MILLER — During the winter season, Dustin and Kristie Lanke’s lives are shaped by basketball and family.

The husband and wife are head basketball coaches for the Miller Rustlers, with Dustin leading the boys and Kristie coaching the girls. They’re also parents of two sons — Presten (4) and Dane (1).

As a result, the couple’s winters are spent coaching the Rustlers, raising their sons, and bouncing from gym to gym — and they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We have a dynamic that nobody really does, and our life just revolves around our boys and basketball,” Kristie, 30, said. “That’s how it is. I have always dreamt of that when I was younger, and now that we have it, we are truly living the dream.”

Dustin, Miller’s athletic director and a physical education teacher, is in his second season coaching the Rustlers, while Kristie is in her first. The basketball coaching duties have strengthened their marriage and kept their winter nights busy at the gym.

“We get to spend a lot of time together,” Dustin, 31, said. “Let’s just say that, bus trips and when we are practicing at the same time and our kids are going back and forth between gyms. We definitely get to see each other a lot. It’s fun.” 

Miller girls basketball coach Kristie Lanke shouts instructions against Wagner on Jan. 20 in Wagner. (Rodney Haas / 605 Sports)

The couple met while attending Black Hills State University in Spearfish, where they both studied physical education. They married in 2018 and later moved to Dustin’s hometown of Broadus, Montana, where they started their coaching careers. 

They were assistant coaches for three years for the boys basketball team, before Dustin took over as the head coach. Kristie was the Hawks’ head girls basketball coach for one season. 

In their final season in Broadus, both the boys and girls Hawk basketball teams won their district championships — marking the first time in school history that both teams claimed the title in the same season.

At Broadus, the couple worked alongside veteran coach Mike Richards, and Kristie said his guidance was invaluable to them.

“He helped me become the coach that I wanted to be and then I took over that program that last year we were there. I had four girls my first day of practice, I ended up getting ninth once I brought up eighth graders,” said Kristie, a Timber Lake native. “I just said ‘Hey, this is how we are going to play basketball, if you are in, you are in,’ and we won a district championship, fought hard at divisionals and it was obviously the best first year of basketball I could have dreamt of.”

In 2024, Dustin accepted the athletic director position in Miller, and their coaching careers carried on in South Dakota — six hours from Dustin’s hometown.  

“Basketball is a little different down here,” Dustin said. “In Montana, we play Friday, Saturday. You get all week of practice, and we play Friday, Saturday. Here it’s Tuesday, Thursday, sometimes Saturday. A lot more during the week. A lot more pre-game practices. A lot more games. I feel like it’s a little more of a grind here, as far as basketball goes.” 

Miller boys basketball coach Dustin Lanke watches the action against Wagner on Jan. 20 in Wagner. (Rodney Haas / 605 Sports)

For the Lankes, the basketball grind never stops from December through March. Between 20 regular-season games for both the boys and girls teams, several JV and C contests, and multiple doubleheaders, it’s basketball all the time.

“Some days there are six games in a day and our boys are sitting through six games of basketball,” Kristie said. “It’s crazy. We switch on and off. We have great girls that help us. We’ve created a small village here and that’s the best we could have asked for. Insane, hectic, is the best way I would describe our game days.”

The two coaches are also teammates. They’re in constant communication about basketball-related matters, and their two rugrats. 

“There’s a lot of communication that has to take place in order to make things work and it takes a village and we get a lot of help from the community, as far as watching our kids and we take turns,” Dustin said. “JV game is going on, I will watch the kids, she’s got the JV game, I will watch the kids — vice versa. There’s a lot of communication that has to take place in order to make this thing work and it’s not always perfect. We definitely live a different life than a lot of other couples.”

A life that revolves around basketball in the winter. At home, conversations often drift to hoops, with ideas constantly being bounced back and forth.

“During basketball season I don't know if we have a conversation outside of basketball,” Kristie said. “We are up until midnight watching game film every night talking basketball. It’s constant. It never ends.”