Monday night, the question of who would be the new girls basketball coach at Warsaw Community High School was answered. It IS a big deal, and the man the school board approved to be the next Lady Tiger leader is a really interesting choice. I was not part of the search committee and I don’t have any inside information to share here, but I can tell you that my phone rang six times from coaches expressing interest in the Lady Tiger job. They wanted to know why Michelle Harter resigned. They wanted to know what was coming up the talent pipeline. They wanted to know if it was still an ‘elite job.’ That one, by the way, is such a silly question. Just the list of quality people who contacted me about it means it’s very much still an excellent coaching job to have. In the end, the committee recommended and the school board approved Lenny Krebs. Name sound familiar? It might. Krebs was a pretty good player for NAIA Hall of Fame coach Jim Kessler at Grace College back in the early 1990s. He was a small forward who was physically stronger than most players at that position with a powerful move to the basketball and a high-quality mid-range shooting game. But Lenny Krebs … the girls basketball coach at Warsaw? That may leave you a little underwhelmed. I get that. After 14 seasons as the head coach at Goshen, he leaves there with a record of 130-174. No sectional championships. No conference titles. So, you’re saying “how in the world did they choose THIS guy to coach the girls at Warsaw?” Let me help you with that. Consider that he accumulated 130 coaching wins at a school where there is no sense of tradition or success in girls basketball – I mean none whatsoever. The list of college basketball players that have come from Goshen is a pretty small list. Very few Goshen girls can list basketball as their best sport. And I would imagine that the budget for the Warsaw girls basketball program is significantly higher than it is in Goshen. Which is not to say anything degrading about Goshen’s girls basketball program. It’s just different here in Warsaw. Krebs’ Goshen team won 18 games a couple of seasons ago – a high water mark to be sure. They finished third in the NLC behind Northridge and Warsaw. If you follow girls basketball, you understand that team had some talent, but they were not a team you knew going in was going to win 18 games. They won by being gritty. They outworked their opponents. They dove on the floor to get loose balls. They drove you nuts. That’s what Warsaw is getting, and that’s what Warsaw needs right now. Krebs inherits a program that will watch all five of its starters and most its point production walk up to grab their diplomas next month. Their tallest returning player will be 5-foot-9, and their projected starting point guard missed all of last season with a torn ACL. So what does he bring to Warsaw? POSITIVE ENERGY: There is no girls basketball coach that I have covered in the last 10 years who is more positive than Krebs. He is an encourager. He is not afraid to tell kids he loves them, and when he says that he means it and the players believe him. Yes, he expects a lot from his players. But he also expects a lot more of himself and the Lady Tigers will see that and respect that. RESOLVE: Krebs was born with a significant hearing loss in both ears. He spent most of his younger years learning how to do all of the things most kids take for granted. He not only learned how to make do, he learned how to improvise. He would not stand for letting what some saw as a disability get in the way of what he was called to do. When he was in high school, opposing fans would tease him for his hearing loss. Krebs tells the story that when he would walk to the free throw line in hostile gymnasiums with students screaming and jumping to distract him, he simply reached above his ear and turned off his hearing aids. He shot every free throw in complete and total silence. A COMMUNICATOR: Ironic that the guy who grew up with 75 percent hearing loss in one ear and 40 percent in the other could be a good communicator, but he is exactly that. One of the most important traits in a leader is being a good communicator, and Warsaw has that in Krebs. INTEGRITY: Not that this has been missing at Warsaw, but it’s really important. A community ought to know that the guy who has been entrusted with something as big as Lady Tiger Basketball and the lives of the girls who are committed to it is a man of integrity. He’s a family man. He’s moving to Warsaw. He will become part of the community. He’ll be someone you see around town and he will remember your name. You will love him and you will find him really easy to cheer for. I don’t know what the next four years will look like. I am not guaranteeing how many wins there will be. There are way too many variables that play into that (see the results from the last two seasons). But this I DO know: Lenny Krebs is a person who understands what he just signed up for. He knows the history of Warsaw’s girls basketball program. He is humbled by the fact that he is now the caretaker of the girls basketball entity that 41 years ago showed us all what girls playing basketball could really be like. And it will be different. It will be the first time since Will Wienhorst was hired in the spring of 1986 that someone not connected to the school corporation has been hired to coach the girls basketball team. It’s time for Lenny Krebs to be heard.
