North Coast Section commissioner Pat Cruickshank will retire at the end of the 2025-26 school year, he confirmed Friday to the Bay Area News Group.

Cruickshank has served as the NCS commissioner since 2019, when he succeeded Gil Lemmon in the role. Cruickshank had previously been an NCS assistant commissioner for the 2018-19 school year after coaching basketball and leading the athletic department at Heritage High in Brentwood.

The replacement for Cruickshank, 66, will be the NCS’s fifth commissioner in the past 54 years. Cruickshank was preceded in the role by Lemmon, Paul Gaddini and Tom Ehrhorn.

A year before he joined the NCS office, Cruickshank won the NCS Division I boys basketball championship, beating Dublin 100-98 in a double-overtime title-game thriller.

The process to select

See Full Page