Lonnie Morris jokes that he is a football coach who happens to coach a college wrestling team — his focus is all about program-first. 

“Team. Family. We,” Morris said, rattling off the words that run to the core of his coaching beliefs. “I coach from a football lens.”

The approach is working. 

The longtime Barrington resident and 28-year leader of the Johnson and Wales University wrestling team was named the NCAA Division III Region I Wrestling Coach of the Year. 

His team, which he built from a roster of four diehards when he first arrived in 1997, has grown into a national power. The Wildcats won the NCAA Division III Wrestling Championship this year, tying Wartburg College. 

Morris, his wrestlers, JWU alum and family members celebrated the title in front of a hometown crowd at the Amica Mutual Pavillion in Providence, which hosted nationals. 

Winning the national championship is no small feat. For the last three decades the NCAA Division III Wrestling Championship trophy has resided at either Wartburg College in Iowa or at Augsburg University in Minnesota. The last time a college not named Augsburg or Wartburg won the Division III title was in 1994 when Ithaca College captured the title. 

Morris believes a team-first focus played a key role in the Wildcats’  national championship, but preaching a team-first message in wrestling is not always easy.

“It’s hard because a lot of these kids were the only good wrestlers on their high school team,” Morris said. 

“Wrestling breeds a lot of selfish people.”

Morris said he works hard to instill the value of the collective: Yes, winning individual matches in important, but pulling your weight for the team is vital. 

“It can be hard, in the middle of the year bumping up a kid” in a weight class to help the team score points, Morris said. 

That selflessness is ingrained in Morris. He grew up in Coventry and gravitated to sports. He starred on the football and wrestling teams, excelling under coaches who demanded much from their student-athletes. Morris thrived under the pressure. He was All-State. He was dominant.

Morris said coaching has changed dramatically from those days. He remembers the Coventry High School football team starting the season with 40 or so members. But practices were grueling and coaches were demanding, and over time the players disappeared, quitting the team for something, anything that was not as difficult. 

“We had 22 kids at the end of the year,” Morris said. “Our coach was ‘My way or the highway.’

“That way doesn’t work anymore. You have to pivot. You have to adapt.”

As a coach, Morris expects much from his team, but has also found success through connections. He works to make every season a special experience. During recent trips to away matches, Morris has taken the entire team to a dairy farm or to an NFL football game. 

The approach has proven extremely successful. 

Morris was recently named the all-time wins leader for active wrestling coaches. He has won dozens of conference titles, produced more than 50 All-Americans and six national champions. Morris has been named his conference coach of the year more than a half-dozen times and earned the title “NCAA Division III Region I Coach of the Year” this season. 

He has also earned praise from his wrestlers.

“Coach Morris is the best coach I’ve ever had; he cares more about you as a person than a wrestler,” said JWU wrestler Jake Ekerle in a recent press release. “He wants what’s best for you on the mat just as much as he does off the mat. I’d go through a brick wall for that guy and then some because I know he would do the same for me.”

Morris’s ability to connect with his team members may be tied to his own experiences as a wrestler. A talented grappler in high school, Morris attended Rhode Island College and shined on the Anchormen’s wrestling team — he was an NCAA Division III All-American, a two-time New England champion, and an All-New England honoree four times as a heavyweight from 1990 to 1994. He remains one of only four wrestlers with more than 100 wins in Rhode Island College history. 

Morris said he encourages he wrestlers to “win at everything” — sit in the front row of the class and pay attention, hold the door for others, work hard at practice, give a 100-percent effort in life. 

It is not just a message on a T-shirt or a banner on the wall. With Morris, it is a core belief. 

“It’s not about just winning matches,” Morris tells his team. “It’s about being a winner in life.”

The Johnson and Wales University Wrestling team is regularly ranked among the nation’s best in the classroom — more than 80 JWU wrestlers have earned academic All-America status, and in 2011, Morris’s team was national GPA champs.  

National championship

Johnson and Wales qualified seven wrestlers for the nationals and placed two on the podium this year. Morris is proud of the accomplishment, but is already looking ahead to the future. 

Morris said he has a number of hard-working talented wrestlers returning next year and has a very strong recruiting class coming in. 

“We’ve got unfinished business,” he said. “We’re going to have a great team next year. We could do it again.”