Shannon Cunningham is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Saguaro High School for AZPreps365.com.

Two Saguaro football coaches are living the double-lives, coaching both boys and girls sports at Saguaro High School in Scottsdale. 

Frank Ruben and Outley Nyles are coaches on the football team at Saguaro, a well-known and prominent program in the AIA's 4A conference, winners of 13 Arizona state titles. Ruben, who is the assistant head coach and chief of staff, has been with the team more than 20 years. Nyles has been on staff for football the past three seasons and serves as the running backs coach as well as the director of operations.

Both were key pieces in Saguaro’s 6A football state championship run during the 2023 season, helping the Sabercats capture the title against Red Mountain, winning 40-20.

However, once football season is over, both Nyles and Ruben flip to their “other” lives. In the winter, Nyles heads over to the gym to become the varsity girls basketball assistant coach, while in the spring, Ruben heads to the tennis courts to head the varsity girls team. 

In the gym, Nyles just finished his first season as the assistant coach of the girls basketball team, after being brought on the team to coach in the fall of 2022 in the playoffs. This year will mark the first full calendar year that Nyles will have with the Sabercats, a rotation that includes the spring and summer offseasons in addition to the regular season. 

Under Nyles and head coach Aria Ham, the Sabercats finished the year at 12-5 and made it to the second round of the 4A state playoffs. This year's Sabercats also boasted three players being named to All-Region teams for Desert Sky and a three year playoff streak.

Even though his two coaching worlds may seem different, Nyles attempts to keep the same coaching approach.

“I try to make sure that I coach them the same way. I don’t want to give them any type of different style of me,” he said. “When you move from one sport to the other it definitely allows you to make sure that what you're teaching they’re absorbing and they’re understanding the concepts…so it was a smooth transition moving from football to girls basketball.”

For Ruben, his thought process behind the positives of coaching multiple sports is about the same as Nyles.

“It’s two opposite ends of the spectrum…It’s two entirely different sports and two entirely different ways to go about things but when you combine them, it just makes your coaching skillset and base so much more diverse,” Ruben said.

Ruben has been a staple for the girls tennis program over 15 years. In his time with the team, Ruben has been the head coach for almost his entire tenure at Saguaro, and enters his 16th season this year after bringing the program back to the Division II state playoffs last season after a four-year drought, before falling in the first round. 

The girls tennis team holds loads of talent this year, returning half of the 2023 Division II Section VI Doubles Section Players of the Year and Singles Section Player of the Year in Rianna Muntean. The team continues to get help from other players on the roster, including rare three sport athlete Melissa Berry. The Sabercats are currently 13-2 and were runners up for the regional championship title while being the 14th ranked team in the conference.

For both Ruben and Nyles, coaching boys and girls come with their own ups and downs, but at the end of the day, they both care about bringing out their players' best potential.

“The girls for sure, the girls do exactly what you ask them to do, the boys are a little different, they think they know a lot more, so they kind of freestyle a lot more, which is okay, you sometimes have to let them do their own thing at times,” Nyles said.

“It’s kind of like the eager puppy and the cat sort of, but when it’s all said and done, you still get everything out of them in terms of what your objective is,” Ruben said.