South Sound YMCA Leader Retiring After Nearly 40 Years of Service
Jul 17, 2026, 10:59 AM
South Sound Business
Originally published on South Sound Business.
South Sound YMCA President and CEO Kyle Cronk is retiring after 38 years spent with the organization. His last day will be Dec. 31.
“The (YMCA) buildings matter because of what happens inside them,” Cronk said in a press release announcing the news. “A family who learns to swim together. A young multicultural staffer who sees themselves in leadership for the first time. A middle-schooler who finds an adult who believes in them. That’s the work. Everything else is just the container.”
Before starting his decade-long tenure with the South Sound YMCA, Cronk was president and CEO of the Olympic Peninsula YMCA, where he led the revamp of the Sequim Area Aquatic Center into a full YMCA. When he came aboard the South Sound YMCA, Cronk immediately collaborated with Mason County community leaders to raise $13 million, in a little more than a year, to construct the Shelton Family YMCA, which today serves nearly 8,000 county residents, the release said.
A key tenet of Cronk’s leadership, the release noted, was addressing systemic inequity.
“Under Kyle’s leadership, being an anti-racist, multicultural organization is who we are as a YMCA,” Anthony Brock, chair of the South Sound YMCA Board of Trustees, said in the release. “It is through learning together in community that we become better able to serve all people who walk through our doors.”
The South Sound YMCA is next planning to launch a nationwide search for Cronk’s successor. Led by Cronk himself, the search committee is aiming to name his replacement by January.
