National champs: How Kairos Elite became a force in the sport of volleyball

It was the biggest volleyball event in the world.

This June’s Amateur Athletic Union, or AAU volleyball tournament, brought more than 56,000 participants and 3,445 teams to Orlando to compete in the annual junior national volleyball championships.

When it was all over, the coaches of the Avera Sports Kairos Elite volleyball program jumped into the pool — for good reason.

Their program was leaving Florida with four national championships, one runner-up team and 17 AAU All-American athletes.

It’s appropriate the group literally would make a splash to cap off the trip, which marked the culmination of nearly a decade of work. In that time, Kairos has built a powerhouse volleyball program in a state that didn’t have a national presence in the sport or as much of a pathway for athletes who wanted to play in college. That was especially true for high school seniors before they entered college.

“The very first year in 2012 we only had an 18’s team,” founder and club director Mitch Lunning said.

“The most important piece of all of this and the reason we started this 18’s team was because all of the clubs in the area were catering to the high school kids that would be coming back to their school.”

Forming a program

Lunning, has always been around the sport.

“I played a lot of intramurals and tournaments growing up and in high school,” he said. “My mom was a high school coach for a couple years, and my wife played volleyball at Augustana.”

Lunning, however, did not start off his career as a volleyball coach. 

“After college, I was working as a financial adviser and at what used to be called Sioux Empire Fitness,” he said. “I spent three years as an adviser and was coaching volleyball as a part-time job on the side at Sioux Empire Fitness as well. I realized that I kept getting pulled farther and farther towards coaching and that it was my passion, so I formed Kairos in 2012.”

In 2014, Lunning stopped working as an adviser to become a full-time coach, following Kairos’ merger with Avera Sports. 

“The communication with Avera started because we were looking for gym space,” Lunning said. “We were searching out various locations because we were trying to grow, and I had a conversation with Jason Askew at the Avera dome about renting space.”

From that conversation, a move toward becoming part of Avera took shape. The program now is based out of the new Avera Human Performance Center in southwest Sioux Falls, which has seven Tarflex volleyball courts — the same ones used in the Olympic games. 

“We operate out of the Avera Human Performance Center; we have a seven volleyball court space there,” he said. “We have athletes from every direction participating in our program from four different states (South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska). We have quite a few athletes that travel one to 1.5 hours, and some that travel even further. We would love to reach more small-town athletes and give them more opportunities.”

“One of the things that we try to do is compete on the national level against the really big clubs from larger cities,” he said. “We are obviously at a little bit of a disadvantage there being that we only have 200,000 people in the city. There are only so many volleyball players in our area.”

As Kairos continues to grow, its training model will continue to evolve.

“We will continue to improve and make our training model better each year,” Lunning said. “We continue to learn and are constantly tweaking our model.”

The national championship

In Orlando, the Kairos teams competed against the nation’s best and logged an overall record of 125-20 on their way to multiple national titles. Eight Kairos teams finished in the top 10 of their division.

“We made the decision early on that we can’t rely on having good volleyball players come to us,” he said. “We had to create this system where kids are training with us from a young age all the way through. Our success is going to be based solely on how good our training model is.”

Lunning believes that one of the reasons why this year was so successful was because Kairos saw its first senior class play — the ones who have been with the program since they were 11 years old. 

“My wife runs our youth academy, so she is working with kids pre-K through fourth grade, and from there, they are getting into our teams from fifth grade all the way up to 12th grade,” he said. “Our training model is set up for kids to come all the way through our program.”

This was the first year that Kairos had a team take a national championship title in the premier division at AAU Nationals. 

“This year, we sent twelve teams to Florida for nationals,” Lunning said. “Our youngest team was 13 and our oldest teams were 18. We had four national championships, one runner-up and then we had two fifth-place titles, which means we lost in the quarters. We also had 17 kids named AAU All-Americans.”

Bergen Reilly, AAU 16 premier All-American and MVP and rising junior at O’Gorman High School, has been playing for Kairos since she was 9. She attributed Kairos’ success to its coaches.

“What makes the Kairos program stand out is the coaching,” she said. “The coaches are completely dedicated to you, and their No. 1 focus is making everyone better. They have gone around the country to go to seminars to learn new techniques. They are very dedicated to making themselves better coaches so that we can be better players.”

Reilly was a player for 16 Adidas, Kairos’ No. 1 team in the 16-year-olds’ division. Her team was the first to take home a premier title for Kairos.

“O’Gorman won the state championship this year for volleyball, but winning on a national level is just a whole different thing,” Reilly said. “I dedicate our win to all of my teammates and our coaches. Every single one of us won it. It was all of us together.”

Success collegiately and professionally

This year, 17 of the 19 seniors from Kairos are going on to play college volleyball.

“Every single one of them that wanted to play in college is going on to play,” Lunning said.

“Kairos was very helpful in the recruiting process, and they definitely do a good job making sure each athlete is given every opportunity possible,” said Grace Bengford, Kairos senior and St. Thomas University commit. “It is definitely a process different to each individual athlete, but the club does all they can to guide and help you to where you want to be. They definitely prepare their athletes well for the next level.”

Bengford has been playing volleyball since she was 10 years old and has been playing with Kairos since she was 12. 

“Playing for Kairos was special to me,” she said. “It was definitely a big commitment, but the coaches and girls always pushed me to be a better player and person. I formed relationships with teammates that I will have forever, and that is what is most special to me. It was always fun being around people with the same goals as me, and that inspired me each day.”

In addition to sending athletes to play in college every year, Kairos also has had a player go on to play professionally. Taryn Kloth, O’Gorman and Kairos graduate, now plays professional sand volleyball.

“(Kloth) played indoor volleyball at Creighton in college, and after her four years there, she transferred to Louisiana State University (LSU) for her master’s and played beach,” Lunning said. “She picked it up super fast. Her and her partner went undefeated this past year at LSU and are now playing professional beach.”

Looking ahead

In addition to offering teams from 9U all the way up to 18U on the local, regional and national level, Kairos has programs running year round. 

“We have a full lineup of summer camps every year, we run a really big fifth through eighth grade volley — we have over 20 teams that participate in that — and private lessons year round,” he said.

Volleyball is the No. 1 girls sport in AAU by participation numbers, and it is the No. 2 overall, second only to boys basketball, Lunning said. 

“More and more girls are figuring out how exciting, fast-paced and athletic the sport of volleyball is,” he said. “It is also an extremely exciting sport as something big could happen at any point throughout the entire match. While some sports are most exciting only towards the end of the game, volleyball has excitement throughout the entire match.”

It’s growth that bodes well for the future, he added.

“We made the commitment about eight years ago to really do everything we can to research, learn and put together a long-term training model,” Lunning said. “We are finally starting to see the results from this process, and I believe we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. We still have much more room to improve and grow.”