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Mike Ruble was born for basketball. He is 6-8 and played at Vanguard University of Southern California. His plan was to play until he couldn't, but after competing professionally in Ireland, Austria, and the Philippines, he decided to give coaching a shot. Stints as an assistant at El Toro (Calif.) High School, Vanguard, and Cosumnes River College set him on the path to become a college head coach.

Instead, he fell in love. It wasn't another human who shifted his plans, but Bradshaw Christian High School. While at Cosumnes, he began working at Bradshaw as the athletic director and physical education teacher. He started as head coach of the boys' basketball team and assumed the same position with the girls' squad one year later. He's been adding sports and Sac-Joaquin Sectional Championships ever since. In this interview, Ruble discusses building his athletic department, creating high participation, and the possibility of becoming head coach at his alma mater.

AM: How did you become the athletic director at Bradshaw?
Ruble: While I was an assistant at Cosumnes River, I started work on my master's degree in sports administration, with the idea that I would take over when Coach James Clark retired. Then, Bradshaw Christian called and said they were looking to develop their athletics.

I went over there to get a steadier income. I wasn't thinking on a grand scale or planning to build the program into what it has become. Then, after Coach Clark passed away while battling cancer, I decided to stay at Bradshaw. I was making connections, falling in love with the school, and feeling the excitement of building a program.

I saw a huge opportunity for growth and a major challenge. When I started here in 2003, we just had the freshman class, and there was no budget. Now we work with a $250,000 to $300,000 budget.

We just built a top-notch baseball field. We're building a gym and a football stadium. We're building all our facilities on a large scale. We want to host CIF events and attract professional and semi-pro teams to use our facilities for pre-season and practices.

How did you approach building the new facilities?
We hit the community hard. We paid attention to branding the school. We tried playing football games on Saturday afternoons, but it didn't have the same feel. So we brought in portable lights for Friday night games and before you knew it, we were packed because of the ambiance we'd created. We have music going, and the football team is successful and new. We put a lot of thought and care into our program, and it shows.

We're a small school, but we operate with a big vision. You can see that in our events. What you feel is the genuine passion for our teams. I have seen parts of the country that take their sports really seriously, but in California, some of that gets lost. We've brought back that feeling, where we play smashmouth football and fundamental basketball.

There are so many good people here who love sports. With that comes success. The football team won back-to-back sectionals and won the league title this year. Last year, the boys' and girls' basketball teams won sectional championships. This year, the girls won their fourth sectional and reached the NorCal finals.

In our five years at the varsity level, we have won eight sectional championships and 10 league championships. Next year, I expect both basketball teams to fight for state championships and football to compete for a sectional championship. Volleyball was in the sectional championship, and has won the league four or five years in a row, and the same is true for baseball.

Did you always want to be an athletic director?
Even though my heart is really in coaching basketball, being an athletic director is something I really enjoy. My competitive juices flow with the challenge of building a program. The wins are fun, but ultimately I enjoy working with other coaches, reaching the kids, and making sure our program gets a lot of respect. Our kids go out and behave themselves. They are a lighthouse in the community. People look at our program and see we put a lot of time into our kids and coaches.

How did the program become successful so quickly?
First and foremost is the support from the administration. Our superintendent, principals, and staff are at every single home game--and most away games, which our parents really appreciate. When our teams travel to another school, whether it's local or two hours away, we usually have more fans than the home crowd. I think that's tremendous, especially when you realize our high school only has is 230 kids.

We laid a foundation from the beginning with coaches coming from the college ranks, and said, "This is how it's going to be. We believe in the system and what we are doing." Part of it was teaching our coaches to open up to parents. Parents can approach our coaches knowing they'll be listened to, even if they have to agree to disagree.

This is an environment where kids can grow and be loved. Not only is it done right, it's done out of love. In our meetings, we talk to parents about representing Bradshaw. We ask them to be careful about what they say in public, and we are very mindful of how we represent our program.

How have you approached hiring coaches?
We are bringing in great coaches who could very easily coach at the college level. In our interviewing process, we don't talk a lot about the sport. We are more about building relationships and finding out what kind of person a coach is. Winning is a byproduct of building character. That's why we have been so successful.

What advice do you have for other athletic directors starting from scratch?
Get as many people involved as possible and ask a lot of questions. When we started, I looked at schools that had done well in their sports programs and academics. We took our administrative team out to their campuses, talked to their administrators, and looked at their facilities. We compiled information and learned from others' triumphs and mistakes. Along the way, we put our own flavor in there and figured out what was important to us.

You have very high participation numbers. Why?
We probably have 85 percent of our students participating in sports, which is due to the fact that our coaches build relationships with their players. They have study halls, go into the community together, and become an important part of their kids' lives. Our athletes build their social lives around the team, and when other kids see them around campus, they want to be part of the family, too. When you're in an athletic program, you're part of a family.

How do your coaching skills help you as an athletic director and vice versa?
The experience I am getting building leadership and running a program is really valuable. The challenge is to make sure that while I'm focusing on the basketball team, I'm also getting spring sports ready. The basketball side helps out the AD side in communicating and learning how to deal with people.

I run the basketball program the way I would like to see my athletic program run. As athletic director, I speak about what has worked for me, but at the same time I learn from coaches and parents. As demanding as we are, and as much as we win, we have to work with the families. If we are going to ask kids to participate at a function outside practice and game times, we invite families too. We say, "Everyone is welcome. Let's all pitch in and make this fun for everybody."

Why did you turn down the assistant coach position at Seattle University?
Cameron Dollar is a really good friend of mine and a great coach. But I looked at my experience and connection with Bradshaw and didn't feel at peace going to Seattle. I've built so many relationships here, and there's still so much still for me to do at Bradshaw. I've had other offers, but it would have to be the right situation for me to leave.

Would you leave to be the head men's basketball coach at Vanguard?
I think I would. It's not a secret, but that position is open right now.

Have you had discussions about taking that job?
I have. We'll see what happens.

What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started at Bradshaw?
I've matured a lot at Bradshaw. It's human nature to try to be right and show you can do anything. The biggest challenge for a coach or athletic director is to learn to surrender. You have to be willing to sit through a tough meeting with a parent and listen to a coach who is having a hard time. A big part of leadership is being able to listen.

Part of our success is we are willing to open ourselves up and take that criticism. With any challenge, if you really open yourself up to it, you're going to grow. Something is going to come out of it that will make you stronger and help you move in a positive direction.

Kyle Garratt is an assistant editor at Athletic Management. He can be reached at: kg@momentummedia.com.