Thousands benefit from Ligonier's Valley Youth Network started by couple

Mention “Kip and Sandy” to someone in Ligonier and it's likely they'll know who you're talking about, even without including their last name.

Kip Crumrine has been executive director of Ligonier's Valley Youth Network, a nondenominational Christian group for high school students, since its inception in December 1994. His wife, Sandy, is his unofficial second-in-command.

Kip has coached the Ligonier Valley High School boys soccer team since its beginning in 1995.

From 1995 to 2002, Sandy worked in the preschool at Ligonier's Covenant Presbyterian Church. A lifelong runner, she started an early morning running group for high school girls and volunteered for years as “sort of a mom” for the girls soccer team.

“I'm not exaggerating when I say they've touched thousands of lives over the years,” said Steve Gooder of Ligonier, a member of the original Youth Network steering committee.

Kip came to the group after seven years as associate director of Summer's Best Two Weeks, a Christian summer sports camp near Boswell, Somerset County, his first job after graduating from Ohio University with a degree in recreation management and wilderness skills.

The Youth Network's mission was to complement church youth groups and to reach young people not involved in a church.

“We wanted to take what we did at camp and do it in a year-round program,” Kip said. “We wanted Bible study, rec-reational activities, a sports component, community service and mission trips.”

Kip said they were fortunate to start with a core group of about 10 students, who met for Bible study and prayer every morning before school.

“Unfortunately, they were all seniors and they graduated in the spring of 1995,” he said.

The next task was reaching other teens, so Kip searched them out.

“Before that ministry began, the municipal parking lot was full of kids at night, hanging out and probably doing things they shouldn't have been doing,” Gooder said. “Kip started going to that parking lot to talk to them and, within a year or two, there were no more kids in that lot. They were at VYN or finding better things to do.”

Kip and his wife raised three sons, Cody, Tyler and Luke, and are grandparents to three boys. They have experience relating to youths throughout various stages of their lives. But, as Kip pointed out, “good leadership is ageless.”

“If you treat people respectfully, lovingly and are kind, people will respond that way,” he said. “Our relationship- building has been the same, whether we were 33 and 34 or 55 and 56. The way we relate to students hasn't changed.”

A staple Youth Network program over the years has been the Thursday evening “Christ Happening in Lives” that includes games and snacks, followed by music and a Bible-based message. Recent attendance has averaged 80 to 85, Kip said.

The organization does a yearly mission trip, with destinations as close as Franklin Street in Ligonier and as far-flung as Native American reservations in South Dakota and Canada and communities in Jamaica, Guatemala and Honduras.

They've helped to mentor similar groups in Boswell and the Kiski area.

“The reward for us is to see people come to faith in Christ and begin to live their life that way,” Kip said. “Even when they're making all kinds of bad decisions in high school ... in the midst of that they come to fellowship, check out Bible study and go on a mission trip. Maybe they won't make a change then, but they'll come back three or four years later and say, ‘Now I get it.' ”

As successful as their program has been, the couple has not slowed in their quest to make it better.

“The job hasn't changed since we started. It's great to say we have so many kids involved, but we have so many others that aren't coming,” Kip said.

That's what keeps the couple going — along with a simple Christian belief.

“Life is hard, and we all need Jesus. That's why we do it,” Sandy said.

Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 724-836-5750 or smcmarlin@tribweb.com.