In just a few days, Warsaw girls basketball head coach Lenny Krebs will stand on the sidelines in the state championship for the first time in his career. This comes a week after his first ever semi-state games, and before that, his first ever regional. In his 22nd year as a head coach, Krebs is finally reaping the rewards he has spent decades sowing.
It hasn’t always been easy.
Born with hearing loss, Krebs found basketball at a young age and instantly fell in love with the game.
“I always felt like I had to find some value somewhere to feel like I was whole,” Krebs said. “That’s why I started playing and I kind of lost myself trying to find an identity with basketball.”
He cited the sport as one of the places in his life where his hearing loss could be an advantage. Playing high school basketball at Fairfield and beyond, Krebs would turn off his hearing aid when heading to the free throw line, rendering the boos and jeers of opposing fans useless.
“It was just me and the basket in an empty gym… You could try and make that gym as loud as it could be but I was not going to hear that.”
If you talk to Krebs, you’ll hear stories similar to that one. While his hearing loss has had a major impact on his life, he doesn’t see it as a negative one.
“When I was on my first date with my wife, she told me that I made her feel so important because I always looked at her while she was talking to me. She didn’t know that if I didn’t I couldn’t hear her,” he said with a smile.
“My hearing loss has been the biggest blessing in my life because of who it’s made me and my story. If my story can inspire one person who is battling something, then I thank the Lord.”
Nowadays, Krebs has a cochlear implant that allows him to hear like he never has before.
“I used to not be able to talk on the phone because if I couldn’t see you, I couldn’t hear you. Now I probably annoy people because I’m always calling and wanting to talk,” he said. “It’s made me a better communicator. I always stress the process on the basketball court, and that’s because I’ve lived it. I had to learn how to hear. So I’m teaching what I’m living.”
After graduating from Fairfield, Krebs went on to play two seasons of junior college basketball at Illinois Valley Community College. His strategy at the charity stripe paid off, as in his freshman season, he finished 3rd in the nation in free throw percentage. In his sophomore campaign, he finished first. To add to that, he finished sixth and third in rebounding as well.
Following his time at Illinois Valley, Krebs returned to the Hooiser state to finish off his playing career at Grace College. It’s also where he got his degree in elementary education, heading one step closer to his longtime goal of being both a teacher and a coach.
“A lot of people who knew me and my situation weren’t sure how I was going to do it,” Krebs said. “Here I am today, proof that you’re able to overcome any obstacle in your way. I always wanted to be a teacher, and I knew I just had to overcome [my hearing loss].
“Growing up with a father that was a pastor, Grace reinforced the importance of Christ in my life. My father would often ask me if I was going to follow him into the ministry. One day I finally told him ‘yes, but my pulpit is different from yours. Mine is on the basketball court and in the classroom.’”
Following his playing career, Krebs spent nine years as an assistant coach: one at Fairfield and eight at NorthWood. In 2004, he broke through and got his first head coaching job at Goshen High School. The success wasn’t there at first, as the team won just 18 games combined in his first three seasons. With so much of his identity wrapped up in the game of basketball, Krebs took it incredibly hard.
“When you ride the rollercoaster of your identity, it can be tough. You start to question how good you are. My wife will tell you there were many nights I came home and just cried. I battled depression because I was trying to separate who I was from what I did.”
The lessons he learned during these down times are now lessons that he stresses to his players to this day.
“It’s a miserable road to go down, tying your identity to what you do,” he said. “I don’t want any of them to go through what I’ve gone through.”
After that initial stretch at the school, Krebs was able to find some success. In his remaining eleven seasons at Goshen, Krebs led the RedHawks to double-digit wins seven times, including an 18-5 season in 2016. While he still struggled to pick up wins in the tournament, he could tell the process was starting to work and the groundwork he had laid was starting to pay dividends.
Even still, 14 years as a head coach was starting to wear Krebs down. He was experiencing fatigue and burnout to the point that he was making phone calls to see if there were any assistant coaching opportunities available.
All of a sudden, the head coaching job at Warsaw became available. That changed everything.
“I decided to throw my hat in the ring. To me, this is one of the top jobs in the northern half of the state. You can look at the facilities, the program. Why wouldn’t someone want this job? I’m blessed to be able to coach here and eight years later be able to compete for a state championship.”

    Krebs makes an official aware of his presence during his first season at Warsaw in 2017.

Krebs has won at least 14 games in each of his eight years at Warsaw, including 18 games twice and this year’s 26, which is currently tied with the school record. He says his biggest growth as a coach over this time period has been his relationships with his players.
“Coaching really is all about relationships. Your relationship to your players and their relationship to each other. I’m hard on my players, I’m going to push them to be the best they can be every day, but I do that because I love them,” Krebs said.
That love goes both ways.
“I sent him a message the other day with a picture of us before the semi-state game along with another one of him coaching me in fourth grade, and I just thanked him for pushing me to be the best I can be,” junior Brooke Zartman said. “He has made me into the person I am today. He loves us so much.”
“When I was in eighth grade, I was kind of scared of him,” senior Leila Knepp said with a laugh. “But then I got up to varsity and he’s just the best. He’s the best coach I’ve ever had.”
Like Krebs, his players are making their first ever deep run in the state tournament. They know what it means to him.
“If you go back and watch the semi-state game, the first thing he does after we win is go and hug his wife, and that just shows what kind of guy he is,” Knepp said. “He loves his family, he loves us.”
“I am so proud of him. I’ve seen the struggle that he’s gone through. Last year especially was a struggling year but he has stayed by us,” junior Joslyn Bricker said. “He’s stayed true to who he is and his belief in us and that means so much to me.”
With 22 years of coaching experience and the love of one of the most tightly knit groups you’ll ever see on the court, Krebs is now one win away from etching his name into the history books.
“It would be rewarding, absolutely. You’re not going to find someone that’s going to prepare more than me. But it doesn’t change my value. It doesn’t change who I am. Win or lose, I pray that it won’t change me, unless it changes me for the better. Whether other people want to believe that or not, that’s what this journey and this group of girls has taught me.”