It’s hard to miss the lesson Con Aquilante has learned after years of coaching and mentoring kids, and it’s not the one you hear in locker rooms or see plastered on banners at every youth field. It’s the one that doesn’t show up in box scores or highlight reels, but that’s been guiding his every move in life: slow down, let kids be kids, and let the game teach them who they are.
When you watch 74-year-old Aquilante coach, you see a different breed of mentor, the kind who doesn’t rush kids into a sport they aren’t ready for or pressure them to specialize too early. He’s all about giving kids the space to explore, to grow, and most importantly, to enjoy the game. It’s a radical philosophy in a world where young athletes are shuffled from one sport to the next, playing before breakfast and signing up for another team before dinner.
Take his grandson, Brayden. On a Saturday, he’s got flag football in the morning and soccer in the afternoon. But as they roll up to the football field, Brayden’s mind is already on the next game.
“Not so fast,” Aquilante tells him. “You’re with me now.”
The game, the huddle — they matter. Aquilante’s not about to let Brayden rush through it without soaking up the full experience. And if the boy’s impatient? That’s part of the point.
“What’d the coach say after the game?” Aquilante asks. Brayden mumbles something about the next one. But Aquilante knows the real lesson isn’t in what was said — it’s in learning how to be present.
“It’s not about winning at all costs,” he says, his voice steady. “It’s about teaching kids to be better people.”
If that sounds like a coaching cliché, think again. Aquilante’s outlook was shaped by more than just years in dugouts. It was forged in personal tragedy.
Like many young coaches, he once chased trophies and obsessed over results. That all changed in 1990 when his fifth son, Jordan Michael Aquilante, was born prematurely. Weighing just 1.5 pounds, Jordan fought for nearly two months before passing away in April.
“I spent too much of my life focused on winning,” Aquilante admits, his voice quieting. “I thought that’s what mattered. But I learned that it wasn’t. The real victories come from the things you can’t measure with a stat sheet.”
Out of the grief came a shift. Coaching became more than competition; it became a calling.
As his older sons aged out of Little League, Aquilante launched a player development program to connect high school athletes with college opportunities, one of the first of its kind in the region. That quiet work laid the foundation for Angels Baseball, a program that would go on to impact hundreds of players across the Mid-Atlantic.
It all began with a five-hour conversation at the Marian Anderson Rec Center in South Philadelphia. Not long after, coaches began bringing six kids twice a week to work with Aquilante and his staff.
But from day one, Aquilante made it clear, the Angels weren’t going to be just another travel team.
There were no cattle-call tryouts, no stopwatch drills, no radar gun obsessions. Instead, Aquilante sat down with kids — not to evaluate their swing mechanics, but their mindset.
“Tell me about your work ethic.”
“How do you handle adversity?”
“What kind of person do you want to become?”
“If a kid’s only focused on stats or playing time, he’s not ready for what we’re building,” Aquilante says. “I want the ones who ask questions, who want to grow, who can see the big picture, the ones who understand that failure is part of the journey.”
Cole Fisher, a standout youth player from Horsham, was one of those kids. He played for Aquilante through middle school and leaned on his mentorship during college ball at Millersville and Oregon.
“There was a weekend where we had probably played five or six games already,” Fisher remembers. “We win the semifinal to go to the championship, and this coach starts getting really upset. Con walks over and goes, ‘Hey man, go win your plastic trophy. You can play, we’re done. We proved ourselves this weekend.
“That shows you who he is. He’s not there to coach baseball. He’s there to coach life.”
And Fisher says Aquilante’s influence reaches far beyond the field.
And Fisher says Aquilante’s influence reaches far beyond the field.
“There’s a deeper meaning to everything he does,” he says. “You don’t always see it in the moment, but over time you realize — he’s preparing you for things way beyond sports.”
“Besides my dad,” he adds, “I’ve learned more from him about life than any other human on the planet.”
That sentiment echoes from players across the region, including Jack Eshleman, a Devon Prep graduate and Collegeville native now pitching for the Blue Jays’ Single-A affiliate in Dunedin.
“He taught me that you're a human first, and you're a baseball player second,” Eshleman says. “So we'd have our practices — fielding, defense, hitting, pitching — but then at the end, he’d spend five or ten minutes just talking about life lessons. Stuff he learned through being a person and being a coach.”
And those lessons stuck.
“I remember he made us keep journals. I still have mine back home, actually,” he says with a laugh. “It’s how I play the game now. Respect the game, and it’ll respect you back. Every time I step on the field, it might be my last time — so I give 110%. That’s what he always preached. That’s what stuck with me.”
Since its launch in 2004, Angels Baseball has helped nearly 150 players earn college scholarships, many as first-generation college students. Dozens have returned as mentors to younger players. But as the travel ball scene shifted, Aquilante grew disillusioned.
“The showcases, the metrics, the pressure — it all became too much,” he says. “That’s not what the game should be about.”
So, he pivoted again.
Today, Aquilante’s focus is on Angels – Athletes in Motion, a hands-on curriculum for families and student-athletes that blends physical development, mental resilience, and personal growth. Operating out of a dedicated facility in Horsham, the program offers a structured environment where young athletes can train with intention, not just to improve performance, but to build the foundation for long-term health and life readiness.
“Most young athletes don’t fail because they’re not good enough,” he says. “They fail because they haven’t trained their bodies to handle the speed and demands of competition.”
The program builds baseline strength, flexibility, and movement patterns, not just for performance, but for long-term health. Families also receive support navigating the academic, emotional, and scheduling demands of modern student-athlete life.
It’s the natural extension of everything Aquilante has believed for decades: that sports are the tool, not the goal. That growth happens in discomfort. That failure is a feature, not a flaw.
“There’s no shortcut to growth,” Aquilante says. “You’ve got to be present. You’ve got to do the work. And sometimes, you’ve got to get out of the way and let the game be the teacher.”
