind” within her, she continued the same torrid pace once she got to college. Her teammates often joked that she lived at the team’s hitting facility.

Halvorson’s response?

“‘I mean, I guess you could say that’; I was there all the time,” she recalls with a laugh.

Even when her offensive numbers were solid, even when her production at the heart of her lineup was helping her team win ball game after ball game, Halvorson continually wanted to be better. Even one eon of improvement was still improvement.

“You have to outwork people,” Halvorson says now, reflecting. “Sometimes talent doesn’t take you as far if you don’t work with it, right? So really working hard every single day [is my goal].”

In the day and age of college sports that we live in, sure, there were plenty of opportunities for Halvorson to leave Brookings. An infield rock, a slugger at the plate? Who wouldn’t want her? But through her first three years, through 40 home runs and awards left and right, she stayed put.

Then, this summer, things changed. Longtime SDSU coach Krista Wood left Brookings to take the head coaching position at Creighton, much nearer her Midwestern home town. The Jackrabbits, coming off two of the most successful years in program history, were without a coach.

And Halvorson’s brain gears started turning.

By her nature, Halvorson isn’t your stereotypical transfer portal entrant – she prioritizes the value of loyalty and really only jumped into the portal after feeling a disconnect with her school’s handling of the initial coaching transition process. Once her name officially appeared in the portal, though, then came the emails. The direct messages. The texts. The phone calls.

A process that she describes as “crazy” also was more tame than the initial influx of interested parties might make it seem.

“It wasn’t as crazy as you might think, because I feel like I knew what I was looking for,” Halvorson says. “There’s more than just a name to a school and it gives you a lot to think about. I was able to dwindle [the list] down pretty easily. If I wasn’t interested, I emailed them back right away because I didn’t want to leave them hanging or waiting for a response, so I let them know if I was interested or not and just kind of ran it from there [on]… I do think it was easier than I thought it was going to be, just because you can openly communicate with people; it’s not like high school, where you can’t talk to anyone.”

Halvorson’s mid-year adventures didn’t just revolve around the portal; she was coaching a travel ball team throughout the summer, something that threw a bit of a wrench into things at times. The day that her name appeared in the portal? Halvorson was coaching her team on the field when those messages and emails started rolling in. A travel ball weekend might include a moment of saying hi to a college coach at the game or at another field nearby. She held off on most of her campus visits until her travel ball coaching season was done.

From the outset, there were two schools that Halvorson knew she would be interested in if they expressed interest in her. As it turns out, both did. One of those schools was the Arkansas Razorbacks. Careful to emphasize the positives she found in both schools, some of the program qualities most important to Halvorson were things that she also found at Arkansas.

“They value people, plus the relationships they have there,” Halvorson said. “You can go somewhere for the name, like that’s cool, but at the same time, are you going to enjoy the experience? I still want to love it no matter what I’m doing there, and I think that comes from the people [around you within a program].”

Relationships, the people around her, and the individuals that she surrounds herself with are important pieces; key cogs in the Cylie Halvorson wheel of life, you might say.

“A lot of me thrives off of people,” Halvorson says. “I wouldn’t be who I am without the people around me. I’m a family person and I love my family, and my teammates are my family too. When you can have those relationships with people, I think you can be a different person and grow. I think you can unlock something in yourself when other people believe in you and value you and want to have a relationship with you… I didn’t realize it until this year, but feeling loved by your teammates and your coaches is really important.”

So what makes this 5’8″ slugger tick? What drives her not just to do what she does, but to do it the way she does it? A brief moment of thought, just enough time to comprehend the question, is all it takes to find an answer.

“I want to be elite and the best at anything I do,” Halvorson said. “Talk to anyone who knows me and they know I love to compete and I like to be the best. And to do that, you have to do the small things, right? I’m going to get up in the morning and do what it takes to get me going. I’m going to lift every single day. I do softball almost every single day. I like to be good at whatever I’m doing and to do that, you have to put more work in than everyone else. That’s my mindset – I want to be great in everything and you have to work for that.”

“A grinder.”

“Consistent.”

“Always giving her best.”

Words that others use to describe Halvorson; words that she leans on, that she strives to prove accurate in their description. At Arkansas, Halvorson joins a twice-defending SEC champion program as one of three transfers on this year’s roster. She is immediately a veteran presence on a generally-young roster, but she’s also the one who some teams might put a question mark beside on the lineup card.

She’s an unknown – for now. If history is any indication, that status could change very sharply, very quickly.