SULTAN — During his sophomore year of high school, Jim Kruckenberg remembers then-Sultan head coach Dwaine Hatch pointing up to a hill near the high school and mentioning how that would be a nice place to live.
Twenty-one years later, Kruckenberg has a house on that hill. And, now, Hatch’s old job.
Kruckenberg, a 1998 graduate of Sultan High School who has spent the past eight seasons as a defensive coach for Glacier Peak, was chosen to be the next football coach at his alma mater in the town where he lives and calls home.
“I look out my kitchen window and there’s the high school. It’s kind of cool,” Kruckenberg said. “It’s my hometown and I think I can do a lot of good here.”
Sultan athletic director Scott Sifferman liked the idea of bringing a former Turk home to coach a new generation of football players.
“He’s a guy who is a Sultan Turk, went and learned elsewhere, and came back home,” Sifferman said. “Community is important. A school like ours, community is really important. … He just blew us away with his passion for football and for working with kids.”
At a student, Kruckenberg focused more on baseball than football. He played at Skagit Valley College before injuries persuaded him to look into coaching. He was an assistant coach on the Snohomish baseball team’s state championship squad in 2008 and spent six years coaching offense for Monroe’s football team before switching to the defensive side with the Grizzlies.
Kruckenberg coached Glacier Peak in all eight seasons of program’s existence, most recently serving as the inside linebackers coach and defensive line assistant.
“I was more of a baseball kid. That was my true love,” Kruckenberg said. “I found my love of football when I was coaching in Monroe. Just all the details and technique of it and how it changes day to day. There’s nothing like going to a football game on a Friday night.”
Sifferman, who was Kruckenberg’s baseball coach at Sultan, said his former player always strived to improve, despite already being one of the best players on the team. He compared Kruckenberg to another Turk, current softball star Shelby Jeffries who has committed to Cal Poly.
“He’s always been a hard worker,” Sifferman said. “On the teams that I coached, he was not only one of the stronger players but also one of the harder workers.
“The best comparison I can make with current Sultan students is Shelby Jeffries. She plays softball at a level that’s well beyond everybody else. But that kid is the best teammate and is encouraging to everybody else. That’s what Jim was like.”
Kruckenberg wasn’t necessarily looking to become a head coach. But after the departure of former coach Ben Murphy, who had been at Sultan since 2010, Sifferman reached out to Kruckenberg.
The coach said it was a tough decision to leave Glacier Peak, which is going through a coaching change itself after longtime Grizzlies assistant Nick Bender was chosen to replace Rory Rosenbach, who left after eight seasons to become the head coach at Union High School in Vancouver.
“It was extremely tough to leave Glacier Peak,” Kruckenberg said. “We built that from ground zero. The coaching staff is like a brotherhood. I’m leaving my actual brother behind. We’ve always coached together.”
Count Rosenbach among those excited to see Kruckenberg get a chance at being a head coach at Sultan.
“I’m so happy for Kruck,” Rosenbach said. “It’s such a cool deal for him to go back to where he graduated from. He’s been with me for eight years, since the beginning, and was always a tremendous coach on the field football-wise. But in the last few years, he developed so much growth and started to understand the big picture of it to where he’s as ready as you can be to be a head coach.”
“I’m really excited for Sultan because I think they are going to have a chance to be really successful with Jimmy,” Rosenbach continued. “It’s a place that is really hungry for some success in some of its sports programs, especially with the boys, and I think he’s a guy that can bring that to them.”
Sifferman said that the Sultan football players have immediately taken to Kruckenberg. His goals for his new coach’s first season revolve mostly around expanding the football program’s depth. Last season, Sultan had to cancel a few junior varsity games due to having not enough eligible players.
“We’re trying to get depth,” Sifferman said. “We had to cancel quite a few JV games because if we had a lot of varsity injuries for a Friday night game we didn’t have enough kids to play in a JV game on Monday. Certainly we want to see more participation and I’m confident we’re going to see that.”
Like Hatch, a Wing-T guru, Kruckenberg is a disciple of the Wing-T offense. However, working with the spread passing attack at Glacier Peak the past few seasons has Kruckenberg envisioning at least an occasional aerial attack for the Turks.
“I’ve played in the Wing-T and coached the Wing-T most of my years as a varsity football coach,” Kruckenberg said. “That’s what I know. After playing Bellevue for the last six seasons I see the positives to that.”
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