Calexico AD Rodriguez seeks to bring stability
CALEXICO — Lorena Rodriguez has not come to a quiet place. Even with the school mostly depopulated for summer vacation, the demands on the Calexico High School athletic director’s time are near constant.
Her office, which doubles as an ad hoc storage facility for athletic equipment past, present and future, receives visitors at regular intervals.
On Friday, the FedEx man stopped by to drop off a stack of fresh cheerleading uniforms.
That one was easy to deal with, but most of her duties require a bit more elbow grease. From managing athlete eligibility to arranging transportation to coordinating with coaches to dealing with parental concerns — bossing a high school sports program is not for the faint of heart.
Whatever difficulties the job may entail, Rodriguez seems determined to meet them head-on. This is the sort of opportunity she’s been angling for quite some time, perhaps even longer than she herself realized.
Rodriguez has an interesting backstory, one notable for its diversity even in this land of cultural fusion.
Born in El Centro to Maria and Antonio Rodriguez, she spent most of the first six years of her life in Tarragona, Spain, where her father is from (her mother is originally from Mexicali), before moving back to Imperial, where she graduated from Imperial High as a member of the Class of 1999, giving her a uniquely cosmopolitan outlook, which she feel enables her “to see things from a lot of different perspectives.”
Her childhood in Imperial saw her increasingly entranced by athletics, particularly basketball, which she played in high school as her “one go-to sport.”
It was basketball that steered her toward a career in education. Entering senior year, Rodriguez had little idea of what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
Late in the year, she found herself with some open periods and no necessary graduation requirements left to fill them. Someone suggested that she give being a teaching assistant a try, so she asked to help out in her basketball coach’s kindergarten class, “and I fell in love with the kids. They were awesome. Seeing them just want to learn and the smiles on their faces, I was like, ‘You know what? I kinda like this.’”
That experience led to a summer of counseling at an El Centro recreation center, after which she was hooked.
“‘This is the path I want to follow,’” she remembers thinking. “It was an eye-opening thing to happen right before I started college.”
Two years of IVC and two years of SDSU later, and Rodriguez had herself a Bachelor of Arts in liberal studies and education. In 2004, she received her teaching certification from Point Loma Nazarene in multiple subjects, including physical education, which she intended to specialize in if she could.
It wasn’t until 2009 — following jobs in Tarragona and St. Augustine, Fla. — that she finally got her shot, landing a spot at William Moreno Junior High in Calexico. Settling in, she parked there for the next seven years, integrating herself into the school’s administration by taking on duties as ASB director and discovering a passion for the “behind the scenes” and “student culture” aspects of education.
Around 2014, Rodriguez, found herself in a newly unenviable position. She accepted the role of athletic director at William Moreno, and was tasked with resuscitating a middle school athletics program that had spent the past several years in cold storage after funding shortages led to its cancellation.
She basically, “had to start the program all over again,” she said — no easy task for a newcomer with limited experience.
But thanks to her penchant for organization, and a willingness to seek help from a support network of fellow administrators — including current Calexico High School Principal Gabrielle Williams — she was able to get soccer, volleyball, softball and basketball all up and running.
This crash course provided Rodriguez with valuable learning experience, and served to reinforce her conviction that her goal “ultimately, was to be an athletic director at a high school.”
Still, she felt that to adequately fill that role, she needed experience on a high school campus whatever form that might take. So when, in 2016, a physical education slot opened up down on Encinas, she wasn’t long in applying.
“It was the best thing I could’ve done,” Rodriguez said.
She got the job and was able, through interactions with administrators and coaching roles in the volleyball, basketball and swim programs, to really “learn how the whole program works. … It gave me so much insight into everything,” she said.
Insight or no, it wasn’t exactly clear when or where Rodriguez would get a chance to apply her acquired knowledge.
Ultimately, she wouldn’t have to wait all that long, or go all that far.
To say that the Calexico High School Athletic Department has had some stability issues over the past couple of decades would be putting it mildly.
Since 2014 the AD’s chair has been occupied by a dizzying array of faces, including “permanent” fixes Joe Evangelist, Joe Trabucco and Chris Lopez, and a number of interims, including Dr. Gilbert Mendez and, most recently, Calexico’s AD from 1980-2003, Ray Alvarado.
By fall of 2018, the district was casting its net wide for somebody to take over for Alvarado — who wasn’t looking to get back into the game for good — and Rodriguez felt it was time to give it the ol’ college try.
Rodriguez admitted she was initially “nervous to apply,” but felt that it was something she needed to do.
Her gut feeling served her well. She officially got the job in November 2018, with an early 2019 start date.
Not wanting to miss a trick, she reverted to her old standby: asking for help.
“I would come during my prep period, after school, before school, and I would bombard Mr. Alvarado with questions,” Rodriguez said. “I always feel like other people with experience can help me, because they’ve been there and done that.”
When the year turned over, it was time for the deep end, but she didn’t feel too overwhelmed, believing that the mid-year hire plus shadowing period helped her prepare for the daily rigors of the position.
There were complications here and there — she describes the process of setting up Karen Salais’ trip to the state wrestling finals as being full of logistical twists and turns — but she managed to get through them.
Now she’s looking forward to her first full year at the helm, working confidently to bring some much needed stability to the Bulldog ship of state.
One of her early projects has been to streamline and modernize certain elements of departmental bureaucracy, porting registration forms and the like to the internet.
Other initiatives include developing campaigns to juice athletic participation and enthusiasm. Rodriguez sees building a sustainable culture as one of her chief aims.
“I think there is a lot of student involvement here, but I would like to see more, honestly. I want to be able to promote it more … to encourage as many kids as possible try out for sports,” she said, “Because I think it helps with discipline, organization and [community engagement]. … I want the school culture and the sport culture to just thrive here in Calexico.”
Her predecessor has watched her grow into her role with general approbation.
“She’s come into that position and taken the bull by the horns,” said Alvarado, applauding her willingness to seek outside wisdom whenever she hits a snag. Despite the potential pitfalls inherent in the job, including the occasional pressures of “outside people trying to run the program,” Alvarado is hopeful that Rodriguez will “be good for the long haul,” thus mending some of the tears the Bulldogs have dealt with as a result of inconstant leadership.
“Once people know there’s a continuity, the kids will respond,” Alvarado said.
Rodriguez herself acknowledges the importance of continuity and hopes to provide it, enabling Bulldog Athletics — which has seen plenty of on-field success despite instability at the top — to take the next step toward model program-hood.
“I’d love to be here for the long term and to see positive changes,” Rodriguez said. “I’m from the Valley, and I’ve been in Calexico for 10 years, so I want to see where it all goes.”
“High school sports, “bring everyone together. It keeps us united as a school saying, ‘We are Calexico; we are Bulldogs.’ … I love sports and I think it’s great to see, like, when the football players come to watch the girls play volleyball and they’re cheering them on, and you just get this sense of pride. … That’s what I enjoy.”