Coach Gonzales and his family are pictured in this 2016 photo with assistant coach Luke Prihoda during Luke's last season with the Javelinas. Luke hugs the Gonzales twins, Roy (left) and Dale, and Courtney and Jason Gonzales are at right. Prihoda applied for seminary with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and was accepted that first week in June. Since then, he transferred to the Diocese of Victoria in the Summer of 2017 and will be ordained a transitional deacon on June 11, 2022, at Our Lady of Victory Cathedral in Victoria. God willing, he will be ordained a priest in 2023.
Coach Jason Gonzales kicks off every baseball season with a Bible and a prayer at the annual First Pitch Banquet. “We cannot be afraid to talk about God, now more than ever. I don’t want your boys to leave this program saying, ‘Coach never talked about God,’” he told members of the boys’ families.
Jason is the head coach for the Javelina baseball team at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. Gonzales wants his boys to know not only the fundamentals of baseball but of life as well. “If I only taught them how to lay down a bunt after four years with them, I have done something wrong,” he said. Gonzales teaches his players to be respectful men, good husbands, and amazing fathers.
“I promised God that if he put me into a head coaching position, I would offer a Bible study,” Gonzales says. The event starts with a home-cooked meal prepared by his wife, Courtney Gonzales, who is thrilled to cook for the boys every week. Courtney built a twelve-seater dining room table to host the boys more comfortably.
Throughout Gonzales’s fourteen years with the Javelinas, the Bible studies are led by different people, including Father John Chavarria and last year, FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) missionary Daniel Rosa from TAMUK. FOCUS missionary TJ Jakubowski leads this year’s Bible studies.
The Holy Spirit has been working among the Bible study group for many years. One man felt called to be a priest six years ago. Assistant coach at the time, Luke Prihoda, who joined the Bible study, gained a deeper understanding of what God was calling to do. In the Fall of 2016, Luke became a seminarian for the Diocese of Galveston/Houston and continues to follow God’s call at St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston. He will be ordained a priest in the Diocese of Victoria in 2023.
Javelina baseball player, Giancarlo Servin, has been with the team since 2018. He says the coach’s Bible study is something he looks forward to every year. “It’s been my rock. At first, I would hear some of the Bible verses, but I didn’t understand. Now I know what I’m reading, and the Bible teaches me how to navigate life.”
Servin says getting to know the Gonzales’s and watching how they interact as a family has taught him about having good relationships. And, of course, “I look forward to the dinners obviously, her (Mrs. Gonzales’s) food is amazing, but I see how the coach goes about his business at church [St. Gertrude], how he carries himself on and off the field, and how he has conversations that impress me. I learn a lot even when Coach talks to other people, the other guys. I try to regurgitate a lot of the stuff he says,” Servin said.
The weekly Bible studies have been a staple in the TAMUK baseball program for years. Coach Gonzales prays with his team before every game and when families come to eat after the game on Senior Day. Gonzales finds a place where everyone can hear him and prays before the meal because after the scoreboard goes off and the game is over, the love that moves through the field doesn’t fade with the grass. It lives and breathes because the Holy Spirit is alive in this program and active in the hearts and minds of the people who make this program a family.