Lonnie Morken first stepped on to a volleyball court as Mabel-Canton's head coach 33 years ago. He had no experience playing volleyball in youth sports, high school or in college, but this season, he passed 900 career wins.
In 2025, Morken earned win number 885 to become second all-time in Minnesota history. He trails former Stewartville head coach John Dzubay, who has 1,039 wins after 47 years of coaching.
This season, the Cougars are 19-7-1 and are one spot outside the top-10 in the latest MNVBCA Coaches Poll - Class A.
High School On SI recently spoke with Morken about his nontraditional beginnings as a coach, how high school volleyball and youth sports have changed, how he continues to improve as a coach, and his most memorable wins and losses. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
High School On SI: You're not far from the Section 1A playoffs. How are you feeling about your team in the final weeks of the regular season?
Lonnie Morken: In the 33 years, it's the youngest team I've ever coached, and it's the smallest team I've ever coached. And so, we've been searching all year for consistency. We've been searching all year for leaders to step up. We've graduated some extremely great leaders the last three, four years, and so it's been a season where we've tried a lot of different things. We're 19-7 right now, and hence we still are in a position to win the conference championship for the 29th straight year and hopefully make a deep playoff run.
HS On SI: You've been to the state tournament four times, most recently in 2023. Is that always the goal entering a season? Or do you set goals season-by-season?
LM: Well, we talk a lot about winning the conference championship first. Beyond that, we just kind of want to say, ‘Let's peak come playoff time.’ And so if it leads to a state berth, great. If not, we just want to be playing our best. We want to keep the bar extremely high for Mabel-Canton volleyball.
HS On SI: I'm interested in how your volleyball career began. It began at Spring Grove, where you're an alum, correct?
LM: Yep, I'm from Spring Grove.
I was in our high school gym stretching before football practice my junior year, and the volleyball coach came in and asked if any of us boys wanted to line judge any home games, and so a buddy and I looked at each other and we said, ‘Yeah, let's let's do it.’ And so that kind of started my volleyball journey.
I played football, baseball, basketball, and I started picking up volleyball a little bit in college, like in intramurals, and I line judged volleyball games at Luther College as well, and so that really got me even more interested in the sport.
HS On SI: So because you didn’t play volleyball in youth or high school sports, what were those early coaching days like when you were trying to coach yourself and also coach others?
LM: The first thing I tell younger coaches is, you have to find mentors. You have to find people who are willing to answer questions, and you have to be willing to just work and do things that other coaches don't want to do and don't enjoy, and you just have to embrace the grind. And so, I was really fortunate to latch on to Walt Weaver. He was the head coach at Apple Valley at the time. And then [Stewartville’s] John Dzubay, who I'm second on the all-time wins list to. I started helping out at camps that Walt Weaver ran.
I watched anything I could. AVP sand volleyball was on Saturday and Sunday afternoons sometimes on NBC, and then I would check out books in the library, and you want to continue trying to get better, and here I am at 55 years old. I still am trying to get better, and every season I doubt myself that I'm good enough for the kids, and I want to make sure that it's a fresh experience for the girls.
HS On SI: Do you think that doubt comes from your non-traditional background, or do you think that's a feeling that a lot of coaches feel and it's the pressure of coaching?
LM: I think it's a combination of both. I know I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. I know my assistant coaches and other people that have been around me feel that I'm maybe a little bit of a control freak. But yeah, a lot of coaches are that way, and it's not an easy profession. It's super rewarding, but not financially, of course.
When you're working with kids and you start with them, and I teach elementary PE, so I get to see kids from pre-K all the way through, and when you see the moment where they're finally able to understand how to serve overhand or how to pass the ball to a target without shanking it, it's so rewarding, and it's just so exciting. And being part of a small community is so rewarding as well because you know everybody knows you and everybody knows the volleyball program, and the little girls are growing up trying to be Mabel-Canton volleyball players.
HS On SI: How do you improve each year as a coach?
LM: I just think you need to just completely stay exposed to the sport, whether you're watching things on Instagram or YouTube. There seems to be a constant evolution of the sport, and there's things that are changing, and there's things now that are coming back that were popular 30 years ago, and so I think you have to keep challenging yourself to find drills, and you also have to be realistic about what your talent is.
There's a fine line between finding challenging drills and drills that are too challenging because then the frustration level is going to set in and then the kids aren't going to grow. As a coach, the worst thing you can do, I think, is just roll the balls out and do what's worked for you in past years because your team is constantly changing and and your talent level is constantly changing and your height and your experience.
I keep all of our practice plans from all the past years, and I compare where we're at week by week. There'll be some drills that we did five, six years ago that I've forgotten about, and they pique my interest again, and I'll bring something back, but recycle it a little bit, change it just a little bit, and try and keep it fresh for the kids.
HS On SI: How has the sport itself changed in your 33 years of coaching?
LM: Well, it's crazy because we now have rally scoring, and we have a libero. You still have to pass and serve better than your opponent. You still have to be able to terminate volleyballs, but the individual rules have really changed.
We try to keep the ball off the ground a little bit longer than the other team, and if we get an opportunity to terminate a ball, we take it. If not, we just keep balls in balance, and hopefully, if we're out of system and we're not able to terminate balls, we're able to play defense long enough for the other team to make a mistake. And so that kind of has been our philosophy for the last 30 years, and with all these rule changes in volleyball, that still is the way it works here at Mabel-Canton.
Volleyball was kind of seen as a second level sport because you had so many men that had coached other sports that were coaching basketball because they coached boys basketball, or they were coaching softball because they had grown grown up coaching baseball, and so a lot of times you had majority of female coaches that were coaching volleyball that had played it, but weren't necessarily your ‘coach’, whereas now the opportunities for young women to coach in volleyball between club and other experiences are making them better coaches.
HS On SI: Youth sports have changed a lot for the average family across the country. It's become expensive for many families. Many kids play year round or they specialize at a young age. Is that a trend that you've dealt with at all at Mabel-Canton?
LM: You know, a little bit. Our kids stay together for the club season, so that's part of the reason our high school team has been so strong over the past few years. So our kids in the offseason stay together and play. Our kids are multi-sport athletes. You know, they play two and three sports, and that's just kind of the way a small school is. We also live in the middle of nowhere, so it's very hard for our kids to access clubs.
We've had kids that have been made to play volleyball by their parents, and any time you make a kid play something, it's not a good experience. The kid doesn't want to be there. The teammates don't want to be there. The coaches don't want them there, and it's just a miserable experience. So, that 1970s, 1980s mentality is, ‘You have to play football. You have to play volleyball. You have to.’ Well, no, not really. If a kid wants to be there, great. If they don't want to be there, it's going to be a negative experience.
HS On SI: You’re second all-time in career wins. You just passed 900 career wins. Do you keep track of it at all in your head, or does somebody come tell you, "Hey, you know, this is 900 today.”
LM: My assistant coach was kind of following along, and it happened at a weekend tournament, and we've been blessed with some phenomenal assistant coaches.
I think there's a lot of people that are on board and they're joking about getting to 1,000 and passing John Dzubay. If I retire and I don't get to 1,000 wins or I don't pass Dzubay, that's the way it goes. I'm not gonna feel my coaching career has been a disappointment because I didn't get to 1,000 wins. I'm just trying to make an impact on kids' lives and grow the sport and hopefully build the females' self-esteem that have played for us.
HS On SI: Is there a single win that means the most to you?
LM: Going to state in 2022 with two of my daughters on the team was pretty special. My one daughter Sophie was a senior on the team, and my youngest daughter Sahara was a sophomore on the team, and so that really is the pinnacle.
I know I told my wife I certainly could have retired after that season, and I would have just been happy because to see the joy on their faces and their friends' faces because they were playing with their friends is just irreplaceable. And I don't know if there'll be anything that will duplicate that.
You know, even if at some point we win a state championship, I don't know if it’ll ever duplicate the feeling of doing that with your family, and so that probably is a memory that stands out more than any.
We defeated Fillmore Central my first game ever back in 1994, and so I remember that first win. And there's so many highlights that do stand out where we've upset teams at tournaments and and we've reverse swept teams where we were just down and our kids just kept plugging and kept working hard.
HS On SI: Unfortunately, one team also has to lose. Are there any losses that still bother you?
LM: Oh yeah, certainly 2024. We were preseason number one in the state, and we ended up losing to Fillmore Central in the section finals, and they were tall and athletic, and they played amazing volleyball, and that defeat was as crushing as I've ever had one.
Our kids had gone to state for two straight years, and we had a large group of seniors that year that were really geared up, hoping to make a run at a state title that year, and we just weren't able to do it. And it took a really long time to get over that. And you could say that it still lingers a little bit, but that's the way life is.
Sports kind of parallels the success and the failures that you're going to have in life, and you got to find a way to get up the next day, and you got to find a way to move on to the next sport and the next season.
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