Chase Tidwell enters his fourth season as pitching coach and
recruiting coordinator at New Mexico State University. His extensive work on
the recruiting trail has already netted the largest early signing class in
Aggie Baseball history with 17 players signing a national letter of intent to
attend New Mexico State in the fall of 2007 that included five time first team
All-American Bryan Marquez, 5 All-WAC selections, and eventually won a school
record 44 games in 2009. He
followed that excellent class with the 2008 recruiting class that included 2011
Pre-Season All American, Chace Perkins.
The 2009 recruiting class may be the best of the group as it produced
2010 Freshman All-American Zac Fisher, 2010 All-WAC selection Ryan Aguayo, and
a bevy of young talent that will take the field for the Aggies in 2011. NMSU signed 8 more future Aggies this
past November. Tidwell comes here from Laredo Community College in Laredo,
Texas, where he spent five years.
Tidwell graduated from Asher High School, in Asher Okla. in
1994. He was an All-State selection his senior year and was the starting
catcher on four State Championship teams. He played for the legendary
Murl Bowen, who is the winningest coach in the history of high school baseball
(3100+ wins and 44 State Championships).
Tidwell played at Laredo Community College in 1996 and 1997
and was an All-Conference selection in 1997 when he slammed 13 homeruns and
drove in 68 runs. After his playing days at LCC, Tidwell played Division I
baseball at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA. In his
senior season (1999), he led the nation in fielding percentage (1.000) as a
catcher and helped lead the Lions to their first Southland Conference
tournament appearance.
After completing his playing career, Tidwell spent two years
(2000, 2001) as the volunteer assistant at SLU. During the summer of
2000, Tidwell coached the Bill Hood Broncos to a 49-13 record and a fourth
place finish at the NABF National Tournament in Wilmington, DE. He then
spent a season as an assistant coach at Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa,
Okla. in 2001-02 before returning to Laredo Community College as an assistant
coach in August of 2002. He then took over as head coach in June of 2004.
In his three years at the helm of Laredo Community College,
Tidwell coached two NJCAA All-Americans, four NJCAA All-Region players, and 10
All-Conference players. In his coaching career he has had 11 players
chosen in the MLB draft and while he was at Laredo Community College, helped 33
players sign scholarships at four year universities, including 11 Division I
players.
On the field, Tidwell is entering his 12th year of coaching
and has become synonymous with turning programs around. In his first year
at Laredo Community College (2005), Tidwell led the Palominos to a 29-24 record
to post the first winning season since 1996. The 17 conference wins were
as many as the previous two seasons combined and the most since 1994. In
2006, Tidwell's second season at LCC, he produced the program's first playoff appearance
since 1996 (10 years). This season was also the most wins in a season
(33) since that 1996 team (34) that Tidwell was a freshman on.
In 2008, his first at NMSU, the Aggies tied a school
record for conference wins (15) and made their first appearance in the Western
Athletic Conference (WAC) tournament. He also helped develop Tyler
Sturdevant and Heath Goin into the first two NM State pitchers to make
All-Conference in the WAC, as they were both voted to the second team. In
2009, the amazing turn around continued at NM State, the Aggies broke the
school record for wins with 44 and the pitching staff set a new school
record for strikeouts in a season with 446 and help lead Daniel Simon to a nine
win season good enough for second best in Aggie baseball history. Simon
also became the third Aggie pitcher to earn All-WAC (2009) and is the
Collegiate Baseball Newspaper 2010 WAC Pre-Season pitcher of the year under the
tutelage of Tidwell. The 2010 pitching staff picked up 423 strikeouts, which
led the WAC for the second straight year, with left-hander Ryan Beck leading the way with 52. Right-hander Dan Reid, who threw the
most innings on the team (73.1), wasn't too far behind with 50 K's.
Although Tidwell assists with the offense and defense, his
main responsibility with the Aggies is as pitching coach. The Aggie
pitchers use different training techniques to ensure that the pitching arm is
much stronger than that of "traditional" training. "We use wrist
weights and six and eight pound balls everyday in our training." The
training helps his pitchers increase their fastball velocity 5-8 mph in their
first 12 months of the program, and it also helps in preventing injuries
because of superior arm strength. In nine years of coaching, Tidwell has only
had one pitcher miss significant time because of injury. "The
pitchers do the work themselves. I just try to teach them how the body
works and what we can and can't do with the throwing motion. It is
different for every pitcher and we have been fortunate over the years to have
guys that have bought in and take ownership of their own pitching mechanics
through our ideas and suggestions."
Tidwell and his wife Lorena reside in Las Cruces.
