Loretta Vogel has never looked at coaching as work or a job. She simply views it as what she does.
For 50 years, Vogel has elevated volleyball programs across several high schools and strived to make her athletes successful on and off the court. She has won three state championships and has helped two athletes become Gatorade National Volleyball Players of the Year.
Vogel’s coaching career started with girls’ basketball, softball and then volleyball when it became a sanctioned sport in Michigan.
Early on she advocated for equality for female athletes. She has also inspired her athletes and the next generation of coaches, including her son, Andrew Thompson, who is her assistant coach at Farmington Hills Mercy and recently wrapped up his first year as head coach of the new boys’ volleyball team at Birmingham Brother Rice – the same year boys’ volleyball became a sanctioned sport.
Vogel’s efforts to advance not only girls’ volleyball, but girls sports as whole in addition to her on-the-court accolades have made her the winner of the 2026 Detroit Free Press High School Sports Lifetime Achievement Award.
“I’m thrilled, and I find that it’s an honor that someone would recognize the time and the work that you put into something you enjoy doing in life,” Vogel said after learning about her newest accolade.
From college athlete to volleyball pioneer
Vogel began coaching at Manchester High School in 1976, when the Michigan High School Athletic Association first sponsored the sport and in the early years of Title IX. She coached softball and girls’ basketball, drawing from her experience as a basketball player at Adrian College.
But Volleyball quickly became her passion, as she learned the sport on the job.
“The dynamics of volleyball just brought me closer to the sport, and I think that’s what elevated me into the game,” Vogel said.
Coaching a new sport came with challenges.
Many girls showed interest in playing that first year at the Division 3 school, and Vogel said the school didn’t allow her to fine-tune her roster.
“They wouldn’t allow us to make cuts, so whoever came out for the team made that team because they felt women, at that time, were not capable or would hurt our feelings,” she said.
In total, 44 girls split between a varsity and junior varsity roster played in the inaugural season for Manchester.
She advocated for her team to get updated uniforms as often as boys’ teams and enough equipment – a challenge because athletic departments were forced to absorb the sudden new cost of adding a new sport.
“I feel like all the sudden, bam, it was you have to do it and it was like now,” Vogel said about schools adding volleyball that first year. “I don’t know if a lot of the schools could prepare financially in the athletic department.”
Vogel also fought for her athletes to have as much gym time as male students at the school.
Thompson, Vogel’s eldest of three sons, grew up in the gym in the late 80’s and early 90’s and watched his mother overcome these struggles. “Boys’ basketball and some of the boys’ sports were given first dibs on times and better courts, and volleyball got the short end of the stick, and she was not going to allow that to happen. It needed to be equal,” Thompson said.
Vogel credits school administration and the parents for supporting her efforts to break through those barriers.
“For every school that I’ve been involved with, the parents made it worth it,” Vogel said, thinking back to her first years as a coach. “They always kept saying, ‘What do you need Loretta?'”
Championship culture
Vogel coached for three years at Manchester before stops at Dominican High School in Detroit, Napoleon, L’Anse Creuse High School and Fraser along with college coaching roles at Macomb Community College and Wayne State.
Vogel landed at Mercy in 2009 and has three state championships with the program.
Jezz Mruzik, 23, first crossed paths with Vogel when she was a seventh grader attending Mercy’s volleyball camp. She planned to attend Ladywood High School in Livonia but chose Mercy after her experience at the camp. “I played with a lot of the girls there going there next year, so I just loved it from the beginning.”
Mruzik who had been playing volleyball since she was 10, said Vogel had a unique way of explaining the game.
“I remember her teaching passing like you’re doing a dance and attacking and serving like you’re holding a waitress platter,” Mruzik said. “It was just niche expressions that I had never heard of before, but they also, looking back, made so much sense.”
Campbell Flynn, a sophomore at Nebraska who played under Vogel from 2021-2025, said Vogel brings a lot of emotion to the game of volleyball.
“She gets very fiery, but it’s like a good fiery that helps her team,” Flynn said.
Vogel’s passion can dominate on the court, but she knows how to keep things fun. Every Halloween, the coach has a tradition to dress up and attempt to scare the players.
“She had a mask on, and she was in this black robe, and she was just standing there, really still, and then jumped out,” Mruzik said.
Flynn and Mruzik both won state and national Gatorade Player of the Year accolades and the Michigan Miss Volleyball Award in their senior years. The two players also helped Vogel earn her first two MHSAA Division 1 volleyball state championships.
Flynn’s 2023 championship win is one of her fondest high school memories.
“We were the underdogs and she just kept believing in us and we believed in ourselves and fought really hard in that last championship game,” she said.
The greatest thank you
Vogel has seen plenty changes throughout her 50-year career, but this year was another year of firsts for her.
The MHSAA introduced boys volleyball as the newest spring sport and saw 119 teams compete for the first state championship. Brother Rice, where Thompson is the head coach, is among those teams. Vogel is by her son’s side as an assistant coach.
The duo have had different relationships throughout the years – mother and son, coach and assistant – which Thompson said he is grateful to have shared with his mom.
“Hearing the stories of the fights that she’s had to put up for women − women in general, women’s athletics and the strides that they’ve made − it’s made a huge impact for me as I go through my life.”
Thompson said Vogel winning 2026 Detroit Free Press High School Sports Lifetime Achievement Award represents not just what she has done but who she is.
“From a volleyball perspective, she’s been doing this for 50 years, this is her identity.”
Vogel still keeps in touch with her players from the past. Former players who have started their own families want Vogel to coach their daughters, which she said is the highest honor of her career.
“I think it’s the most gratifying thank you that I think players could ever say to me,” Vogel said. “ … Some of them are coming to Mercy because there’s a connection in that regard, and that’s just a high level of thank you that they have enough confidence that we show them how to play the game, but I also feel it’s how we present ourselves to them as women and we should treat each other in life.”
Eric Guzmán covers youth sports culture at the Free Press as a corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support this work.
Contact Eric Guzmán: eguzman@freepress.com; 313-222-1850.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mercy volleyball coach wins Detroit Free Press Lifetime Achievement Award
Reporting by Eric Guzmán, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Eric Guzmán, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
