OwlFeed – Tess Morrow

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On Oct. 13, 2015, an Agua Fria legend returned to our school to see the outstanding new renovations and see how much Agua Fria has progressed and changed over the years. That legend is Mr. O.K. Fulton.

As you may know, Mr. Fulton has been a major part of our school for a total of 36 years as a teacher, coach, principal and assistant principal, and a school board member. He coached football and baseball, but his preference is most definitely reserved for basketball. He was the head basketball coach for 18 seasons.

Fulton remembers how every single home basketball game was completely packed with hundreds of spirited Owls. “All of the athletes and people had great enthusiasm,” Fulton said.

We watched Fulton walk into the Old Gym and look at how it had been completely restored to how it was when he first started his memorable career at Agua Fria.“I love being back in this gym, it looks great!” he said.

We were lucky enough to have him share some of his uplifting stories from the glory days, such as when he once had to intervene in a scuffle between one of his players and another player from the opposing team by pulling them apart from one another.

Due to this iconic event, Mr. Fulton vowed to never get involved in players’ fights during a game ever again, and he kept his word. Every home game after that he used a seatbelt to bolt himself to the basketball bleachers, giving him the name, “Seatbelt Coach.” This even made it to national news at one point!

His favorite memory from working at Agua Fria was going to the state basketball championship, as well as around the year of 1966 when his basketball team went undefeated.

Agua Fria has changed immensely since his decades of dedication to the community here, when a mere 450 students attended Agua Fria in his first year. Seeing the bright smile on his face as he walked through the campus was a great thing to witness, and everyone at Agua Fria was very appreciative that he was able to come to our school once again!