Right at home: G-R’s Lensch wraps up rewarding career

From starting quarterback to teacher, to head coach, to high school principal, and to district superintendent, Kreg Lensch has tackled all kinds of leadership roles at Glidden-Ralston.

Beginning July 1, retired after a 36-year career in education, including the last 19 years in his hometown of Glidden.

For Glidden native Lensch, there was no place like home for a very rewarding career.

On the football field, Lensch helped the Wildcats finish with records of 8-1 in 1982 and 7-2 in 1983 and win the Central Valley Conference championships both seasons.

As Glidden-Ralston superintendent, he’s led a district with about 400 prekindergarten-12th-grade enrollment and 30 to  35 certified teachers and about 75 teachers and associates altogether.

After graduation from Glidden-Ralston in 1984, Lensch, who was an all-conference player, followed his Wildcat Football Head Coach Barry Brandt to Northwestern College in Orange City, where Brandt had been hired as offensive coordinator.

Lensch received his bachelor of arts degree in education from Northwestern in 1988 and began his career teaching social studies and physical education at Storm Lake St. Mary School. After a couple of years there, he moved on to an eight-year stay as a high school history and K-12 physical education teacher at East Monona, which was located in Moorhead in western Iowa’s Loess Hills. East Monona during that time began a sharing arrangement with Boyer Valley. 

Lensch headed back toward home in 1998 when he joined the Carroll High School staff as a social studies teacher. 

Along the way, Lensch, who competed in football, basketball. track and baseball at Glidden-Ralston, kept sports a big part of his career, holding many head coaching and assistant coaching positions.

He returned to his alma mater in 2000 as seventh-12th-grade social studies teacher, head football coach and assistant boys basketball coach. After that he also served as head football coach, and had stints as assistant boys basketball coach and head baseball, boys basketball and girls basketball coach. In 2005, Lensch became Glidden-Ralston High School principal, succeeding Kevin Litterer, and in 2016 he succeeded Rob Olsen as superintendent. In a sharing partnership, the last six years Lensch also has served as Paton-Churdan superintendent.

Lensch, who went on to also receive a master of science degree in educational leadership and administration as well as a specialist degree with superintendent certification from Drake University, said that when he began his education career he never thought he’d become an administrator.

“But once I got into it, I wanted to have a little more to do with the big picture, and hoped I had something to offer,” he said.

“Number one, I thought I could help other teachers become better teachers. And I felt I had strength communicating with kids, so I just wanted to expand that a little bit. An administrative position allowed me to be a part of the education from someone coming into preschool at the age of 4 to someone graduating at the age 18,”

At Glidden-Ralston he got to see students make that progression all under one roof.

Lensch said of returning to his alma mater and serving as a principal and then the superintendent, “I grew up here. This district is really important to me.”

Lensch, who also played linebacker on defense in high school, found, though, the district had tough issues to tackle.

“Financially things were difficult,” he said. “I wanted to do what I could to make sure that this place stayed here, stayed independent, was its own school district. I guess I found my role at that time was more of a financial one so that I could help ensure it did, and we’ve done really well that way. So I’m proud of that, and I’m proud of the (school) board members. Financially they’ve made some tough decisions but good decisions that have allowed us to stay and be a very viable school district.”

Lensch said of choosing an education career, “I really went into this thing to coach, but the longer I got into my career, I think I flip-flopped and saw coaching as just another way to educate kids. So I thought it was going to be about coaching and what happened was that it became a lot more about education, and coaching was just another way you could add to that, another way you could reach kids for character-building, relationship-building.”

Lensch may be rare for continuing to coach on top of his duties as an administrator. In football, he remained head coach since 2000 except for stepping away for the 2020 and 2021 seasons, but he was back on the sidelines the last two seasons. With him at the helm, the Wildcats achieved remarkable success, qualifying for the state eight-player playoffs from 2004 to 2015, capturing the state crown in 2005, and advancing to the semifinals in 2015.

“I enjoyed all the teams I coached, I really did, and that was a great experience,” Lensch said. “I had a couple of my sons (TJ and Ethan) on that (state championship) team, which made it even more unique.

“But there were a lot of good moments coaching. It’s a different way to be around kids rather than just being an administrator. That’s why I’m glad I coached the whole time. It was a great outlet. Kids got to know me in a different way, and I got to know them in a different way, too. 

“It was very unique in an administrator’s career. I doubt there are many superintendents that keep the coaching job. It helped in relationship-building with students. It brought a different connection within the school building, too. They could see how much I valued their education and how much I valued their development as people as well. 

“I never thought I would be a superintendent and coach girls basketball, but I did that, too, for a couple of years, and it was a great experience.”

Lensch said his career has rewarded him with “with a lot of unbelievable friendships” both with people throughout the community and in the profession.

He’s seen students who he taught and coached come back in the doors years later with their own children in school. 

He said of seeing that growth and maturity, “They exhibit a lot of things not really taught in books but being better people, better parents, being good citizens. Being in one place long enough to watch them carry that through, that’s really cool, really rewarding. I’ve seen that out of a lot of kids who have either stayed here or come back and been part of the school again. That’s education. That’s why you get into it. That’s the most important part.”

That’s not to say he hasn’t contended with a number of challenges as well.

“COVID was frustrating for all school systems, and the political weight that kind has hit education, that’s been challenging,” he said. “You have a lot of good teachers out there just trying to do a good job. I sometimes wish legislatively they’d just get out of the way and let them do a good job. There just seems to be a lot more regulation now, a lot of decisions being made that are just frustrating. They’re not talking to the educators, they’re not talking to the people doing the work. And they just seem to be regulating a lot of things.

“The teachers I know spend all their time trying to get kids to think critically for themselves, to make their own decisions. The negativity that’s been put on education has been tough to deal with the last few years.”

As Lensch is retiring, a number of school districts have changed superintendent partnerships. Glidden-Ralston will now partner with Coon Rapids-Bayard instead of Paton-Churdan, and Thomas Ridder, who had been superintendent at Logan-Magnolia, will lead these two districts. Eric Trager had been superintendent of Coon Rapids-Bayard and Audubon, but Audubon is switching to partnership with Exira-Elk Horn-Kimballton and that left Coon Rapids-Bayard without a sharing partner.

“The (Glidden-Ralston and Coon Rapids-Bayard) boards worked really well together in the selection process and made sure they stressed this is an upper-level management thing,” Lensch said. 

“Geographically this made sense,” he added. 

He also mentioned the possibility of Glidden-Ralston and Coon Rapids-Bayard sharing some teachers in the future in order to deal with teacher shortages.

Glidden-Ralston and Coon Rapids-Bayard have had a longtime sports rivalry, and Lensch remarked, “I think in the course of the years it’s still a good rivalry, but gotten to be kind of a friendly rivalry too. There’s a lot of respect between the schools.” 

Lensch is the youngest of seven sons of Buel and Barbara Lensch. His dad was a mechanic at Glidden Farm Equipment. His mom taught in a country school in Audubon County when first married but became a stay-at-home mom.  

Lensch said in his biography on the Glidden-Ralston website, “One of the things I take the most pride in is the fact that 13 members of my immediate family have graduated from this school district.”

Graduating ahead of him were his brothers, Buel Jr. “Skip,” Mark, Blaine, Hans, Jeff and Trent. Kreg’s children and stepchildren who have attended Glidden-Ralston are: Nicholas, graduated in 2005, now lives in Johnston and works in health care administration; TJ, graduated in 2006, lives in Waukee and works in management for an insurance company; Ethan, graduated in 2008, lives in Dyersville and is Western Dubuque High School principal; Mitchell, graduated in 2013, lives in West Des Moines and works at a law firm in the business marketing department; Mark, graduated this spring and will be going to school for radiation therapy; and Grace just completed her sophomore year. Kreg has 12 grandchildren. During his career, Lensch got the opportunity to coach all his sons. 

Lensch praised Glidden and Ralston communities’ “fantastic” support of the school, and said of the opportunity to attend school there and then come home as a teacher, coach and administrator, “It’s always been home; it always will be.”

His career hasn’t allowed him much time for hobbies, he said, but now that he will have more free time he may use it golf, fishing and attending grandkids’ events.