Tony Quinones, 48, is the new head softball coach at Jarvis Christian University in Hawkins, Texas. He earned his bachelor’s in business in organizational management from Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa, and his master’s degree in Sports Management from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
A 20-year U.S. Navy veteran who served primarily as a technician in electronics fire control, which means putting ordnance accurately on military targets, he served abroad in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom with the U.S. military after Desert Storm.
Quinones, the son of a Korean mother and Hispanic father, grew up in El Paso, Texas, where he began competing in the early 1980s in a combined martial arts as a child, with training in karate, aikido, jiu jitsu, Korean hapkido, and gung fu (an art of self-defense also called kung fu). Quinones competed even at the national level and was invited to screen test for a television show. Ironically as a softball coach today, Quinones never played baseball. He said his interest in coaching softball grew with his daughter, who plays collegiate softball.
“This opportunity at Jarvis for me is more of an experience using softball as a tool to teach the students about life, not just a sport,” Quinones said. “My philosophy is taking care of the players and treating them like adults instead of coaching using negative influences. I don’t assign players to run laps for punishment. I am 100 percent about fitness, but I want to influence these players in a way that is more in line with what they would have to deal with in a normal adult setting—and not just in athletics. We want to win, but I’m not measuring success by wins and losses, but by character development. I tell them that winning is a symptom of us doing things the right way.”
Quinones opened a nonprofit several years ago in San Antonio, working as a select travel coach, providing private pitching lessons, tutoring and encouraging the ladies with mental health counseling. He then made the decision to see how his leadership experiences in the military combined with his interest in the positive well-being of players could take him as a coach. He worked for 18 months as a pitching coach at Texas A&M and then as a head softball coach an HBCU, Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock, Arkansas.
His wife, Karla is a mental health counselor. Besides their daughter, Hope, 22, who plays softball for the University of Houston—Victoria, the couple has a son, Noble, 18, who is a senior in high school in San Antonio. Quinones says the family will move to East Texas when his son graduates.
