For this year’s first installment of The Reporter’s summer mini-series ‘Where are they now?’, RHS alum Austin Caffey describes looking forward to leading the Blue-and-Gold baseball team and how one night at Tiger Stadium lured him into coaching.
Although Austin Caffey went on to join the Texas State University baseball program following his graduation from Rockdale High School in May of 2014, he never planned on being head coach of the Blue-and-Gold.
He never even planned on being a coach.
But that all changed while seated in the bleachers of Tiger Stadium one evening in the fall of 2016.
“When I left high school, I actually went to college to be an engineer,” Caffey said. “I had no aspirations to get into coaching and it’s kind of funny how it happened.”
“I was sitting in the stands and there was this weird feeling that kind of came over me. I thought t ‘man, I miss this’,” he said. “I missed the lights, I missed being on the sidelines and I missed the camaraderie between coaches and the players.”
Once he was back on the Texas State campus, the Rockdale native switched his major from engineering to kinesiology.
By that time, Caffey wasn’t a part of the Bobcat baseball program as a player anymore but got a start to his coaching career two years later after running into coach Ty Harrington, a former Longhorn infielder who went on to lead the Texas State baseball team to three Southland Conference titles as coach.
“He saw me while I was going to one of my kinesiology classes and asked if I had any interest in coming back to run the bullpen and being the student coach of their baseball team my senior year,” Caffey said. “That was a really good experience to be around some really good baseball and very intelligent, savvy coaches.”
Following his graduation from the San Marcos school in Fall of 2018, Caffey was hired by Thorndale, where he was under the wing of Bulldog head coach Kelly Kuhl by the spring of 2019.
Kuhl, who has led THS to the state tourna ment t hree times and has more than 300 career wins, taught Caffey a lot.
“I can’t say enough about how fortunate I’ve been to work under Coach Kuhl,” Caffey said. “You always want to do things the right way and Coach Kuhl is the epitome of someone who runs things correctly.”
“Not only being someone who teaches skills when it comes to sports, but teaching kids how to be good young men,” he added. “He didn’t just teach me how to coach, but the right way to go about your business as a coach like being prepared and always having a plan.”
Midway through his fourth season with the Bulldogs, where he helped lead a pitching staff that allowed just six runs during district play, his alma mater came calling.
“We were rolling along in the spring over in Thorndale and Coach Jacob Campsey reached out to me,” he said. “He told me it looked like there would be an opening. He asked if I would be interested in coming back home.”
At the time, Rockdale baseball coach John Hooser was invited to join former Tiger coach Jeff Miller’s staff at Class 6A Cypress-Fairbanks, a school in the greater Houston area.
For Caffey, being asked to coach his hometown team was surreal. But deciding to leave Thorndale, where he was in the middle of district championship season and made many f r i e n d s , wasn’t easy.
“It was a tough decision,” Caffey said. “I thought about it a lot and it was a really good opportunity.”
“Not only to be around some good coaches, but to come back home,” he said.
Rockdale High School announced via social media that the former Tiger would now coach the Blue-and-Gold late last month.
Going i n t o t h e 2022-2023 school year, he is excited to coach players that he already has a degree of familiarity with.
“In Thorndale, we’ve opened up the season with Rockdale for the past four years,” he said. “I’ve been around these kids, I’ve seen these kids.”
“I’ve seen not only how talented they are, but they’re good kids,” Caffey added. “They do things the right way, they’re well-mannered and very respectful. I’m not only looking forward to working with them on the field, but just being around them as people and building relationships with them.”
Caffey is the son of Derek and April Caffey of Rockdale.
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