As head coach of the Fountain Hills High School baseball team, Mike Briguglio has stressed numerous times that he never looks ahead to the team’s next opponent. As he puts it, if you focus instead on simply playing the game well on a day to day basis, everything else will fall into place.

Over the past 20 years, that’s how he’s handled his tenure within the Fountain Hills Unified School District, too. When he started back in 1997, he said he never worried about what was coming next or how long he’d be a Falcon in the nest that is FHHS. He said he just kept moving forward a year at a time and, the next thing you know, two decades had passed.

A couple of weeks ago, Briguglio announced that he would be retiring from the local district, with girls basketball coach and local educator Amanda Baca stepping in to fill the role of Athletic Director. Briguglio’s position of Dean of Students at the high school is being filled and, by next spring, a new baseball coach will be in place.

After 20 years, though, it’s impossible to deny that he’s left a mark on the local district and baseball program.

Briguglio started off as a teacher in FHUSD, beginning with seventh grade science in 1997. He moved on to social studies and then history.

“For my first six years I was teaching,” Briguglio said. “Oh, and there was a year in there where I taught PE, too. I was certified in science, social studies and PE, so I bounced around everywhere.”

For the past 14 years Briguglio has been on the administrative side, including Athletic Director and Dean of Students at FHHS. He took over the baseball team during his first fall in the district, the programs third coach in four years.

“There had only been three varsity season before that, so it wasn’t a total rebuild so much as a total build for the program,” Briguglio said. “We were playing at Golden Eagle Park. It was a softball-sized field at the time, so we had to literally put in a scoreboard, move the plate back to make the baselines proper and, from the ground up, make a lot of changes.”

Briguglio said he remembers not even having a place to store equipment, so all of the team’s gear had to be lugged around in his trunk. Eventually the Middle School was built, along with the new team fields.

Briguglio said it was fun getting to put his mark on the new program and, by the time his first group of freshmen were seniors, the team had won its first state title.

There have been plenty of other accomplishments over the years. For sports fans who like their stats, that includes a 471-142 record over all of those season, with 20 consecutive trips to the state playoffs. That tenure includes four state titles, three runner-up standings and 12 region titles. Briguglio himself earned 20 coaching honors over the years, plus a 2009 induction into the Arizona Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Even the field, which Briguglio and his team take great pride in maintaining, earned 10 honors on both the state and region level.

“As I’ve talked about with the kids over the years, it’s all about the journey,” Briguglio said. “I never thought one way or another about how long I’d be here. I just thought about the day to day, and it’s been great.”

When asked about his proudest achievement over the years, he said it was seeing how the alumni have turned out.

“We have an alumni game every year and 30-40 games come back to play and watch,” Briguglio said. “I love seeing how they’ve turned out. We have captains in the Air Force, a doctor, a lawyer, a couple of teachers and a couple of coaches… I love when we have guys introducing me to their kids, saying they’re teaching them to play baseball the same way I taught them.”

Along with the players, Briguglio said none of the successes would have been possible without the help of his assistant coaches, including mainstays Brian Romanick, Chris Peterson, Carl Galietti and Pat Gammill.

“The fun thing about sports and athletics is that, good year or bad year, you always get a restart,” Briguglio said. “Each season is new faces, new opportunities and new hopes. It’s rejuvenating. That’s what keeps you young and keeps you coming back.”

Speaking of which, while Briguglio is retiring from FHUSD, he’s not stepping away from education or baseball. Instead, he’s throttling back a little, stepping away from the hustle and bustle of administrative duties to come full circle. Starting this fall, he’ll be back to teaching PE and coaching baseball at a private school, Bourgade Catholic.

“My goal in retirement has always been to drive my tractor and coach baseball,” Briguglio said. “With less demands, I’ll be able to teach a few classes and do exactly that.”

Looking back, Briguglio said he has many fond memories of coaching and working in FHUSD.

“It was a labor of love,” he said. “The benefit from the kids and the families, over the long haul, was more than I could have asked for. It was a wonderful time in my life.

“When I first got the job, I went to Golden Eagle Park, went out to center field, laid in the grass and I said a prayer…And it couldn’t have worked out better.”