Telegraph photo by TOM KING Alvirne High School baseball coach Mike Lee is retiring after 38 years as the Broncos head baseball coach.

HUDSON – A coaching legend at Alvirne High School is calling it quits.

Mike Lee left the field after a season ending walk-off loss in Rochester vs. Spaulding High School in May of 2019 fully expecting to return this spring for what would have been a 38th straight campaign as the Alvirne High School baseball coach.

“It was a great atmosphere, and leaving the field that day, I had the feeling that I can’t wait to get back at it with these guys,” Lee said Wednesday. “It was an experience that would hold them in good stead and I told them that.”

And then he changed his mind.

“But the more I thought about it,” he said, “I said, ‘This is it.’ I want the next guy who takes over to have a veteran team, and not a young team in his first year. I’ve seen how difficult it is for coaches these days across sports to survive these days without administrative support, parent support, etc.

“That’s the logic. I certainly to leave with (his successor) having his best shot and make a good first impression. That’s the key. It’s a different world in terms of surviving these days. … It would take the pressure off.”

So Lee told his team, with a strong core of juniors, right before the pandemic cancelled the season that this spring would likely be his last as their head coach. He is also retiring as a teacher, and leaves Alvirne with a 357-360 career mark and a spot in the New Hampshire Interscholastic Coaches Association Hall of Fame. The school made the announcement Wednesday night on its virtual sports awards night that aired on Hudson Community TV.

Lee, whose first season at Alvirne was in 1983, guided the Broncos to three Class L/Division I finals. They were edged by Portsmouth 2-1 in 1988, lost to Nashua 11-4 in 2001, and was beaten by Keene, 9-4, in 2009. His program’s last deep tourney run came in 2016 but ended in the Division I semis with an upset loss at the hands of local rival Bishop Guertin at Holman Stadium.

He leaves as the longest tenured varsity coach in Alvirne’s history, and was the dean of current New Hampshire Division I baseball coaching fraternity. He had two players make it to the professional ranks, as Kyle Jackson was a pitcher in the Red Sox system and Bobby Tewksbary had a career in the independent leagues. Both are still in the game; Jackson is the manager of the Nashua Silver Knights of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League and Tewksbary is a noted hitting instructor who has worked with Major Leaguers. Also, a few years ago Lee had the unique situation of coaching against his son Derek, who at that time was the head coach at Windham. Derek Lee is now an administrator at Pinkerton Academy.

And, of course, Lee also coached his boss of the last few years, Alvirne principal Steve Beals, who played for Lee from 1983-85.

“I really had a wonderful role model and mentor (in Lee),” Alvirne principal Steve Beals said in making the announcement. Beals has coached at Alvirne under Lee and also has been a coach in the youth and American Legion level in Hudson, “and it was very directly Mike Lee who shaped so much of that experience. … Mike Lee has been a significant part of my life through the dedicated efforts of what he taught us of how to play baseball the right way.”

Lee, 65, began his high school coaching career as the freshman coach at Bishop Guertin, a role he had for four seasons to the tune of a 57-14 record before getting the Alvirne varsity job. He said he learned a great deal from then Cards head coach Bill Dod, who retired two years ago at Souhegan as the winningest coach in New Hampshire.

“Some great kids,” Lee said of his time at BG. “It’s Bill Dod that I’m here today as a baseball coach. The biggest thing I learned from Bill is that the game is fun.”

Lee said while he’ll miss coaching, he won’t miss the bad spring weather. “I swear it’s getting worse and worse,” he said with a chuckle. “Until the end of May I’d say we didn’t have ideal baseball weather.

“So I won’t miss that, but I’ll for sure miss the kids, the competition, the umpires. I told (the players) I’ll be their number one fan. I’ll be around, cheering them on, watching this senior group do their thing. Hopefully they’ll get an opportunity to do it, there won’t be a second (coronavirus) wave, and they’ll have an opportunity to get out there.”

Lee’s teams were always known for their aggressive play on the basepaths and in other tactical areas of the game, a way for the Broncos to compete and partially overcome the fact they weren’t always blessed with supreme talent.

“That’s probably the other No. 1 thing I learned from Bill Dod,” Lee said. “I took what we did at BG and I said, it works pretty well with Bill, I like it, he knew what every (opposing) kid could do. You look for any edge you can get in the course of a game.”

But Lee will be hailed at Alvirne as a coach who helped shape quality athletes in terms of character.

“Everybody would like to look back on a legacy and have it defined by the quantity of championships and wins and losses,” Beals said. “I prefer to look at it as the qualities of individuals that came out of the baseball program coached by Mike Lee.”

The school also announced it has established the Michael Lee Scholar Athlete award, one each to be given to a male and female student-athlete. Alec Dubois and Abbey Dubois were named the first recipients on Wednesday evening.

Newsletter