Crescent superintendent moves from coaching to her new role

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, August 11, 2026

JOYCE — Sondra Lundvick’s path to the Pacific Northwest was paved with hardwood — a basketball road that ran from her home state of Texas to Alaska to Hawaii and back before ending two years ago at Crescent School District, where she traded the gym for the counselor’s office.

The next leg of her journey was the shortest yet: down the hall to the superintendent’s office.

“This is my last stop,” Lundvick said. “I’m blessed to be here.”

Lundvick succeeds Dave Bingham, who retired in June after 41 years at Crescent, the last 10 as superintendent.

“Those are big shoes to fill,” Lundvick said.

Lundvick grew up in Orange, Texas, and stayed close for college, choosing Lamar University in Beaumont — 30 minutes away — partly so her family could watch her play.

Her freshman year, the Cardinals qualified for the NCAA Tournament, beating Louisiana State and the University of Texas at home in Austin on the way to the Elite Eight, a game shy of the Final Four.

What she remembers most from her time as a shooting guard at Lamar isn’t the scores. It’s her grandmother in the stands — a woman who never got the chance to play sports growing up.

“I kind of felt like she got to live it a little bit through me,” Lundvick said.

Playing led to coaching, which she said is the reason she went into education.

“It changed my life,” she said. “And I felt like I could be most impactful in that way.”

After graduation, she returned to her old high school and coached for five years, then spent four years as an assistant at Northern Illinois, followed by a stint at TCU and a teaching job at a Fort Worth high school. Then it was to Texas as a high school girls athletic coordinator and basketball coach.

She returned to Lamar for two years as associate head coach.

Along the way, she earned a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology, a master’s degree in educational leadership and a master’s degree in sport management.

By 2009, she said, Lundvick and her husband, Jay, were ready for a change.

“An adventure,” she said.

She got one: a job in Metlakatla, on Annette Island in Southeast Alaska, as the girls basketball coach, athletic director and assistant principal — all at the same time.

After three years, Lundvick, Jay and their daughter, Rihana, traded snow for sunshine and headed to Hawaii. At Hilo High on the Big Island — a school of roughly 2,700 students with 56 sports teams — she was “a one-woman athletic department.”

Before long, they were back north, this time to Sitka, Alaska, where Lundvick served as assistant principal and coached the girls basketball team to the school’s first state title in 2015. She was later promoted to principal and guided the school through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Olympic Peninsula was supposed to be a retirement place. A superintendent she’d worked for in Alaska told her they’d love it, and, starting in 2015, the couple began spending summers here. They eventually purchased land in Eden Valley.

That’s how she often drove by the Crescent campus and though, “I wonder what that little school is like?”

So, when the district posted an opening for a counselor in 2024, she applied, figuring she had nothing to lose — and was hired.

The job came with more than counseling with duties like scheduling, assessment and student support. By then, she’d done nearly every K-12 job possible — except superintendent.

So, when Bingham announced his retirement in January, she wasn’t sure the job was for her. She thought it over, and it began to feel right.

“It was my next logical step,” she said.

The Crescent School Board unanimously selected Lundvick in May after a search process that included stakeholder surveys, community forums, interviews and input from staff and the community.

Now she has the job and the challenges that come with it.

A reduction in force last spring cost the small staff two certificated positions and some paraprofessionals — “life changing for people,” she said, and “a difficult time.” The district is facing a shortfall of roughly $300,000 next year and doesn’t want to keep drawing down its reserves.

The campus needs work, too: septic trouble, a backup generator just brought online, power to the gymnasium and a leak in the gym roof that’s getting a temporary patch. On bigger repairs, and on any future levy or bond, she’s keeping the door open.

“All options will be discussed,” she said.

What she wants most out of year one is pure coach: rally the Loggers.

“The goal for me for this year is to really bring back some of that school spirit and school pride,” she said.

That effort is already underway — a strong turnout at Joyce Daze, an alumni flag football game that drew about 20 graduates back to play the current students, and the school’s adoption of a stretch of the Olympic Discovery Trail as a service project, allowing students to take care of a piece of their community.

Lundvick is quick to credit what she’s found a Crescent — a new principal in Jeff Lunt whom she calls a good partner and the Joyce Community Education Foundation, which guarantees every Crescent graduate scholarship money.

“I’ve never been anywhere where it’s like that,” she said.

Staff report back to school on Aug. 24. Students arrive Aug. 27 and, in a way, the season begins.

Now that she doesn’t work the sideline anymore, Lundvick watches basketball games from the stands, although she admits she sometimes has to sit on her hands or pace to make it through all four quarters.

“I’ll always be a coach,” she said. “I just do my coaching in a different way now.”

________

Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.