The photo is poignant for two reasons. It illustrates how Tidwell worked on every aspect of his program to make it successful. And it shows that baseball was never more important than the kids - his or anyone else’s.

When Tidwell resigned last week as head baseball coach after 22 years at Belton High School and a 32-year career that included stints at Bay City, Aldine Eisenhower and Longview Spring Hill, memories of his tenure came flooding back to the players he mentored and coaches he encountered.

Every person who reminisced on Tidwell’s career referenced the man with 577 victories as a mentor and a fatherly coach.

It seems apparent that along with his 450 victories at Belton that include the 1994 Class 4A state championship, Tidwell’s legacy will be his ability to build up players, mentor young men and guide them on their path through life.

The builder

In the spring of 1997, Belton senior catcher Bry Ewan was in the middle of an all-state season in which he had caught the eye of almost every major league team.

Then one day the Atlanta Braves sent their regional cross-checker to Belton. Upon arriving, the scout wanted the Tigers to halt their highly structured practice so that he could evaluate Ewan.

Tidwell obliged and Ewan was impressive enough to earn one of 25 spots at a Braves national workout in Atlanta, where officials decided to draft him in the seventh round.

“There’s no question that Coach Tidwell was instrumental in me getting drafted where I did,” Ewan said last week. “He made average players into good players, good into great, and great into pro. If you let him, he would elevate you to the highest level you were capable of.”

Hal Roberts broke into the coaching ranks with Tidwell at Bay City in the late ’70s and said there was no one better at getting a player to reach his potential.

“He simply had a way of getting the absolute most out of his players, whether it was in football or baseball,” said Roberts, who coached with Tidwell at Bay City, Eisenhower and Spring Hill. “He had great rapport with his players. And these days, a lot of kids won’t play for you unless you have that kind of rapport.”

Former Belton athletic director Jim Rodrigue, who said Tidwell had “the greatest patience and ability to work with kids of all ages and ability” and who lured Tidwell back to Belton from Spring Hill for the 1990 season, was succeeded as Tigers AD by Jay Warrick in 1997.

And Warrick could see what he had in Tidwell.

“The biggest thing was that he did things right,” said Warrick, who was replaced last spring by current Belton AD Rodney Southern. “He had very high expectations for kids, and he gave them all the help they needed and every chance they needed to reach them.”

Current Texas A&M standout and former Belton star Brian Ruggiano said Tidwell was “the most influential coach I’ve ever had.”

According to ex-Tigers pitcher and University of Virginia graduate Kyle Matous, the building wasn’t limited to the baseball field.

“Coach Tidwell stood up for what’s right,” said Matous, who expects to enter law school in the near future. “That included hard work in the classroom as well as in the weight room and in practice.”

The mentor

For good or for bad, coaches have a tremendous impact on the lives of student-athletes because of the sheer number hours spent together in preparation and competition.

Evidently, Tidwell was ever-vigilant of that fact.

“Every year he’s done something new as far as the way he’s treated kids or did things,” his wife, Lesa, said. “He’s always wanting to learn something about how other coaches handle their players. And he was always so patient every time he tried something new.”

Tidwell’s ability to mentor players was born from his ideals of what’s right, which rubbed off on those around him.

“We were looking for a baseball coach after the 1985 season, and a friend told me about this coach at Eisenhower,” recalled former Belton AD Dick Stafford, who originally hired Tidwell. “At that time, our program wasn’t renowned but I got him to come up and visit.

“I was very impressed, offered him the job and he accepted. Shortly after that, Klein offered him what was actually a better job. I called him and said, ‘You can do what you want. We don’t have your name on a contract.’

“And this tells you something about his character because he could have checked out but he said, ‘I told you I would be there. So I’ll be there.’”

If anyone should know about Tidwell’s mentoring abilities, it would be his three sons, all of whom were multi-sport stars at Belton.

“He wasn’t just a dad to me. He was a dad to everybody on the team and the other 75 kids in the program,” said Chad Tidwell, an assistant baseball coach at the University of New Mexico. “And that’s never changed. He’s always been passionate about the program and the kids who are in it.”

Chad’s twin, Tyson, learned the hard way that their father treated everybody the same.

“He actually kicked me off the team for a while as a junior,” said Tyson, a professional golfer who resides in Scottsdale, Ariz. “But I probably needed it and he treated all of his players the same. His players were always the top priority. Baseball was second, and the kids were first.”

Added youngest son Kyle, the head baseball coach at Comfort: “When we got on the field, he was the coach. We called him Dad, but he was the coach. Then when we were off the field, he was Dad again. And really, it was that way with all of his players. When you’re between the lines, he was very demanding. But afterward, he was like a best friend.”

The guiding light

During his career, Tidwell was a teacher both as a coach and for coaches.

“He taught everybody more than just baseball, which he could teach as well as anybody,” Matous said. “The kids that go through his program know that he’ll be tough and that practices will be hard, but most of them know he’s that way for the right reasons.”

And those reasons were apparent not only to his players but to other coaches, as well.

“It’s a sad day because we’re losing not only a great coach in this game but also a good friend,” said Glenn Cunningham, who faced Tidwell several times through stints at Killeen Ellison and now Harker Heights. “It was always a pleasure to go over there and play them because of his courtesy and respect and the way he went about the game.

“He’s an ambassador of the game of baseball, and coaches develop a tremendous amount of respect for a guy who has accomplished all that he has.”

For all of their battles as part of one of the area’s biggest rivalries, even Temple coach Larry Haynes admitted that things will never be the same.

“We went head-to-head for 20 years as pretty fierce competitors,” Haynes said. “Anytime you take a coach out of the loop like that, it changes the dynamic of the district. We’ll miss him, and I’ll miss him.”

edrennan@temple-telegram.com