SAUGUS — Leading a varsity team for the first time can be daunting, but Saugus High School baseball coach Mike Mabee said he leaned on both his players and experienced colleagues to make his inaugural season a success.
“Overall, I’d say it was a good experience. I definitely gained a lot of experience, leading a varsity team for the first time,” Mabee said. “I think what made it easier for me was the senior class. We had eight seniors and five of them were everyday starters. They really made it kind of seamless for me to go in there and set the culture I was looking to implement. Using that experience that we gained this year, hopefully we can build on that last year.”
Mabee took over after former coach Joe Luis left earlier in the year.
“Even though he left abruptly, it still gave me a good amount of time to prepare,” Mabee said. “I believe he left around late January, early February, so it gave me a couple of months to know what I want to do, get my staff ready, and give the players some sort of preseason program. We started lifting pretty much as soon as I was hired. That helped us get off to a good start. Then in March we were able to get off the train tracks running right away.”
While he played in the Northeastern Conference, coaching gave Mabee a fresh perspective on the competitiveness of the league.
“Just the competitiveness of it, seeing it from a coach’s perspective is a little bit different than playing in it every day. You get to see how different coaches are and how they handle themselves. I definitely learned a lot from the coaches in the league and just seeing how the players handle themselves,” he said. “There’s a ton of great ball players we got to play against this year, and seeing it from a coach’s perspective, I appreciate it a bit more rather than going and competing in it myself.”
Mabee also credited veteran coaches around the NEC for guiding him through his first year.
“Coach [Joe] Caponigro of Swampscott actually coached my dad back in the day, so I’ve known him for quite a bit. He’s awesome,” Mabee said. “Whenever I had a question for him he would always answer. We got to talk about his players, our players, and how he developed things. I asked him questions regarding how to handle umpire stuff just so I knew how to do it the right way. He’s always been receptive and helped me out a ton.”
He also leaned Marblehead’s Mike Giardi and Beverly’s Jon Cahill.
“All of these guys have been a great resource for me. They’ve been in the league for a while, so getting to use them as a resource to help me build my program has been great,” Mabee said.
The season also taught Mabee lessons in balancing immediate responsibilities with long-term goals.
“The biggest thing is that we want to make the tournament and make a run in the playoffs. But you have to have a plan for that in the long term, and you have to be able to take care of your business day by day,” he said. “I think we started to do that. We had plans and we executed more times than not, but if we can find that balance of attacking each day and also planning for the long run, we can set ourselves up for a playoff push.”
For Mabee, the highlight of the year was simply being back in his hometown.
“There’s nothing like coming back to your hometown and going to coach the team that you once played for,” he said. “Hopefully the kids that I coached, the seniors, will want to come back and either coach or help this program in some way.”
