Mica Mountain’s Nugent began climb to state title long ago | Greg Hansen

His uncle, Tom, was the head football coach at Florida State and Maryland. His father, John, was a Hall of Fame prep football coach at Rye High School in New York, selected the 1975 New York high school football coach of the year.

Pat, an all-region prep quarterback at Rye High in 1985, has coached Mica Mountain to a 13-0 record and into Friday’s Class 4A state championship game in Tempe. It runs in the family, right?

He began his climb up the football ladder in 1986 as a student manager under Arizona coach Larry Smith. He spent seven years on the Flowing Wells staff before he became the Caballeros head coach in 1997, leading to head coaching jobs at CDO, Pima College, Cienega and now Mica Mountain. He has won 166 high school games, No. 5 in Tucson history.

The only thing that escapes Nugent is a state championship.

Nugent has been in the game so long that in 1986 he was part of the UA football staff that included graduate assistant offensive line coach Marty Schaetzle, who went on to coach at NAU, Bucknell and for 20 years was the head coach at Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania.

On Friday, Schaetzle, who has moved back to Arizona and plans to move to Tucson this summer, was on the field, an assistant coach for Yuma Catholic, as Nugent’s Thunderbolts won 24-14. Talk about coming full circle.