4th win excites Cowboys
Last season, Las Vegas team managed only 3 wins; new coach seeing much progress
There was no dog pile on the pitchers mound, no spraying of carbonated beverages in the clubhouse, no players or coaches being carried off the field afterward.
There was, however, a sense of relief. The moment the New Mexico Highlands University baseball team put the finishing touches on a series sweep of Oklahoma Panhandle State in Amarillo, Texas, on Feb. 24, Cowboys coach Harry Estep took a deep breath knowing his team was on the right path.
“A feeling that we are making progress,” he said. “That we’re getting better, the work is paying off.”
That fourth win, which saw pitcher Andrew Rodriguez work all seven innings for a complete game in a Saturday doubleheader, was a landmark victory for the Cowboys. After a 12-game losing streak to start the season, the series sweep saw them surpass their win total from the disastrous 2023 campaign.
Highlands finished 3-47 last season, making it the worst in school history and one of the worst in the country. NMHU went in a new direction after it was over, bringing in the now-30year-old Estep from crosstown Luna Community College.
He didn’t exactly clean house with the roster, but he did hit the ground running by bringing with him five players who had ties to Luna. Estep also used his junior college connections to find as many quality players as he could to retool a roster that was, at times, historically bad in 2023.
“It’s fair to say we were trying to find as many freshmen as we could, but freshmen we could supplement with older guys we already knew about,” Estep said.
Rodriguez was one high school players he unearthed. A 6-foot-4 righthander out of Montwood High School in El Paso, he is already established as
the team’s ace with four starts, a 1-1 record and 4.82 ERA with 13 strikeouts in a team-high 18.2 innings.
What’s more, he wasn’t around for what the team experienced a year ago.
“I don’t know if it’s trying to put last year behind anyone as much as it is we’re trying to get better with the players we have now,” Estep said. “We’re not all talking about last season. We’re just working on what we have now; that’s it.”
Only five seniors dot this season’s roster. Ten are freshmen, the majority of whom hail from El Paso.
A typical day for NMHU is pretty straightforward. Estep said he and his staff arrive every morning to establish practice plans, discuss the team and network leads on the recruiting trail. They’ll also spend time with players getting extra work.
“We don’t believe in missing time, not for class or anything else,” Estep said. “If a player has a class and can’t make a workout, we’ll be here to get those guys on the field or in cages to get their time if something else comes up.”
Estep was willing to challenge his team early this season, crafting a schedule that’s not exactly a tiptoe through the tulips. The Cowboys opened the season against Central Oklahoma, a perennial top 25 team in NCAA Division II. It was the start of a monstrous road trip as NMHU played its first 16 games away from Las Vegas.
The Cowboys will play another pair away from home next weekend when they visit Eastern New Mexico, finally getting their home-opening series March 15-17 against nationally ranked Colorado State-Pueblo.
“When you start as late as we did with the schedule, I mean, we didn’t have much time to put it together when I came in, you’re basically forced to take what you can get,” Estep said. “If that means facing a top 25 team a couple times early on, that’s what we’ll do.”
Estep hoped to see some growth in his team. He got just that as six of his team’s first 12 losses were by five or fewer runs.
“We’re only 16 games in, and the culmination of all the things we’ve gone through is that we’re learning how to handle things as a team,” he said. “We’re playing good baseball against some really good teams. We’re testing ourselves, and the guys are not backing down.”
Junior Taiga Sato is perhaps the team’s top position player. The Japan native leads the team in batting average (.417), hits (20), runs (14), home runs (2) and RBIs (11). One of those El Paso freshmen, Carlos Chavez out of El Dorado High School, ranks among the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference leaders with eight doubles.
“To attract the kind of players we want, we have to sell them on the idea of playing in a competitive conference where, if you play well, you’re going to get noticed by scouts,” Estep said. “We’re surrounded by good teams and, yeah, I think we can be one of them. It starts with what we’ve got right here.”