Athletics History 2 of 2

Laredo Morning Times | lmtonline.com | Sunday, May 10, 2020 | E7 50th Anniversary For more information on TAMIU’s 50th anniversary, follow TXAMIU on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Spotify, use the hashtag #TAMIU50 and visit the school’s website at 50.tamiu.edu . (2009), Chris Collazo (2011), Abdel Rivera (2013), Alex Salas (2013), Alex McKeon (2014), Alexander Cabezas (2017) and Jorge Napoles (2019) each won first-team honors once. Jeff Anderson (2013) and Gordie Taggart (2014) each won gold gloves from the American Baseball Coach- es Association and Heartland Con- ference, while Rey Alvarez (2010), Luis Bracero (2010), Jerry Hawkins (2013), Sean Smedley (2013) and McKeon (2014) all won gold gloves from just the conference. SOFTBALL The TAMIU softball program has been the model of consistency since nearly its inception. Lee Dobbins’ group took the field for the first time on Feb. 1, 2008 in a 10-2 loss to Midwestern State as it dropped its first 10 games in a 12-35 season. After that, however, Scott Libby took the reins and hasn’t let them go. Libby finished his 12th season with an all-time record of 262-373. He was riding a remarkable streak of qualifying for the conference tournament in every single year he coached before the pandemic- shortened 2020 kept him and everyone else from playing for a league title. Libby guid- ed the program to a regular- season and t o u r n a m e n t championship in 2011. He also won the H e a r t l a n d ’ s Coach of the Year honor in 2010. “I was a high school coach before I got hired here, and my aspira- tion was to go to the college ranks,” Libby said. “There were several of my former players that had played at TAMIU their first year of softball when they were a provisional Divi- sion II school, and then the job came open. I jumped at it, and luckily TAMIU hired me. I will always be grateful for TAMIU giving me this job at the college level.” The Dustdevils have two league Player of the Year winners in their history in Victoria Beltran (2011) and Maddison Schofield (2019). The pair are also two of the four players that have earned first-team All-Con- ference honors twice as the winners include Beltran (2010-11), Saman- tha Garcia (2009, 2011), Maya Paul (2018-19) and Schofield (2018-19). “It’s come a long way in the 12 years I’ve been there,” Libby said. “Griz Zimmermann has done a great job as athletic director as far as try- ing to provide us with the money so we can go out there to help us recruit upper-echelon players with as much scholarship money as we can.” Photo by Laredo Morning Times Scott Libby has made the conference tournament in every one of his 11 full seasons for TAMIU softball.