“While I was in China, I helped coach a 7th-grade girls basketball team,” Morlock said. “It was a really interesting experience and a really interesting level of basketball. In America, most girls start playing around the 3rd-grade, some start sooner. However, this was the first time playing for these 7th-grade girls. During the first day of practice, I tried running the Mikan drill and then I realized we didn’t even know how to dribble. It really was a good experience in showing me the importance of sports.”
Coaching Upon returning to the U.S., Morlock continued to coach, transitioning to a role with the 9th-grade boys squad in Stewartville—a position she spent seven years s at, only leaving to spend one year coaching JV boys before returning to the freshman squad and eventually stepping aside in 2021. But she hasn’t really stepped aside, you can find Morlock coaching her youngest son’s 7th-grade travel team. “This is the first year in probably over 20 years that I haven’t coached in the school,” Morlock said. “I’ve been coaching for a long time. I don’t miss the time commitment. But I’ve never coached my youngest, so it’s been fun to coach him. And we’ve actually gotten along! That’s not always the case when you coach your own kids, so it has been good!” She also helps substitute teach at schools in the area, which helps feed her passion for bettering the youth. “It’s so important,” Morlock said. “When I think back to North Dakota State, where we were obviously ultrasuccessful, I don’t think I could tell you
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hardly anything about the three national championship games we played in. But I could tell you a lot about all of the speeches coach gave and the memories I made with my teammates during practices and bus rides and all of the off-the-court stuff. That’s important for these young kids to have as well.”
The Farm Aside from the brief stint in China, the Morlock/Tschetter clan has spent nearly their entire time as a family
living on a farm owned by Morlock’s parents since the early 90’s. “Back in 2003, the people that were renting the farmhouse were moving out and we decided to move in and we’ve been there ever since (aside from the stint in China).” The farm is small, a little over 160 acres, and the growing and cattle raising operations are small as well. However, the impact it has had on Morlock’s family has been anything but.