Pratt’s Jamie Cruce settles well into high school coaching

Jamie Cruce was a college football coach. Try finding a college football coach willing to bury his ego and take a step back to coaching in high school.

But after six years as coach at Bethany College in Lindsborg, and before that working as the Swedes’ defensive coordinator, coaching at Northern State in Aberdeen, S.D., and at Anderson, a Division III school in Indiana, Cruce had had enough of the college ranks.

“We just felt it was the right time to leave Bethany,” Cruce said. “There were maybe some philosophical differences about where the program needed to go. And I had four children – it was time to make a move. Recruiting is 24/7, every day of the week.”

Cruce put out feelers. A Salina native, he liked being in Kansas. Small towns appealed to him and his wife, Amy, grew up in Cheyenne Wells, Colo.

In 2013, Cruce ended up at Pratt, a strong football town that hadn’t had a strong football team for a while. The Greenbacks kept running into Ulysses in Class 4A and were usually locked out of the playoffs.

“I was probably one of those guys, for a while, who wanted to see how far I could go with college coaching,” said Cruce, a former Bethany player. “But then you get a family and you start realizing what’s important in life. I called a lot of people, friends from the college and high school ranks and guys who have coached both.”

One of those friends, Mike Waldie, told him the football coaching is 100 percent the same in college and high school.

“The only difference is, in high school you have to deal with kids who football is not their life,” Cruce said. “They might like football, but they might not love it. And you don’t have to spend all your time on the road recruiting. Those were the differences.”

Cruce said he felt comfortable at Pratt, where he thought he would have strong administrative support. The assistant coaches for the Greenbacks were good, he said, about giving him information. He was excited for a new challenge in a new place and the opportunity to rebuild a program that hadn’t won a state championship since 1995.

That was going to change, but not without setbacks.

The spring of that first year was good, Cruce said. Players bought into his aggressive weight-training philosophy and were excited about the spread offense he was instituting.

Then the unimaginable happened.

Drake Evert, set to be Pratt’s quarterback, was killed in an early-morning traffic accident on K-61 near where he lived, in Preston, eight miles north of Pratt. The Trans-Am Evert was driving collided with a semi truck. It was early in August 2013, about a month before Pratt’s first game.

“A good quarterback,” Cruce said. “And a really talented kid, charismatic. We were going to be pretty good with him. He was a kid everybody followed and definitely the leader of our team. All of our players were crushed – they lost one of their best friends right before football season.”

Cruce said he was just getting to know Evert. He liked the kid and loved his quarterbacking skill set.

“We were going to be run and gun,” Cruce said.

Those plans were scaled back. Pratt went with an inexperienced QB and won two games. The Greenbacks improved to five wins in 2014 and four in 2015 before finishing 12-1 this season and capping it with a 48-14 win over Topeka Hayden in the Class 4A-II championship game last weekend.

There wasn’t much gun in the Greenbacks’ offense, but there was sure a lot of run.

Sophomore fullback Travis Theis rushed for 1,800 yards and 20 touchdowns while Hunter Kaufman added 903 rushing yards on 85 carries and 20 touchdowns. They could not be stopped.

The 5-foot-9, 180-pound Theis rushed for 266 yards and four touchdowns in the win over Hayden. That mean Greenbacks quarterback Landon Struder had to throw only three passes. He completed two for 78 yards.

“We played some really good games this year, but that was probably our best game of the year,” Cruce said. “Theis is a kid we’ve known about for a while before he got to high school. I got a chance to work with him in the weight room before his freshman year and he’s doing things you don’t usually see. He’s one of our best basketball players and baseball might be his best sport.”

Best of all, Cruce didn’t have to recruit Theis. He came up through the ranks and landed in Cruce’s lap.

Which, he says, is one of the biggest advantages of coaching in high school.

“When I saw there was an opening at Pratt, it seemed like it would be a great place that was hungry for success,” Cruce said.

He has given the Pratt folks a state championship to tide them over.

This story was originally published December 3, 2016 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Pratt’s Jamie Cruce settles well into high school coaching."