Coach Roy Salvemini has been guiding the junior varsity (JV) players on the Armijo High School baseball team for three years, but before that he coached players on the Suisun Little League team and Fairfield Pacific.

Coach Salvemini played at Armijo for the four years he attended, and graduated in 1998. He played a total of 16 years before going into coaching. “When I finished (playing), I missed being a part of it so much that I jumped into coaching a couple of years after I got done playing in college,” he said.

While coaching takes up a large part of his life, his real job is working as a project manager for Signal Solutions, a Bay Area telecom and audio /visual company. With what free time he has left over, he enjoys golf a couple of times a week.

Not everyone is cut out to be a coach, but Coach Salvemini would tell people who are interested to be patient. “Coaching comes along with a lot of different personalities and each player is different,” he said. “You need to try to adapt to them not just be one way.”

When he looks at the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District (FSUSD) as a whole, he knows that there is room for improvement, and if he could coach the FSUSD, he would point out some of their weaknesses. “Some of these kids do not belong there. They have no motivation and get in trouble all the time,” he said. “They should be placed elsewhere.  It’s a huge distraction for all the students who do want to be there.”

There are more weaknesses, though, than just the educational environment. “More importance needs to be made to sports,” Coach Salvemini said. “Sports are very important in high school, but I don’t feel like the schools think so. Some students would probably just stop coming if sports were not available.  They work harder in the classroom to be able to play.”

On the field and in the community, Coach Salvemini knows that working addressing the weaknesses is a primary step to eliminating them, and he works hard to strengthen his team members each season. This year might have been lost to COVID-19, but in the future he will have a chance to inspire those who already have a love of the game.