Grant Community High product Kazlausky signs off with Air Force baseball
This happened in Colorado but hits close to home.
Mike Kazlausky, a graduate of Grant Community High School in Fox Lake, on July 15 announced his retirement as Air Force Academy head baseball coach after 16 years.
Since walking on to the Falcons baseball team in 1988, he’s been with the academy 36 years, including stints as a combat pilot, pilot evaluator, commanding officer and, now, in Air Force athletics as director of Leadership and Institutional Strategy. He retired from active service as a major.
“I have only worn two uniforms in my life, our nation's uniform and our Air Force baseball uniform,” Kazlausky said in his retirement address as coach.
“Those uniforms are woven into my identity,” he said. “I may be stepping away from the dugout, but I will never stop wearing them in my heart.”
Well, maybe three uniforms …
Kazlausky, who recruited Pittsburgh Pirates Cy Young Award-winner Paul Skenes as well as Libertyville pitcher Josh Holst, was a star for the Grant Bulldogs, inducted into the school’s Alumni Hall of Fame in 2016.
He played for his father, Fritz Kazlausky, head coach of Bulldogs baseball for 27 years (1968-94) and in the program 39 years. Grant’s field is named after Fritz Kazlausky. Spanning baseball, football and basketball the elder Kazlausky coached 95 seasons. He’s in the Illinois Baseball Coaches and Illinois Basketball Coaches halls of fame.
“All through his younger days and high school he was always a leader,” Fritz Kazlausky said of his son in an email.
“To this day, former students and players always said to me, ‘Mike would always succeed in whatever he does,’” he said.
An infielder and four-year starter at Air Force, Mike Kazlausky led the team in hitting in 1989 and 1991. Twice all-Western Athletic Conference, he graduated with eight program records and still holds three of them.
As coach, Kazlausky led Air Force to the 2022 Mountain West Tournament championship. That earned the Falcons’ first NCAA Regional bid in 53 years.
He managed the most games, 835, and won the most, 360, in program history.
Fritz Kazlausky said his son’s focus was developing quality people, not necessarily star ballplayers.
“(The) mission will stay the same,” Mike Kazlausky wrote in an email to the baseball program announcing his retirement as coach.
“Raising great men,” he wrote, “great husbands, and great fathers.”
Pickleball pros
Barrington High School graduate Ammar Wazir, of Hoffman Estates, repeated as men’s singles champion Sunday at the Association of Pickleball Players Vlasic Classic in Highland Park.
Wazir beat collegiate champion Jayden Broderick of South Carolina 11-2, 11-2 to win the title at the $125,000 APP event, both earning slots at the 2026 USA Pickleball National Championships Oct. 31-Nov. 8 in San Diego.
Two women from Geneva, Baili Hernandez and Klara Nowak, won the AARP Champions Pro doubles bracket for women 50 and older. Hernandez also took silver in mixed doubles with Lombard’s Marcel Borcean.
Buffalo Grove’s Chuck Feinstein and partner David Spearman of Georgia won the AARP Masters Pro doubles title for men 60 and up.
A lifer
A release about Aug. 22-23 basketball clinics in Naperville featuring former Bulls 3-point artist Craig Hodges included the name Jarrett Starwood. We were intrigued.
Coming to Aurora from Baton Rouge, Louisiana., Starwood was a talented, mercurial guard for Waubonsie Valley, Class of 2004.
Now managing the basketball training facility Shoot 360, it’s hard to believe Starwood will turn 40 in October. Time flies.
His son, Jehvion, “was a pretty good player” at Oswego East before he graduated in 2024, Jarrett Starwood said.
Jarrett Starwood assisted with the Waubonsie boys for several recent seasons before stepping down. At Shoot 360 he’s helped train such players as Kaneland’s Marshawn Cocroft, Waubonsie Valley’s Tyreek Coleman and Neuqua Valley’s John Poulakidas.
Now he’ll rub shoulders with Hodges.
“We wanted to bring somebody with a world of experience,” Starwood said. “What’s better than a 3-point champion from the Bulls?”
His player development experience at Shoot 360 has been “really good,” Starwood said.
“It’s been great being part of the community and do what I love to do,” he said, “and give back to everybody.”
doberhelman@dailyherald.com