SPORTS: TAMIU’s baseball program promotes coach

By Kaily Olivo
Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024

Just the day before the new school year, TAMIU officially promoted an assistant coach to the lead the Dustdevils baseball team.

Previously, Ruben Rodriguez served as an assistant coach alongside former coach Phillip Middleton. Rodriguez experienced Middleton’s leadership and influence on the team.

“Coach Middleton was a great leader for us,” Rodriguez said. “He’s a guy that I personally look up to because … he’s great at keeping everything professional … So, being able to try to take over for him is some big shoes to fill, but we’re ready for it.”

While the process was long and the transition remains ongoing, Rodriguez initially began without assistance and gradually worked his way to a full coaching staff, which hadn’t been done in quite a while. With this, Rodriguez is ready to lead the team. The players are adapting, but welcoming, as they recognize his familiar face and voice.

“Getting the new coach was just like it was fitted,” senior infielder Omar Cervantes said. “Because we all trusted him since last year and we all liked him, and he recruited most of us; it was a really good transition.”

As Rodriguez brings his coaching concepts to bear, he steps in with changes in responsibility and authority while also looking forward to creating relationships with the players along the way.

“Being able to hold guys accountable a little bit more … there’s some tweaks here and there, but our guys have adjusted pretty well,” Rodriguez said, “ … [and] creating these strong relationships with the players … that’s the reason why we got them here is because we’ve created really good relationships with them in their recruiting process and being able to continue to make those [relationships] to improve our team to have a better record than we did last year.”

At the same time, Cervantes believes this position allows Rodriguez more room to voice his ideas.

“I’m looking forward for him to bring his new ideas,” Cervantes said. “We’ve been working a lot on fundamentals … cause that’s the core of baseball … and that’s a good idea … It helps going back to the roots.”

With the implementation of his ideas, Rodriguez hopes to improve over last year and strives to focus on the little things to overcome obstacles, as a program.

“Last year is a good [example] of what we can do and continue to build, since we got a lot of returners returning this year on the offensive side,” Rodriguez said, “… to just continue climbing the ladder year-in and year-out.”

Through it all, Rodriguez plans to involve more community and bring in noise, fans and support for the team.

“Getting our guys out there, we got a lot of kids [who] are from Laredo too … If you look at previous rosters … you can see very few kids from Laredo,” Rodriguez said. “So, [we plan on] involving the environment and the people in the city … to probably create more people in the stands and have a bigger crowd to cheer us on.”