Baseball: Cary-Grove’s Ryan Passaglia steps down as head coach

Ryan Passaglia knows he will miss baseball and feels “weird” when he watches Cary-Grove’s summer camps now and is not a part of them, like he was in the previous 26 years.

But he knows the payoff is coming, which is why he recently resigned as the Trojans’ baseball coach after five seasons. C-G was 96-66 under Passaglia and won three regional titles, including each of the past two seasons.

“I knew when I got into coaching there would be sacrifice on the part of my family,” Passaglia said. “Every coach realizes that, and I feel very fortunate and blessed to have coached as many seasons as I have in 26 years. I owe all of that to my wife (Amy), who gave me the grace to be able to do that.”

In the past few spring seasons, however, Passaglia missed his daughter Lauren’s soccer games and his son Derek’s tennis matches, and that gnawed at him.

“I can count on one hand the number of matches I saw him play in four years because of my baseball coaching commitment,” Passaglia said. “That sacrifice has kind of started to turn into regret. I’ve been thinking a lot about this for a couple years.”

As Passaglia was coaching baseball games his mind would wander to what other activity of his own children he was missing. He became determined to be there for daughter Kailyn, who will enter the seventh grade this fall, when she was competing in sports.

“I realized I had to change something,” he said. “I’ve made the decision I’m not going to miss her activities. She’s getting involved in travel basketball, travel soccer, she’ll be starting volleyball soon.

“She’s very much like my oldest daughter, she’s getting involved in a lot of stuff. My wife and I made the decision, ‘Enough is enough.’ "

Passaglia, a 1994 C-G graduate, will remain as an assistant on football coach Brad Seaburg’s staff. The Trojans won the Class 6A state championship in 2023 and in 2021.

Passaglia played baseball and football at NCAA Division III North Central College and returned to his alma mater, where he teaches math and coaches. Adding in one season as a girls basketball assistant early in his career, at Prairie Ridge, and Passaglia has 53 coaching seasons total.

When Don Sutherland stepped away from C-G’s baseball program after 31 seasons, following the 2018 season, Passaglia took over. He had the enjoyment of having Quinn Priester, the No. 18 overall pick in the 2019 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft, on his first team. Priester currently is on the 15-day injured list with a lat muscle injury with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Trojans won a Class 4A regional title that season, then won Class 3A regionals each of the past two seasons.

Passaglia marvels at coaches like Sutherland, who were head coaches for decades.

“It blows my mind how you can do something for so long,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of coaches who are head coaches and coach other sports. The demand of being head coach at any level is starting to get greater and greater in terms of the time it takes to do justice to that sport. Football is absolutely a year-round commitment and baseball is getting that way as well, especially if you want to compete in a great conference like we have.

“It was a nice little run. We had some good teams in there.”