Legendary coach Ray Evans earns career win No. 500

Flanagan baseball coach Ray Evans has collected several lasting memories during his time coaching at Flanagan, with three state titles and one national championship.

He added another one on Thursday night, earning his 500th career win – 309 of them with the Falcons – in a 12-0 district victory over Miramar at home.

“Honestly, it just means I’ve been doing it a long time,” Evans joked in a phone conversation with the Sun Sentinel on Friday. “It’s a milestone, but it’s not going to be my last milestone.”

It’s not a bad number for someone who admits early on in his career he figured he’d jump in and out of the high school ranks quickly to move on to college ball.

“I liked it at this level too much,” Evans said. “They’re young kids and I saw that I can go ahead and make a difference in guiding them in the right direction and learning how to play the game right. It’s just been really rewarding to watch the kids grow into young men.”

Joining Flanagan before the spring 2004 season, Evans has led the Falcons to state titles in 2005, 2006 and 2010. That 2010 team also was named national champions by Baseball America. That call notifying him of the national No. 1 ranking and the last outs of all those state finals — plus several other district titles — are among his fondest memories, but to him, it’s also about the process of helping his players.

“It’s just try to get them to be good kids — do the right thing, be respectful, move on to bigger and better things after this,” he said. “It’s going to be over one day, and then it’s all those life lessons you’ve learned from athletics.”

Before Flanagan, Evans started his high school baseball coaching career at Miami Beach from 1990 to 1998. He then took over at Miami Krop, when the school opened during the 1998-99 school year.

On Thursday, Evans’ son, Tyler Evans, led off the five-inning victory over the Patriots with a triple to get the offense rolling. Four different pitchers saw action as Luis Moriyon started and earned the win.

Flanagan is 7-1 and next plays a key District 12-9A game at West Broward on Tuesday.