Coupeville Sports

Kirsty Croghan

Kirsty Sue is coming home.

Former Coupeville High School volleyball star (and Videoville clerk extraordinaire) Kirsty Croghan has been hired as the new volleyball coach for the Wolves. Croghan, who will be joined by new assistant coach Breanne Graham, replaces Toni Crebbin, who retired after 20 seasons at CHS.

Croghan, a 2006 Coupeville grad, has been an assistant in La Conner, helping with a very successful program there.

When I heard that Kirsty had applied for the position, I wrote a piece that I didn’t run. It would have been a public plea to have her hired, but, being smarter than I am, Ms. Croghan asked me to hold off and let the process play out naturally.

Now that CHS Athletic Director Lori Stolee has made the hire of the year, I’m going to run that original piece:

This is a rare moment in time.

Coupeville High School stands at a crossroads. Longtime volleyball guru Toni Crebbin called it an (early) day, so she could watch her young daughters grow up and be there for them as they play sports, play piano and just play.

As much as we will miss Crebbin — and we will, as she was one of the best coaches I have worked with in 23 years of covering sports on-and-off on Whidbey Island — the reality is, she isn’t coming back, but Wolf volleyball rolls on.

The program is in a good place. Crebbin never succumbed to the idea that Coupeville couldn’t compete, just because it was the smallest of three 1A schools in a league that also houses five 2A schools. Her teams carried her fighting spirit onto the floor every night.

Eight of the 11 girls on this year’s varsity can return next year. Hailey Hammer and Madeline Strasburg have two years left, while Breeanna Messner, Amanda Fabrizi, Sydney Aparicio, Megan Oakes, Haley Sherman and Allie Hanigan form the core of a rock-solid group that will be seniors next season.

There is talent at the JV level, talent at the middle school level, talent all around.

And now there is a chance. A chance to bring in a coach who could fire this program through the roof.

Her name is Kirsty Croghan, CHS class of 2006, and she should be the next head volleyball coach at Coupeville High School.

Listen, I don’t conduct the interviews. I don’t make the hires. I don’t know who else has applied or will apply before the search wraps early in 2013.

Hey, maybe Andy Banachowski, the winningest coach in Division 1 womens’ college volleyball history when he retired from UCLA in 2010, will up and move to Whidbey Island on a whim and decide he wants a new challenge.

Could happen. Won’t. But could.

But, barring a Banachowski miracle, Ms. Croghan is the one.

She is everything CHS needs. A former star player as a Wolf, a link to the rightly-revered Crebbin, a coach who has honed her skills as an assistant in the top-level volleyball program at La Conner.

At 25, she is old enough to be the voice of authority and young enough to step onto the court and show her team the way you play the game.

She is living proof to the players of today of what you can accomplish when you come out of Coupeville. She excelled on The Rock, she went away and excelled and now is the time to welcome her back home.

I’m not going to pretend I am impartial here. I am not.

I covered Kirsty when she played volleyball and, more importantly, we worked together at Videoville. From my 12 years spent behind the video counter as manager, Kirsty Sue remains on a very short list of my absolute favorite people.

She is exactly what the Wolves need right now. Barring a change of heart from Crebbin … and she’s saying no … or a Banachowski surprise … and he’s saying, please stop writing me, I’m getting a restraining order … Croghan is our past, our present and our future all mixed together in one dynamic young woman.

Hiring her would energize the base. Would inspire Wolf Nation. Would be a move you look back on 20 years later and say, “Why did we even debate this?”

I am calling on every one of my readers to reach out to CHS Athletic Director Lori Stolee (who likes to monitor this blog with a side of Alka-Seltzer) and let her know — WE WANT KIRSTY!!

Write her. Call her. Email her. Talk to her next time you run into her at a game (she’s at all of them).

This is a rare moment in time. It’s Kirsty Sue time!

Wednesday, the dream came true.