The new athletic and activities director at Cuba High School is a familiar face in Cuba athletics.

After coaching stints in football, basketball and baseball and teaching strength and conditioning for the past six years, Collin “CJ” Crader has moved to the administrative side.

Crader, 28, is the youngest Athletic Director ever at Cuba High School. He officially started his job July 1 and is Cuba High School’s third Athletic Director in its last three years, succeeding Ryan Okenfuss and Taylor Dace. He said that he plans to bring stability to the role.

“I don’t think I would have applied and been interested in this job if I didn’t see myself doing it for a long time,” Crader said. “I always wanted to be an AD and be in this role. I didn’t think I would do it as early as I’m doing in my career, but once I’m in it, I’m in it. You know, I’m established here. I’ve spent my last six years here. I love it. I love Cuba. I love the community.”

Crader grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Imperial, graduating from Seckman High School in 2016. He played high school football and baseball and went on to play collegiate baseball at Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina, Kansas.

After playing two years at KWU, Crader said he had to hang up his cleats because of a health issue. He was already majoring in exercise science and health and physical education and decided to go into coaching for the team that he played for, despite being the same age or younger than many of his fellow teammates.

“Coaching my best friends was an interesting way of starting my coaching career,” he said.

“I stopped playing and then joined the coaching staff, but I was still living with all my buddies. At the time, I was 20 years old, and at the NAIA level, there were kids that were 25 and 26.”

Crader graduated a semester early in Dec. 2019, and was looking forward to coaching baseball in the spring. When COVID-19 shut down all athletic activities that March, Crader’s career was suddenly in limbo.

He said that he was considering applying to be a part of KWU’s graduate assistant program and staying a part of the coaching staff and getting his master’s degree.

After a potential job then fell through at a junior college in North Carolina, Crader moved back home with his parents in April 2020. He started working landscape jobs while he applied to other coaching positions, including Cuba High School.

“I actually did my interview in the back of a work truck,” he said about his initial interview with Cuba High School.

“I was cutting grass and doing landscaping and was in the middle of weed whacking and got a text, ‘Can you do an interview real quick?’ I told them I’m covered in sweat and dirt and all this stuff, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, just go ahead, it’s fine’. So I interviewed in the back of a work truck and wound up getting hired.”

Crader credited Cuba coaches Randy Bouse and DJ Dace for welcoming him to the staff and helping him develop as a coach throughout his time at Cuba High School.

Crader was able to work directly with all of Cuba’s athletes as the strength and conditioning coach, and although he’ll be around the athletic programs, he said that he will miss those consistent interactions.

“I think that was one thing that I did really well with was just interacting with them and building relationships with them, getting really close,” he said.

“Early on in my career, I feel like it was just the age of it. You know, being that young coach and somebody that’s almost like an older brother in a way, and as I’ve gotten older and doing it, I’ve just kind of kept that same ability to teach kids and work with them every day.”

Dace will take over as Cuba’s strength and conditioning coach, a role that Crader views as crucial to the development of athletes and their attitude.

“Just seeing the growth and the changes that happen whenever you lift and get kids bought into it and seeing the confidence of kids grow and through the weight room and stuff, it’s undervalued,” Crader said. “I mean, you get stronger, get faster, jump further and stuff, but just the confidence that comes with lifting and being strong and stuff like that is awesome to see.”

Crader said that his six years as a coach in Cuba have helped develop trust with the other coaches, and while he expects to continue learning on the job, he is receptive to feedback.

“I think going into my seventh year has really helped me be a familiar face. They know who I am. They know my personality,” Crader said. “There’s going to be a learning curve, but I don’t think my learning curve is going to come from the operation of sports or the relationships with other schools or the relationship with our staff that we have. It’s going to be, you know, kind of those ins and outs and little intricate details on things and just learning as we go. It’s not going to be me constantly telling the coaches what to do because then there’s no new ideas and stuff like that.”

Besides directing athletics, Crader is also the activities director at CHS, overseeing extracurricular clubs including band, choir, speech and debate. He said that he’s working on setting up an awards night for those clubs, similar to the ESPY awards for sports programs they’ve had in the past. He added that after not having a sports awards night this past season, he hopes to resume a sports awards night this year.

“I felt like it was unfair to not have a fine arts equivalent to the sports awards night,” he said.

At the year-end fine arts night, Crader said that the plan is to “put together a multi-act play performance.”

“We’ll have our choir perform, we’ll have our drama club give a performance, and then we’ll have our band give a performance while also auctioning off artwork,” Crader said. “So that’ll be kind of their big fundraiser that we’ll do at the end of the year.

“Otherwise, I look forward to seeing our band and our drill team continue to excel. Year in and year out, they seem to be the top dog in the area when it comes to bands. Anytime we go play somewhere else, it’s not the same. It doesn’t sound as good.”

  Crader said that Cuba High School Principal Michael Clutts and Assistant Superintendent Myra Siebert are great resources for helping him acclimate to his new role. Both have served as athletic directors in previous roles and Siebert was Cuba High School’s principal when Crader started.

Crader said he is also supported by his fiancée Cami Myers, who is Cuba High School’s junior varsity volleyball coach. The couple recently celebrated their fourth anniversary and plan to get married in April in Rolla.

“This job wouldn’t work without the support of my future wife as well,” Crader said. “Just having her there to support me and allow me to go out and do things, but then to also be like, ‘Come on, you’ve been at the school for 12-13 hours. Like, come home, let’s go’ is important for me.”

Crader said that he’s hoping to allow sixth graders to participate in middle school sports starting in the 2027-28 school year. But more immediately, he wants to improve school spirit.

He’s starting a program that will allow students from sixth through twelfth grade free access to any Cuba High School sporting event if they are in good academic standing. Students in fifth grade and under will also receive free entry.

“So if they have no Ds or Fs, no discipline write-ups, and they weren’t tardy or absent that day, they will be considered academic stars,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s the official name we’re going to work under, but those students who qualify will receive free admittance to games.”

Crader added that military, senior citizens and first responders will still receive free entry to games.

“I feel like to build our sports and build our programs, we need to put people in situations where it’s affordable for them to come in and see what’s going on with our programs,” Crader said. “That’s one thing I remember as being a little kid is going to the high school games or going to professional games or anything like that and seeing it. And I was like, I want to be a part of that. And I think the biggest thing is allowing that avenue for people to come in and do that is allowing that free admittance and getting people in seats, getting them to watch the games, get them interested, and also improving the game day environment. You know, we’re trying to have some pre-game music and then increase our game day worker wages as well, in order to build more of a better game day environment to where that attracts more people to be there. And I think that kind of just full-fledged involves everybody in the community, and it gets people in games, and then also supports kids.”