By Josh Martinez
Twitter: @jmartinez064

When Saguaro High School hired Lucas Ramirez to lead its boys basketball program, it got more than just a new coach.

Mr. Ramirez, 27, comes to Saguaro from his alma mater Horizon High School where he was an assistant coach for the past three seasons. This will be his first head coaching job of his career, which spans back to when he was an 18-year-old coach at North Canyon High School.

Aside from his resume, Mr. Ramirez brings with him a relationship-focused mindset; a solid social media presence; a passion for supporting the community; and a vision for where he hopes to lead the program.

Mr. Ramirez replaces longtime coach Bob LaRue, who has been a coach at Saguaro for 31 years, 21 as head coach up until his resignation. The Sabercats won a state championship under his leadership in 2004 but went 4-21 last season.

Saguaro Athletic Director Brandon Johnston said he firmly believes Mr. Ramirez is ready to take the next step in becoming a head coach because he’s received solid recommendations from past coaches.

“He is a strong communicator, detail-oriented and a dynamic leader that holds high expectations of all stakeholders in his program,” Mr. Johnston said via email.

“He holds himself to those same high standards as well. He has a clear vision of what he wants Saguaro Boys Basketball to be and an understanding of what it will take to accomplish that. We’re excited for our student-athletes as we think we’ve found a great fit for Saguaro in Coach Ramirez.”

Despite the limited face-to-face exposure, rising senior Marcos Putnam said Mr. Ramirez’s excitement for the game is infectious.

“He’s one of the most hungry coaches I’ve ever seen,” Putnam said. “He loves every part of basketball. The workouts and just getting better, he’s always motivating all of his players. He’s constantly trying to contact them. I love that. It makes me want to get up every morning and get a good workout in because he just sent a new one yesterday.”

Mr. Ramirez hopes to build a program that invokes pride in the school, his players, the community and himself. But that pride won’t only come from the basketball court, he said. Rather, he hopes it’ll come from on-court play and off-court activities in the school and the community.

“It’s not about what the scoreboard says,” he said. “I know that’s cliche, but we’re going to do everything we can to be the best we can be in every facet of our lives.”

A coach’s journey

Mr. Ramirez has loved basketball since he was a young child. He said he vaguely remembers watching Michael Jordan’s game with his parents. He spent his prep years at Horizon, playing under Paul Long before graduating in 2011.

Upon graduating, Mr. Ramirez said he felt coaching was the best route for him. He started coaching under Mike O’Guinn at North Canyon while attending Scottsdale Community College and later, Arizona State University. During that time, he also coached the Arizona Rebels Amateur Athletic Union team until 2015.

The next step was an assistant coaching job at Phoenix College under Matt Gordon. Two seasons later, he found himself on the bench next to Arizona High School Athletics Coach Hall of Famer Jerry Conner at Horizon.

But basketball wasn’t the only waters Mr. Ramirez tested. While at Horizon, he helped coach track and field, football and baseball as well as being an athletic event worker.

While Horizon was his home for many years, Mr. Ramirez said he liked Saguaro because of the athletic history the school exhibits and the community around the school.

“It’s a really strong and supportive community,” he said. “And, of course, the school from the top down. I think there’s a great administration there who’s passionate about all of its programs from athletics to fine arts to the education itself. Quite frankly, I love the talent we have coming back on the roster.”

Not only will Mr. Ramirez look to strengthen that roster, but he’ll work to build relationships with those players. Relationships are what he finds as the most rewarding part of coaching.

During the pandemic, Mr. Ramirez couldn’t meet with his players but he did push for online meetings and workouts. He said he believes this has helped him start forming relationships with his players.

“I’m a big relationship guy,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. That’s what I get excited about. That’s what I’ve enjoyed over the past few months is getting to know our players. That’s what I’m really looking forward to on Monday,. ... I’ll finally be able to be in the same place as them, socially distanced of course.”

Putnam agrees, saying while the pandemic has kept the team separated and many players have yet to meet Mr. Ramirez personally, his efforts are obvious and they’re having a positive effect on the players.

Putnam says Mr. Ramirez has done one-on-one meetings with the players as well as team meetings as a way to ignite the kindling of future relationships. Although those meetings had a lot of basketball talk, Putnam said they were also focused on getting to know the player.

“Although I did know coach, I feel like during this quarantine and stuff I haven’t seen him but we’ve gotten closer,” he said.

Mr. Ramirez comes into Saguaro at a young age, though he’s been coaching since he was 18. Age doesn’t matter to him, because it’s more important for a coach to build solid relationships with their players.

But that mindset wasn’t always present. Mr. Ramirez said early in his career, he felt intimidated because he was young and at times, younger than some players such as at Phoenix College.
Since then, he’s learned several key components to becoming the coach he is today.

“I think if you combine all those things --- being invested in their lives, genuinely caring about them and genuinely building that relationship on top of coaching them hard, knowing you’re going to push them hard but you’re going to love them just as hard as well, that’s when you have success,” he said.

A coach and more

His efforts, however, don’t just stop with his players. While at Horizon, Mr. Ramirez was involved in many facets of the school, both in and out of athletics.

Along with his many coaching hats, Mr. Ramirez attended choir performances and theater productions. He also volunteered with Horizon’s student government.

He said he’d do all this because he wanted to be supportive of a community and a school that supported him as a student.

Though he won’t be able to be as involved as he was at Horizon since he has more responsibility, he still plans to be active in the Saguaro community.

“I think it was instilled in me at a young age that it’s important to be a part of something that is bigger than yourself,” Mr. Ramirez said. “Whether you’re a member of athletics, whether you’re involved in theater at your school, no matter what it is, it’s always important to have a sense of community that supports something.”

Mr. Ramirez hopes to instill this mindset in his players and to help them support those who come out to support them. In the early goings, Putnam says he’s felt motivated.

“It won’t always be basketball, it’ll be life things where he’ll motivate us to get involved in the community, be good leaders and I think that’s awesome to make basketball more than just a sport,” he said. “Making it a life thing. Teaching us the right things and we haven’t really started yet that’s what the awesome thing is.”

As part of his transplant into the community, Mr. Ramirez will also teach social studies at Saguaro. While at Horizon, he enjoyed being on campus around the basketball players and said he is happy to do the same at Saguaro.

Another place, people can find Mr. Ramirez making his mark is on social media. He has an active Twitter account where he posts on a bevy of different topics.

His posts range from championing calls for social justice to positive quotes and inspiration to highlighting news from the school and district. He says his focus on social media is because he believes it is the way of the world and a good place to promote the program and players.

“I think it’s all about promoting positivity and doing that the best way possible,” he said.

While there’s still a lot left to be written in the Saguaro history books, Putnam says he is optimistic because of what he’s seen so far from his new coach.

“It’s very difficult for him to try and connect with us when a lot of us haven’t met him but he’s done an amazing job with it,” he said.

“I’m just beyond excited to see how my senior year goes with great change.”