Farron Riggs is more than just a varsity baseball coach at RHS, he has become a mentor to many players who have come through the program. After finishing the 2018 season with a 15-3 record, Riggs won the Maryland State Baseball Coach of the Year award.

“He just talks to me, he knows what’s going on in your life especially when it comes to school and he asks how he can make your day better,” senior center fielder Matt McTighe said. “He’s been doing that for the past 10 years of my life. I know I can always ask him anything, it’s a relationship higher than the normal coach-player relationship. It’s two friends just talking to each other and making sure everything is alright.”

Last season, the team won their first division championship during Riggs’ tenure as head coach for the past 20 years with the previous division championship coming in 1993. The team is confident they will be able to add another to their resume this year, even after losing many seniors from last season.

“We lost some great guys like Chris Ribaudo and Will Wheeler, but Matt McTighe and young guys like Donovan Shekdar and Lucas Ribaudo will make sure we have another great season. We want to make another deep playoff run and show what we can do,” senior varsity catcher Manoli Athanasakis said.

Before coaching, Riggs played baseball for RHS and continued his baseball career in college playing two years at Francis Marion University and then played his last two years at North Carolina State University. When Riggs first started coaching at RHS he started by coaching the JV team for two years before assuming the varsity coaching position.

Riggs enters his 21st season coaching the varsity team with this state award and the Montgomery County Coach of the Year awards he earned in 2011 and 2018.  While winning the awards is a great accomplishment, he said, he gives the credit to his players and his coaching staff.

“It’s a great honor to be given any type of award, to me it’s more about what our players have done and what our coaches have done, and all the support I’ve gotten over the years. That’s the most important thing to me, it represents what they’ve done, especially the past few years which have been awesome,” Riggs said.