SIOUX FALLS — Mike Schouten secured win No. 500.

The longtime Sioux Falls Christian boys basketball coach recently notched his 500th career boys basketball win against Marshall (Minnesota) on Feb. 24.

“It’s a nice accomplishment but it takes good players to be able to reach a milestone like that and I’ve been blessed with good players over the years,” Schouten said. “It may be a milestone for me but it’s more of a milestone for my players and my former players. It’s because of them that I was able to get that amount.”

Schouten has coached at SFC for the past 26 seasons, including one season of girls as well. He says the most important factor in his coaching success has always been “having good players.”

“We have a pretty good basketball tradition at SFC and it’s been there for a long time so a lot of our kids have grown up loving to play the game of basketball,” Schouten said. “They see the older kids or brothers playing and they want to be a part of that. It really just comes down to having good players, and I’ve also been blessed with good assistant coaches. When you have that, you’re going to have a lot of success.”

Schouten became the 14th boys basketball head coach in South Dakota history to reach the 500-win mark, joining Larry Luitjens, Gary Munsen, Paul Raasch, Burnell Glanzer, Gayle Hoover, Mike Tuschen, Frank Cutler, Dave Hollenbeck, Jim Schlekeway, Bill Marquardt, Doug Groth, Silas Blaine and Bill Vincent.

He has guided the Chargers to 11 Class A state tournaments, including a streak of 10 consecutive appearances dating back to 2016, winning two consolation championships, two third-place finishes, two runners-up and two state titles.

A Sioux Center, Iowa native, Schouten got his coaching start at Lake Worth Christian in Lake Worth, Florida. He became an assistant coach for two seasons before becoming head boys basketball coach for two more years.

After four years in Florida, Schouten returned home to work as an admissions counselor for Dordt College in his hometown.

“The life of a college admissions counselor is on the road a lot and when I got married and had a family, life on the road a lot isn’t probably a good thing and I just missed teaching and coaching,” Schouten said. “I was out of it for two years and I just really missed it a lot.”

Schouten found a job opening in Manhattan, Montana, and got back into coaching for four more seasons at Manhattan Christian School before he and his wife, Maria, decided they wanted to be closer to home.

“We had our first child born out there and kind of had the tug of coming back home,” Schouten said. “My wife is from Chandler, Minnesota, which is also just an hour from Sioux Falls so both sets of family were around Sioux Falls so we just felt that tug to come back.”
He has since been at SFC for the past 26 years and has felt the immense support from the community since he arrived.

“They’ve been great, really welcoming, it’s been a really good fit for a family and for me as a teacher and coach here,” Schouten said. “We’ve got a great community of teachers here. Several teachers who I’ve been here with for 25 or 30 years so we’ve all just enjoyed it so much, we’ve stuck around and it’s nice to be close to home, but Sioux Falls Christian is a special place. We’ve just never had any desire to leave.”

In his over three decades of coaching boys basketball, Schouten says the biggest thing he’s learned is to continue having the desire to learn and grow.

“You don’t know everything, so you still have that desire to continue to learn and to get better at what you’re doing,” Schouten said. “Just building relationships with the kids is so cool. I’ve had some great kids, great players over the years. Just being able to get together with the guys at practice and at games has been a ton of fun.”

But he hopes to make a larger impact on his players and students than just learning the game of basketball.

“Basketball is second here at SFC,” Schouten said. “We want to develop christian young men and have some kind of influence or impact on their lives in their spiritual walk mainly and hopefully teach them the game of basketball and what it means to be a part of a team, what hard work produces for you.”

Schouten hasn’t decided when he’ll step away from coaching yet, but says he still enjoys the highs and lows that come with the job.

“Coaching is still fun, I still enjoy it a lot and so I’ll see how long I keep going,” Schouten said. “We’ll just take it one game at a time from here.”