March 26th, 2021 | Josh Adelman
US Army CPT (Ret.) Kris Babler selected as Coach of the Month
In the month of March Madness we are honored to award Kris Babler as the STS Coach of the Month, March 2021. He has spent a lifetime inspiring and motivating young athletes and aspiring coaches. His impact has been far-reaching in the northern Midwest United States.
Coach Babler is the current Athletic Director at Eagle Ridge Academy in Minnesota. Prior to leading the Eagle Ridge athletic department, he served as a Head Basketball Coach at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Head Men’s Basketball Coach at River Rainy Community College, and Head Men’s Basketball Coach and Head Track & Field Coach at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School.
Why and how Kris got involved in coaching
“I knew I wanted to get into coaching as a sophomore in high school. I had a coach that was an assistant football coach, a track assistant and my varsity basketball coach that chose to believe in me. I had just grown six inches the prior summer and couldn’t walk and chew gum, much less dribble or shoot. He believed in me and encouraged me and that made all the difference in my world. 20+ years later, here I am still in the gym.”
“I have taken some hard coaching jobs in places with no history of winning or schools that hadn’t ever even had teams. This profession speaks to me in a unique way. I think I always gravitate to leadership positions, but coaching is special. There isn’t anything more rewarding than seeing individuals grow and teams achieve things they didn’t think were possible. Maybe that’s why I have fit in jobs with little tradition — because of the great opportunity to grow something myself.”
What propelled him to service
We also wanted to know why coach Babler decided to join the US Army and how his experience influenced him. He tells us:
“I grew up the son of an Airman. My grandfathers were WWII and Korean vets, respectively. Interestingly, I swore I would never serve, and I probably wouldn’t have until I was 24 years old. I lost a high school classmate to the war in Iraq. That shifted my perspective on service and sacrifice.”
“I entered the Army Reserves and accepted a commission through OCS at Fort Benning the next year. I fully attribute the hard-fought successes I have achieved as a coach to the leadership development that was provided by the Army.”
“The mentorship that the NCO corps provided me as a young Lieutenant was critical. I was lucky to have great experiences deployed in Combined, Joint Operations – working with international partners and troops from different branches. I have found ways to bring those experiences back into an educational setting.”
Leadership lessons from coaching and military service
Like every successful journey, it always involves stress and adversity. But enduring these challenges and overcoming them yields tremendous lessons learned. Kris reflects on one of his most pervasive challenges.
“The most difficult challenge in coaching, and, in my military experience, is the great toll the profession levies on a family. Working in athletics is demanding. In order to coach well, you can always do more – recruiting, fundraising, planning, communicating. That is massively taxing on a family.”
“I have known so many coaches that have been divorced because they fall into their sport and lose perspective. I haven’t had a year where the demands of being an AD or a coach hasn’t worn thin on my spouse, but she understood this was part of the deal with me. I have learned slowly that I have to be present when I get home to my family.”
Coach Kris Babler
If we can figure out how best to manage the demands of coaching and military life, we can live a incredibly rewarding life. Coaching creates many heartfelt moments that can make us very proud. It is always difficult to pick just one moment but Coach Babler discusses one uniquely special season.
“My first stop as an NJCAA Head Coach was Rainy River Community College in International Falls, Minnesota. Twenty-Four guys showed up wanting to make the team in August, and I was young and wanted to win. So, we would get that group up for 6 AM workouts out in the cold wet grass and have esprit de corps runs past the dorms waking everyone up. I probably pushed them a little too hard, but I wanted to see who would persevere.”
“We ended up with a 12-man roster and I called them the Dirty Dozen, which they rallied around. Ended up having the best year in Rainy’s prior 19 seasons. A third of those guys ended up with NCAA D2 offers. We raised the team GPA almost a full point from the prior year. Mostly though, we formed a unique bond that season. It was a fun group to coach!”
Because Coach Babler is a high school athletic director, we had to ask him about what he has learned in this wild year of COVID impacted sports schedules.
“Athletic administration is just coaching coaches. COVID paused everything for our programs at a crucial time. I started our programs here at Eagle Ridge and they were all very young so that lost developmental time was a setback. It has also allowed me to reassess how we operate and find ways we can deliver. I definitely learned to value the time I have had to lead an organization and see our different programs grow — and just how fragile the whole thing is.”
Coach Kris Babler has a truly inspiring story. Because of his amazingly positive and solution-based leadership style, we are proud to honor him as the March 2021 STS Coach of the Month.
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