“I just hung on every word they said and they were just great people and great coaches,” Marquardt said. “That made me want to get into coaching.”

Fast forward 54 years, a few coaching stops and hundreds of players later, Marquardt has impacted student-athletes much like his high school coaches did to him. As a result, Marquardt joined an exclusive club on Tuesday, Feb. 27 in Freeman. 

Marquardt, the Centerville High School boys basketball, earned his 500th boys basketball coaching win over Freeman Academy/Marion in the Region 4B tourney. 

“It reminds me that I stuck with it a long time,” Marquardt said about the milestone. “I think I still have a passion for it, and mostly it’s longevity.”

The passion and longevity have pushed him past the 500-win barrier, becoming the 11th South Dakota boys basketball coach to reach the milestone. Marquardt joins Larry Luitjens, Gary Munsen, Burnell Glanzer, Gayle Hoover, Paul Raasch, Mike Tuschen, Frank Cutler, Jim Schlekeway, Doug Groth and Dave Hollenbeck in the 500-win club. 

“That’s pretty humbling, that’s for sure,” Marquardt said about joining the 500-win club. “Because they are all good ones. There’s I think three or four active ones ahead of me and a lot of guys that will be ahead of me before too long.”

Marquardt has had multiple coaching stops en route to the 500 boys basketball wins. A 1976 Northern State College graduate, Marquardt has been a head boys basketball coach at Warner, Bridgewater, Sioux Valley, Hanson, Colman-Egan, McCook Central/Montrose and Centerville. 

What has lit Marquardt’s coaching fire all these years?

“It’s just the whole planning and studying and watching film,” Marquardt said. “I enjoy that. Over the years it became my hobby. I used to hunt and I used to fish and I used to golf. Then my own two children got into the age where they wanted to do summer basketball and it kind of became a year-round thing for us.” 

Marquardt’s teams from Bridgewater, Hanson and McCook Central/Montrose played in five state tournaments, including a Class A championship (Hanson, 1986) and a Class B runner-up finish (Hanson, 1989). Hanson won 46 consecutive games during the 1985-86 and 1986-87 seasons. 

Marquardt was also a head football coach for nine years, compiling a 60-21 career record and led Bridgewater to the 1981 Class 9A state championship. He also was a head track coach for 20 years, leading Bridgewater’s boys to a fifth-place finish in 1980 and Colman-Egan’s girls to a runner-up finish in 2006.

Marquardt is one of three head coaches in South Dakota history to win state championships in boys basketball and football, joining Marv McCune (De Smet) and Kent Mueller (West Central). 

A social studies, language arts and physical education teacher, Marquardt retired from teaching in 2013. Marquardt still had a desire to coach, but his next opportunity was a little different.

He coached the Mount Vernon/Plankinton girls basketball team “for four really fun years,” and gained an appreciation for coaching girls. 

“I just stumbled into an awesome group of kids and just had a lot of fun,” Marquardt said. “Sometimes I think boys feel like they know everything and girls feel like they want to be taught everything and I really enjoyed the four years. We had good teams. So that made it a lot of fun, too. But really fun kids and a great situation.”

In four seasons at MVP, his teams went 71-23, placing fifth (2014) and third (2015) in the Class A tournament.

Marquardt didn’t coach boys for eight years, but took the Centerville position in 2021 when the school needed a head boys basketball coach. 

Marquardt has steered the Tornadoes to 36 wins and praised the current crew for turning the program’s tide. 

“They love the game and are really good kids,” Marquardt said. “There hasn’t been a lot of success at Centerville and I stumbled into a pretty good group. The culture of the program has been changed to where I think it’s going to be sustained now. There’s good young kids in the high school program. The junior high is in good hands and has good players. So I think Centerville is going to be on the map for quite a while.”

Marquardt and his wife, Laura, are both retired and live in Sioux Falls. The Marquardt’s two children — son, Chris and daughter, Dana — and their children also live in Sioux Falls. 

Marquardt isn’t sure how many more years he’ll coach, but instead will take it one season at a time. 

“It’s a grind and we compress so much into such a short time,” Marquardt said. “In South Dakota, our season is so short on the calendar and yet we still get a lot of games and practices in. I never say never. I never have, but this year a lot of days felt more like a job than a hobby. So I will reassess when the season is over. I don’t want to think about it. But it’s certainly one year at a time.”