Coaching for Success—On and Off the Field

When St. Francis de Sales (SFDS) alumnus Roger Ochoa, ’95, picked up the phone to ask Principal Roni Facen about resurrecting the school’s baseball program, he got a little more than he had bargained for: “Roni offered me the chance to coach baseball...and then recruited me to be the school’s next athletic director,” he laughed. 

Roger enthusiastically accepted both offers, but although he is a veteran baseball coach, he admits that when it comes to the athletic director role, he is still very much a rookie: “The biggest challenge has definitely been the learning curve—handling everything from scheduling games and practices to coordinating buses,” he said. Roger credits his predecessor with helping him to learn the ropes: “I know I can always reach out to Miss Ramos, which has been really helpful,” he said.

When asked what he has enjoyed most about returning home to SFDS, Roger says that both connecting with students and encouraging them to come out for different sports have been especially rewarding. So far, he is off to a good start: this year’s boys’ soccer team started off as a group of eight students, but sign-ups quickly grew to more than 20. “That kind of interest tells me that our students’ enthusiasm for sports is contagious,” Roger said.

As a former two-sport SFDS athlete who now leads the school’s athletic program, it’s not surprising that two of Roger’s biggest influences from his days as a student were his own coaches: “Coach Lodl and Coach Lick, my baseball and football coaches, encouraged me to work hard and be successful,” he said. Their influence extended beyond the playing field: “Coach Lick was my Algebra II teacher,” Roger explained. “I’ll never forget the time he told me in the hallway that I had to get 100 percent on my next test to get an ‘A’ in the class. Because of that, I studied hard and got the grade, and let’s just say math wasn’t my favorite subject!”

Following his graduation from SFDS in 1995, Roger played one year of baseball and football at the University of St. Francis before sustaining a shoulder injury and transferring to the University of Illinois at Chicago. He later received his law degree from Loyola and married fellow SFDS alum Diana Ortiz in 2004. Roger has passed his love of sports along to all three of their children, and has coached his eldest son’s travel baseball team for the past seven years. Diana says that her husband is a “perfect fit” for his new role: “Roger has a way of connecting with kids and inspiring them to be better versions of themselves, and it’s especially meaningful to both of us that he has this opportunity to mentor and motivate students at our alma mater.”

Whether the SFDS students who come out for baseball next spring are experienced or brand new to the sport, Roger says that it won’t change his approach as coach: “No matter how little or how much they’ve played, my primary focus is getting back to the fundamentals of correct footwork, glovework, and batting. Baseball is a sport where, if you don’t practice those basics every day, you lose the skills.”

At the end of the day, proper hitting, catching, and fielding are only the beginning of the fundamentals Roger aims to teach SFDS student athletes: “I think the main goal of sports is to create good young men and women moving forward in life, being able to work hard as a team, being able to face adversity, and to learn how to accept losing and learn from it,” he said. “These are basic life skills that I learned from Coach Lodl and Coach Lick, and they helped make me the coach and person I am today. If I can help teach our students those same fundamentals, I know they will be successful in anything they do.”