Q&A with Kip Crouch

I'm originally from Texas, so I think I have a "can-do" attitude. That's what I take from Texas: nothing that can't be done. I've worked in independent schools for 35 years and it's been an awesome journey. I went to college in Pennsylvania where I played field hockey and lacrosse. After briefly working for my dad in business, I went back to school and got my first master's in sports management. Then, I started teaching and coaching and eventually became a dean of students and then an athletic director. I was able to follow my dream: what I always wanted to do was be an athletic director. 

I was first hired to coach at my alma mater, The Hockaday School, in Dallas. It was a cool experience to be there on the other side. They hired me part-time to be the lifeguard for the pool and to help as kind of a sub-teacher, but I also coached some field hockey, soccer, and softball. Then, I got my first teaching job at a school in Houston where I coached volleyball, soccer, and softball. Eventually the field hockey position came open, so I was able to shift into that and get back to my favorite game. After a few more teaching positions, I was able to live out my dream as an athletic director at a girls school in Ohio and a coed school in Florida. Then my life brought me here­ it's been a great journey. I've had a lot of fun and I'm very fortunate because I've been able to do what I wanted to do. 

I think in any independent school the athletic program is really important to round out the experience for kids. Parents send their kids to independent schools for a whole host of reasons. They send their kids to Lab for the educational benefit, but it's the athletics and arts experience that complete the experience and can either keep kids here or drive them away. Athletics is not only important for their personal development and enjoyment, but can offer a compelling reason for them to be at Lab and engage with all the school has to offer. 

I would love for us to be able to have a lacrosse program again. My gauge for that is really soccer because the same kind of kids that play soccer also play lacrosse; you develop a field sense and strategies on how to create space which are skills you need in both sports. There is a lot of crossover, so at the point at which we can have a girls' soccer program and a boys' soccer program instead of a co-ed, I think we would have numbers enough to support a girls' lacrosse and a boys' lacrosse and I'd really like to see that happen. There's enough carryover from basketball strategy-wise that I think it would be an almost seamless transition for our kids and we could have a pretty strong program. 

Lacrosse is a great team sport because it gets you thinking outside of just 'how can I score?' into, 'how do I help my teammates score?' It's one of those games where you definitely need more than one really good player. 

I'd like for us to take the programs that we have and sort of move them to the next level. I want kids to better understand what commitment is and realize that what you put into practice and opportunities with coaches, you get back five-fold when you play in a competition. Take tennis for example, you have to work on ground strokes in order to win points off ground strokes. You have to learn all of the pieces and parts of the game in order to play the game. From there, you can learn to compete.

I think our basketball program is a perfect example. Kids understand the importance of competing, but they don't necessarily always understand what goes into learning how to compete. I want our students to understand the commitment to sports and then fill in the gaps of what it takes to compete. What is competition really like and what's it all about? What do I as an athlete need to put into it in order to get the gains from it? What other kinds of benefits do athletics provide for our students at Lab and later in life? 

I really think that athletics gives kids an opportunity to sort of lose themselves in a team environment. Even in individual sports, you do things with a team and as a team. During the school day, the focus can be very individualized as students think about their own schedules. "I need to work on this, I need to work on that" and so on. In sports, you have to create something where these individuals are working together. Like a group project in class, it's just an extra challenge and gives them extra strategies to help them cope later in life. 

The teamwork, the sticking to something and seeing it through to the end, even if it's uncomfortable, is key. Figuring out the difference between discomfort and pain is important because it's during the discomfort 
that the growth happens. You can go through practice and be uncomfortable at the end of it because you've just worked your rear end off, but you're not in pain, you're just uncomfortable. So, you've got to recognize the discomfort and push through it in order to get the benefits from it.