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02/11/2016 11:00 PMAnthony Pagano owns deep roots at Valley Regional and has coaching in his DNA. Born and raised in Essex, Anthony attended Valley, where he played football and basketball for the Warriors before graduating in 2010. Given his love for both sports and a natural ability to teach, Anthony was practically like a coach on the field during his playing days. Before he even graduated, Anthony was asked by football coach Tim King and offensive coordinator Kevin Woods—who’s also head coach of boys’ basketball—to help teach at spring practice his senior year and then he ran the passing camp for quarterbacks that summer.
Now at age 24, Anthony is the assistant offensive coordinator for Warriors’ football and also moved up the ranks to become Coach Woods’s right-hand man on the basketball court. Anthony helps with drawing up plays, making substitutions, and overall game strategy for Valley hoops, and also serves as head coach of the JV team. His intellect, work ethic, and all-around knowledge of the games have made Anthony’s transition from player to coach a seamless one.
“I have fun and really enjoy coaching. I love football and basketball and it makes it easy to do when you love doing it,” Anthony says. “It’s like a family—the staff and the team. Coach [Paul] Ginter, Coach [Bobby] Sanchez, Coach King and Coach Woods, they are all great people and I feel like I just had an instinct for coaching. I love the games, but also practice and watching film. I just enjoy every minute of it.”
Anthony joined the football squad’s staff as an assistant in 2010, working with the quarterbacks on offense and the secondary on defense. Anthony was at the field every day, putting in the time and effort to help young players grow, while attending Central Connecticut State University, from which he graduated with a degree in accounting in 2015. The Warriors have won their division four times during Anthony’s tenure and captured the program’s first state title with an undefeated season in 2014.
Anthony’s time on the sidelines with the basketball team began in 2011, when the Warriors took home the Class M state title. Although he wasn’t officially on staff yet, Anthony ran the scoreboard at games and did the team’s statistics. In the 2011-’12 campaign, Anthony became a volunteer assistant who worked with the kids at practice and had a spot on the bench during games, functioning as a bridge from the staff to the players. Anthony became even more involved the next season as his duties increased during Valley’s run to the Class S state crown in 2013. According to Coach Woods, Anthony has made a lasting impression on the Warriors’ athletes through his roles as the JV head coach and a varsity assistant.
“I coached Anthony as a player for football and basketball and now we’ve been working together for the past five or six years. He is incredibly hard-working and talented. He’s great with the players and they all love and respect him. He has such a tremendous knowledge of both sports, but also has brought a 21st century way of communicating to the game. He updates the websites, does the stats, handles the film room, and everything he does is appreciated,” Woods says. “The great thing is he was a protégé of mine, he played for me, and now he loves to coach. We’ve been together so long I don’t have to worry about substitutions on the basketball court because he knows what I’m thinking. I’ll turn around to send someone into the game and he already has them ready. He just knows. It allows me to focus on the game 100 percent. The same with football. Anthony will look at me and suggest a play and it was exactly what I was going to call. We are just really in tune and can communicate with just a look. That’s pretty cool.”
During his football career, Anthony was a quarterback and defensive back who won the Warriors’ Special Teams Player of the Year Award as a junior and the Rudy Award in his senior year. For basketball, Anthony played as a freshman and sophomore, but decided to step aside when he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. The stomach ailment, for which there is no cure, caused major discomfort and Anthony felt that playing both sports was too much stress on his body.
“I felt like I had to focus on my health and figure out what was wrong, so I stopped playing basketball,” he says. “I still wanted to be a part of it because I’d be miserable without sports, so that’s when I started doing the stats and scoreboard. After that, I took to coaching and just ran with it.”
Anthony’s been coaching at Valley Regional ever since. He loves mentoring young athletes to aid their maturity as both players and people, and everyone, including Coach King, seems to agree that Anthony has a bright future as long as he wants to continue coaching.
“He’s a wonderful young man, reliable, and a terrific coach. When Anthony wanted to get into coaching, it was a no-brainer. He’s a student of the game, energetic, just a great football mind,” King says. “His work ethic is going to help him out big-time. When he played for me, he was a coach on the field and his knowledge of the game is simply amazing. It almost seems like he’s reading Kevin’s mind on plays. They have all these names for plays and Anthony will yell out and Kevin will yell the same thing. It’s pretty special. I hope he’s here until I retire and then keeps going with it because he is one heck of a coach.”
Anthony’s love of football and basketball ensures that he will continue on as a coach. It’s just a matter of what he wants to do next. For now, Anthony is more than happy to be coaching at Valley and can’t see that changing any time soon.
“I’m going to do this as long as I can. We have a great program and a great system in place at Valley and I’d like to keep it going. Our motto here is to ‘Never Give Up’ because there’s always a chance and we truly believe we will find a way to win,” Anthony says. “I said it before, but we are a big family. The coaches, kids, everybody and I have to thank them all for giving me the opportunity to do what I love. I also have to thank my parents [Steve and Phyllis Pagano] because they have always supported me, given me great advice, and came to all my games. They still come and that means so much to have them there.”