Fort Myers High School honored its longtime head coach, Sam Sirianni Jr., with a retirement ceremony Thursday night. The event brought together former players, coaches, students and opposing coaches to celebrate his impactful four-decade career.<\/p>\n
Sam Sirianni Jr. spent 40 years at Fort Myers High School, taking over the program in 2002 from his father, Sam Sirianni Sr.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad had one of these, and my sister, who is the mastermind of this, and I knew it was coming, and maybe not to this extent. But I kind of got what I deserved because I laughed at my dad the night they surprised me because I got this trait from him,\u201d said Sirianni Jr.<\/p>\n
In over 20 years leading the Green Wave, Sirianni Jr. achieved 175 wins and 14 district titles. The Siranni’s are the only father-son duo in the state to win more than 150 games in their careers as the two led the Greenies for over 57 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were fortunate. We had great players. We had a lot of success, you know, on the scoreboard,\u201d said Sirianni Jr.<\/p>\n
However, Sirianni Jr. emphasized that he will miss the relationships he built more than the games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe time we spent on road trips and in the office, and the preparation and afterwards, when the kids and seeing their success outside of school, that\u2019s what I remember. Yeah, I\u2019ll remember games. We\u2019ll have selective memory on the good ones, as opposed to the bad ones, but it\u2019s more about the relationships. As I said, I could write a book, and it would have very little to do with the field,\u201d said Sirianni Jr.<\/p>\n
When asked about his legacy, Sirianni Jr. expressed his hopes for how he will be remembered.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully people remember that I love this school. I’ll always love this school. I was blessed, you know I was blessed and fortunate to be here all my life. And I just hope that kids that left here you know thought I gave them something to them that would help them in life more than as a coach or anything like that,\u201d said Sirianni Jr.<\/p>\n
With tears in his eyes during the ceremony, Sirianni Jr. acknowledged the significance of the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lot of great memories you know it\u2019ll be a night I always remember,\u201d said Sirianni Jr.<\/p>\n
Sirianni Jr. will be the grand marshal of the Edison Festival of Light Parade next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Myers High School honored its longtime head coach, Sam Sirianni Jr., with a retirement ceremony Thursday night.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,59316,60639],"class_list":{"0":"post-121056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cape-coral","8":"tag-cape-coral","9":"tag-cape-coral-headlines","10":"tag-cape-coral-news","11":"tag-fort-myers-high-school","12":"tag-sam-sirianni-jr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}