Longtime coach Mike Kazlausky is leaving his role with Air Force baseball and moving to a leadership role within the athletic department.

Kazlausky has led the Falcons program for the past 16 years, taking an afterthought of a program to Mountain West regular-season and tournament championships and landing Major League Baseball superstar Paul Skenes as a recruit.

“It is not with a heavy heart, regret, or sadness that I officially step down as the head coach of America’s Team at our United States Air Force Academy, it is with overwhelming gratitude,” Kazlausky said in a statement. “For 16 years as the head baseball coach, and after more than 30 years serving this program, I have had the privilege of living a dream few people ever experience. Every day I walked onto the field representing something far greater than baseball, it was the honor of wearing Air Force across my chest and standing beside young men who chose a life of service before they ever played a game.”

A 1991 Air Force graduate, Kazlausky alternated between stints as a baseball assistant and pilot/instructor while on active duty for two decades before taking over the program in 2011.

He inherited a program that had gone 18-181 over the previous eight years and transformed it into a team that finished at or above .500 in five of the past six seasons.

His 365 victories are the most in program history and the two conference titles (Mountain West Tournament in 2022 and regular season in 2024) are the only league championships in team history. The Falcons’ appearance in the 2022 NCAA Regional was a first for Air Force in 53 years.

Skenes was the jewel of that run, serving as a pitcher, catcher and designated hitter for the 2022 team before transferring to LSU and then going to the Pittsburgh Pirates with the top pick in the 2023 MLB Draft.

“For 16 years Kaz has been the head coach of the Air Force Academy baseball team,” Skenes, the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner, told The Gazette on Wednesday. “In that time he has impacted thousands of lives and executed his mission statement as well as anyone I’ve ever met — developing great men, husbands and fathers. Kaz is a father to every man who ever played for him and a mentor to everyone he’s ever met. Kaz is retiring from coaching baseball, he will never stop coaching the young men and women who are serving the nation. He is a legend. … Literally no words that can do him justice.”

Griffin Jax (now with the Tampa Bay Rays) and Skenes won or shared Mountain West Pitcher of the Year honors for Kazlausky’s teams and Sam Kulasingam (twice) and Jay Thomason each won the conference’s player of the year award. This past season Wyatt Hanoian was named the league’s top freshman before transferring to Tennessee.

Kazlausky’s teams produced 127 Mountain West Academic All-Conference selections, 51 All-Mountain West honorees, nine All-Americans, nine MLB Draft picks and routinely sent an overwhelming majority of its graduating seniors into pilot training, graduate school or special forces.

“From the beginning, our mission was never just about baseball, it was about developing great men, great husbands and great fathers,” Kazlausky said. “It was about taking boys and making them into men, then taking men and making them into warfighters.”

In his new role, Kazlausky will serve as the director of leadership and institutional strategy within the Air Force athletic department.

“I have only worn two uniforms in my life, our nation’s uniform and our Air Force baseball uniform,” Kazlausky said. “Those uniforms are woven into my identity. I may be stepping away from the dugout but I will never stop wearing them in my heart.”