by Blair Guzman
New Albany, Ind.- IU Southeast 2022 graduate Marco Romero’s exceptional baseball skills have led him to a career in player development with the Chicago Cubs organization.
A native of Caracas, Venezuela, Romero escaped political unrest as a child. After a youth playing baseball, former IU Southeast baseball coach Ben Reel saw Romero’s potential and recruited him out of Oakton College in Des Plaines, Illinois. At Oakton College, Marco Romero helped bring the Owls to National Junior College Athletic Association Division III World Series appearances in 2018 and 2019.
Romero played in 139 IU Southeast games, had 15 home runs with the Grenadiers and helped them go 109-32 from 2020-22 with a trip to the 2021 NAIA World Series. He looks back on his IU Southeast baseball career fondly.
“Talking about specific game situations, I’ll never forget all the times we walked teams off the field,” Romero said. “We beat Tennessee Wesleyan, [a number one ranked] team in the nation to advance to the World Series in 2021.”
Because Romero did not play pro-ball, he began to set his sights on other jobs after graduating from IU Southeast with a degree in Business Management and a minor in Entrepreneurship. A LinkedIn contact encouraged him to go for a coaching position after viewing his resume, which showed that Romero had years of experience coaching youth players, helping his teammates, and serving as a team captain.
Romero was hired in the summer of 2022 by the Houston Astros as a hitting coach apprentice at their West Palm Beach, Florida, complex. In December 2022, Romero went to work as a player developer for the Chicago Cubs organization, and in 2023 he helped the Double-A Tennessee Smokies on both the hitting and pitching sides.
His time spent at IU Southeast helped Romero to shape his coaching philosophy.
“I think IUS made me realize I wanted to be a coach because I found myself consistently helping some of my teammates with their swing mechanics or just talking about swings/baseball very often,” Romero said.
Playing baseball at IUS also allowed him to create memories alongside his teammates on and off the field that he still cherishes to this day.
“The teams I played with during 2021 and 2022 were [among] the best teams that I have played for in my career,” Romero said. “The confidence that we had and the sense of tranquility in the dugout was something that I had never seen before. Off the field, I would never forget a meeting we had when we all talked about the reasons why we played baseball. I would say I was able to feel a very deep connection with everyone of my teammates after that. They all became my family.”
In 2024, Romero could be placed as an assistant hitting coach with either the High-A South Bend (Ind.) Cubs or Low-A Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Pelicans. However, those assignments have not yet been announced and are yet to be determined.
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Blair Guzman is a junior from Eisenberg, Germany majoring in Audio Production. She works as a student intern in the Office of Marketing and Communications.