Tony Staffiere was named the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class B Coach of the Year this season. But the Mount View High School girls basketball coach has stepped down to concentrate on his young family.
“It was an easy decision,” said the 41-year-old Staffiere, the father of a nearly 4-year-old son Gabriel and an infant daughter Natalie. “I was told before I got into this business that I would wind up spending more time with other people’s children than my own and I really felt it this year.
“I definitely needed to make the change. I’m very excited about spending a little more time at home during the winter months,” said the Veazie native, a 1994 John Bapst High School graduate.
He said travel played a large part in his decision.
Staffiere, wife Sarah and their kids live in Waterville. He works at the University of Maine-Augusta.
It was a 45-minute trip one way from his office to Thorndike and 32 minutes from home to the high school. He worked until 4:30 p.m. and weekday basketball practices began at 6:30 p.m.
“And driving the back roads wasn’t easy,” he said.
His Mustangs went 6-12 each season but this year’s team finished 12th and earned the school’s first trip to the preliminary round of the Class B North tournament since 2008. It lost to Winslow.
Five regular-season losses were to Class A contenders Skowhegan, Nokomis of Newport and Camden Hills of Rockport, who went a combined 39-15.
After losing to Skowhegan in their regular season finale, Mount View assumed it missed the playoffs.
“Tears were flowing in the locker room. I was thanking everyone and then our athletic director [Chris Moreau] came in and said Spruce Mountain had knocked off [Maine Central Institute] so we were in,” chuckled Staffiere. “I said let’s do a 180. We’ve got to get ready to play a tournament game.
“This put a bit of validation on what we were building,” he said.
He enjoyed his two seasons at Mount View.
“I liked being able to push the kids, watch them develop and see them go on to do greater things,” said Staffiere. “We had the same record as last year but we beat more point-worthy teams this year. Our upset of Waterville was incredible. Our kids deserve a lot of credit for hanging in.”
He didn’t have enough players to field a JV team but expects the new coach to have one. One senior graduated, 11 players will return and they will have a handful of newcomers.
He will continue to run his CORE (Conditioning, Overload, Repetition and Elements) Values Basketball sessions twice a week during two, five-week sessions (one in the spring, one in the fall) at the Gilman Street Basketball Club in Waterville and he said he may get back into coaching when his kids are older.
He said he was honored to be named the coach of the year by his peers.