Briggeman | Newly developed winning culture of Air Force baseball a reflection of coach Mike Kazlausky (2024)

If a singular statistic sums up Air Force’s rise to the top of the Mountain West, here it is.

Ninety-five percent.

That’s the estimated number of baseball-playing academy graduates that coach Mike Kazlausky expects will proceed to pilot training, special forces or medical school.

To earn those placements at the ultra-competitive service academy, a cadet must be all-in. Spend any time with the coach they call “Kaz,” and it’s clear where that example is set.

“When you first talk to Kaz, he tells you this is the greatest school in the world,” said pitcher Ben Weber, who earned victories Friday and Saturday as the Falcons finished a three-game sweep of Fresno State to capture the program’s first regular-season Mountain West title.

“You believe him by the time your (recruiting) visit is over.”

There’s no template for success as an Air Force coach. In football, Fisher DeBerry’s folksy, charming personality differed greatly from the no-nonsense, buttoned-up approach of his replacement, Troy Calhoun. But the two of them have kept the program at an elevated level since the early 1980s. Chris Gobrecht, who built the women’s basketball program into a winner, never claimed to possess the hilarious wit of hockey coach Frank Serratore. Still, both are the unequivocally best to have led their programs.

Kazlausky’s intense, caricature-adjacent persona is impossible to adequately describe. The dial is turned to 11 and stuck in that position. But it would work anywhere because its roots are embedded in absolutely authenticity.

He’s practiced everything he preaches.

He was a standout player for Air Force. He served two decades on active duty, primarily as a C-17 pilot. He flew missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He was serving as an instructor at the academy in Sept. 2001. After the events of 9/11, he voluntarily left that role to return to combat.

And if that isn’t enough, he can share this in the living room of recruits – he sent both of his kids to the Air Force Academy.

He has personally transported the bodies of fallen servicemen from the Middle East back home. He has dealt with the deaths of two of his former players, 2nd Lt. Travis Wilkie and cadet Nick Duran.

The result is a coach who proselytizes the bigger mission of the academy at every opportunity to the point where it drips from him with no filter.

“We’re here to put warheads on foreheads,” he has said in his unabashed style of describing the ultimate purpose of training future officers of the Air Force at the academy. “Turn people into hair, teeth and eyeballs for our country.”

Someone so deeply bought-in is bound to inspire and influence those under their command, and that’s what has led to culture feeding Air Force’s program.

“I give all the credit to coach Kaz,” sophom*ore Charlie Jones said after his grand slam all but sealed the conference title. “He’s earned it, he deserves it and I’m so glad we were able to give it to him.”

Air Force hadn’t finished above .500 as a member of an NCAA Division I conference in 39 tries before the Kazlausky-led team accomplished the feat in 2021. In 2022, the Falcons broke through and won the conference tournament.

Kazlausky, in his 14th season, is now Air Force’s all-time winningest coach. He has turned a long downtrodden program – one that was nearly cut for budget purposes in 2013 – into a fixture near the top of the conference. His program produced the first service academy graduate to reach the major leagues (Minnesota reliever Griffin Jax), and another of his players became the first overall MLB Draft selection in 2023 (Paul Skenes, who played two years at Air Force).

His program has produced 42 All-Mountain West players and 117 academic All-Mountain West selections. This doesn’t begin to touch on the many cadet leadership roles his players hold.

This is all part of an approach that demands his cadet-athletes submerse themselves into the full experience during their time at the academy. More to the point, he finds recruits who seek that.

"He does a great job in recruiting boys who are willing to be a little different," said Jax after earning a hold in a win over the Nationals on Wednesday. "It’s not the path for everyone, and he makes sure everyone is aware of the tough road. But he makes sure you work and do it for those around you. He’s perfect for that program and I couldn’t’ imagine anyone else for the role."

Kazlausky says the three best jobs in the country are at Air Force, Army and Navy, and he never intends to work anywhere else. It is at a service academy where he has learned to use baseball for something he considers much more important.

“We expect them to be at the tip of the spear,” said Kazlausky, who retired from active duty with the rank of major. “We are preparing them on the ‘friendly fields of strife,’ to learn how to deal with adversity, stress, pressure, teamwork, winning and losing as it will really matter when the ‘real game’ they get to play, which is called war.

“We expect our baseball cadets to be in the field and not sitting on the bench.”

UP NEXT

Top-seeded Air Force opens the Mountain West Tournament vs. No. 4 Fresno State at 7 p.m. Thursday in San Diego.