Rockdale High School athletes will begin their 2019-2020 season with two new faces heading up the boys basketball and girls volleyball teams.
Coaches Marcus McNeil and Kelsey Hudson are joining the Tiger family.
McNeil comes from Weimar where his Wildcats went 25-9 this season and won a District 29-2A championship before losing to eventual Region IV finalist Port Aransas 46-44 in the quarterfinal matchup.
He built the program up in the five years from a 7-22 team in 2014-15 to a co-district championship team in 2016-17, an area finalist team in 2017-18 to regional quarterfinalist team in 2018-19.
“He did everything we were looking for,” said Jeff Miller RHS athletic director. “He’s great with kids and he’s a great coach.”
The former Wildcat coach inherits a roster that has three returning varsity players with Kobe Mitchell, J.J. Moreno and Mehki Crawford.
He replaces Sean Coleman who led the Tigers to a 12-19 record in the 2018-2019 season.
McNeil said he plans to run an up-tempo, team oriented and disciplined program and he wants the players to be conditioned, play as a team and be fundamentally sound.
“My short term goals include earning the players respect as they buy in to our system as we contend for a district championship,” he said. “Long term, I want to help our young men reach their individual goals, dominate our league and compete for a state championship.”
He and his wife, Raelynn McNeil, are expecting their first child, Sterling Tate McNeil, in September.
He received a BS in kinesiology from Angelo State University and will be teaching Algebra I at the high school. McNeil was a multi-sport athlete at Brenham High School, where he played football, basketball and baseball.
He’s bringing 13 years of coaching experience to Rockdale.
“The biggest accomplishment of my coaching career is the fact that I have been fair and consistent with each one of my players no matter their skill level, and leaving an established competitive program that student athletes have bought in to and accepting the high expectations needed to maintain the competitive level in our classification,” McNeil said.
VOLLEYBALL – The new Lady Tiger volleyball coach said teaching and coaching is a family tradition that she came by naturally.
Her father, Robert Hudson, a Cameron Yoe High School graduate, is the superintendent at Westphalia ISD. He coached for 20 years. Her mother, Kimberley is a counselor in the Franklin ISD and her younger sister, Katie teaches at Mumford. Her third sister, Kallie is going to University of North Texas and does not have plans to join the family in the teaching field, Hudson said.
Hudson, who will teach freshman English at RHS, is inheriting a team that went 7-8 last season. She replaces RHS graduate Jennifer Keen, who coached the Lady Tigers for five years.
“The team has done well these past four years,” Hudson said. “There’s a lot of talent there. I have goals to get the girls to the playoffs and improve every year.”
Which is what she did at Mumford High School. In 2016 the Lady Mustangs went 9-17. In 2017 and 2018 her teams made it to the district playoffs with 10-15 and 14-16 records respectively.
“We made the playoffs in a tough district. Although we weren’t in the top of the district, we kept improving,” she said about the District 25-2A competition, which had last year’s state semifinal team Thorndale and perennial powerhouse Thrall.
She graduated from Rogers High School in 2011, where she played volleyball, basketball and softball and ran track. She graduated with a BS degree in sports management from Texas A&M University, where both her parents and sister Katie attended.
Hudson said she excited to be a Rockdale Tiger and can’t wait to start developing relationships with the players.
“We’re going to do a lot of team building and starting up a new culture there. In order to build a championship culture, we have to respect each other and play selflessly as a team,” Hudson said. “The single biggest thing I want to do for the girls is to teach them skills and self-assurance they can use when they leave the program.”
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