Chase Tidwell is in his fourth year with the UIW baseball program and he understands the challenges of moving from NCAA Division II to Division I. He has become known for building and turning around programs quickly. Tidwell is the lead recruiter for the Cardinals and knows the type of players it will take to be successful in the Southland Conference and Division I.
“To be able to help basically build a program from scratch at the highest level of college baseball is very unique. Some people call it a challenge, but we call it an opportunity,” said Tidwell when he was hired.
In addition to being a strong recruiter of baseball players, Tidwell also helped recruit the newest UIW baseball coach. Ryan Aguayo was recruited by Tidwell at New Mexico State and joined the UIW staff in the fall of 2014.
Tidwell has worked extensively as the UIW pitching coach and had his first player drafted last year, Geno Encina by the Toronto Blue Jays. Encina posted a 2.57 ERA in 73.2 innings as a junior for the Cardinals. Tidwell has a young group of pitching prospects that he is working with in 2016 and is buidling that group to be a Southland Conference contender by 2018.
Tidwell spent the 2012 season as the head baseball coach at Lon Morris College. Prior to that, Tidwell spent four seasons as pitching coach and recruiting coordinator at New Mexico State University. His extensive work on the recruiting trail 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 received an at-large bid to the 2012 NCAA tournament.
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 home runs 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 where he worked under former UIW pitching coach John Maley. 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 14 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 16th 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. In 2009, NMSU broke the school record for wins with 44. In his four years in Las Cruces, the Aggies won 147 games.
Chase and his wife Lorena reside in San Antonio. They have one daughter, Kyndall.
