Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Longtime Faith Lutheran coach retires after overseeing program’s improbable ascent

Faith Lutheran's Bret Walter Coaches Last Game

Wade Vandervort

Faith Lutheran’s Bret Walter coaches his last home game in 23 years as the Crusaders’ high school basketball coach during a game against Bonanza, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020.

Faith Lutheran's Bret Walter Coaches Last Game

Faith Lutheran's Bret Walter coaches his last home game in 23 years as the Crusaders' high school basketball coach during a game against Bonanza, Monday, Jan. 27, 2020. Launch slideshow »

Bret Walter returned to his seat on the home bench during his first basketball game as the Faith Lutheran coach 23 years ago, navigating up a small flight of stairs and onto a stage where his team was sitting on a portable metal bench. 

In an amusing scene, he coached from the stage the entire season, shouting instructions down to players and starting to build a culture unlike any other in Las Vegas-area prep sports. No school combines high-end athletics with a focus on service and practicing faith like the Crusaders, and the retiring Walter has long been the ringleader. 

When Walter moved to town in the late 1990s, Faith Lutheran was a school of about 100 students located on Robin Street near Rancho Drive and Interstate 15. The building was a former Mormon church, which included the tiniest of gyms with little space to maneuver or sit.

But he never complained. Not once. “It was a blessing to be here,” Walter said.

Walter was just 23 when he arrived in Las Vegas with his wife, and just a few months removed from playing in college at Concordia University in Nebraska. They expected to stay about three years. He never imagined falling in love with the charm of Faith Lutheran, raising his family here and becoming a legend in the Crusader community.

“We weren’t even a good (class A) team then,” said Scott Fogo, the school’s principal, who also has two decades worth of history at the school. “We had years and years of losing. It’s been fun watching this grow. We are all in awe of what Faith Lutheran has become.”

Slowly but surely, Faith Lutheran started to expand. The school moved to the current location in Summerlin, which initially didn’t have a gym or other buildings and playing fields that were added with recent expansions. Practices were held a few miles away at the Las Vegas Sportspark. 

The Crusaders competed in the state’s lower classifications, often taking long bus rides to rural parts of the state. Walter can talk for hours about snowstorms in Lincoln County when the school bus drove 15 mph to the next city. He can also proudly say he’s coached in all four of the state’s classifications.

“I’m still trying to become a better coach,” said, Walter, who also is the school’s athletic director. “Every experience you have, you learn from it.”

Walter’s competitive nature is contagious with others in the program, which won five state championships — including four consecutive from 2005 to 2008. He was so intense that Fogo didn’t even like playing pickup games with Walter, who “had this fiery competitiveness.”

But Walter was also patient with the program’s growing pains and loyal to the school’s mission of incorporating lessons of faith into every decision. While the school has grown by leaps and bounds, that mission remains the same: to prepare students to be their best, whether that’s for a school assignment, in becoming leaders in the community or for an athlete on the playing field. 

Before most games and practices, Walter gives a lesson in Scripture, relating words from the Bible to a challenge players will face.

“Coach was able to relate to so many guys and made a difference to so many people, me especially,” said Brett Lubbe, the program’s all-time leading scorer, who returned last week for Walter’s farewell. “He was such a competitor. He could bring that out in everybody.”

Faith Lutheran is no longer a school with only a handful of students playing in rented gyms against teams from rural Nevada. Rather, the Crusaders are competing in the state’s large-school classification, housed in one of the nicest facilities in town. There’s no stage to coach from anymore, but rather a spacious gym with all the bells and whistles of a modern facility and many championship banners hanging overhead. It is the house that Walter built, if you will.

Throughout two decades, Walter developed a few players into college recruits, including his oldest son, Brevin. A shooting guard like his dad, Brevin is redshirting this season at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. While coach Walter is just 46, this seems like a great time to stop coaching — at least temporarily — to become a fan. Though he'll stay on as athletic director, he intends to travel to many of Brevin’s games.

“I’m leaving something I love for something I love even more,” he said.