Wire-to-wire: How The First Academy baseball’s focus carried it to a state title

The First Academy Royals baseball team entered the 2025 high school baseball season as the favorite to win the Class 2A, Region 2 championship, advance to the state Final Four and compete to bring home their second state championship trophy. 

In a season where the Royals had a bull’s-eye plastered on their back all season, they went from wire-to-wire as one of the top programs in the country and captured a sixth-consecutive district championship and a second-consecutive regional championship. Then, after a 7-2 win over Trinity Christian Academy Wednesday, May 21, at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers, TFA brought home the second state championship in program history. 

The question is, however, how did the Royals manage to maintain its focus throughout its 34-game season and not let the target on their backs weigh them down? According to first-year coach Alan Kunkel, to be the team that’s dog-piling on the mound at the end of the season his players needed to on the process.

“This is going to sound cliché, but people who know me know my focus has always been process over outcome,” he said. “I take great pride in working hard in practice and learning how to be fundamentally sound. I want our kids to be able to compete with confidence knowing they are fully prepared. So, how does it feel to have the year end in a dog pile? Rewarding because God has blessed the work, the sweat (and) the consistent approach of playing for His glory.”

Thomas Achey, the winning pitcher in the championship game, reiterated his coach’s mindset this season and how it helped the Royals maintain their focus throughout a season filled with expectation and pressure; Achey led TFA from the mound with a six-inning, seven-strikeout performance.

“It feels amazing (to win); I’ve dreamed of this moment for so long, and to finally achieve (it) is incredible,” he said. “Day in and day out as a team, we had a routine and we stuck to it and that’s what helped us stay focused and locked in.”

A DREAM COMPLETE

Kunkel’s insistence of process over outcome comes from a place of experience. He won four state championships at his previous high school coaching stop. The only question at TFA: Would his senior-heavy team buy into a new mindset — especially after getting so close to winning it all last season?

“We set the expectations and the standards of the program, (and) we wanted to focus on the ability to improve daily not only physically but mentally and emotionally, as well,” he said. “Winning is hard. Being able to compete for 21 outs, managing any and all adversity, shifts in momentum, controlling damage and responding well is hard, but it’s what we worked really hard to do. The guys were in the Final Four last year and got a taste of being there. I knew it was on their mind, so we consistently curbed the focus to executing and out-competing our opponents and seeing what happens when the last of the 21 outs are made.”

That buy-in, considering a majority of TFA’s top players from 2024 were back for their final run in high school, was one of the most important factors that drove this title-winning season.

“It feels great putting in all the hard work in the offseason and during the season (through) the ups and the (downs), to be able to lift up that trophy at the end of the year, it’s amazing,” senior Blake Fields said. “We all had one goal this year, and that was to win it (all) this year. But we had to play it one game at a time. We all wanted the same thing — and that was to dogpile at the end of the year.”

SENIOR SENDOFF

With a group of eight seniors serving as Kunkel’s top players — and a handful of underclassmen making key contributions— getting their buy-in to shift to a focus on what’s-in-front-of-you type mentality was crucial to this success, because these eight not only were the ones who led the team on the field, they also were the ones that would develop a foundation for this program in the coming years. 

That’s why it means so much to Kunkel to send this group off the right way.

“It means a great deal to me,” he said. “This senior class is a tight-knit group, and they have played together for a long time. (This championship) is really a culmination of the years of preparing the field so God could bring the rain. They fought hard for one another, always stayed positive and never backed down from any opponent.”

The attitudes Kunkel described — staying positive, fighting for one another and never backing down — is the reason it meant so much to these players. Having fought together for such a long time and having come so close to the mountaintop last season, ending their journey as not only a nationally ranked team with a 30-4 record, a district and regional title but also as the top dog in the state is a priceless feeling for this class of seniors.

“I wouldn’t want to go out any other way,” Achey said. “This senior class has known, played against or played with (one another) for most our lives, so it’s come full circle to win a state championship with them.”