Few people outside of her family and close friends know that Calallen softball coach Teresa Lentz, who led the Wildcats to their third consecutive Class 4A state title this season, was born with dyslexia.
Lentz had problems reading in elementary school and was diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disorder, as a seventh-grader at Driscoll Middle School. She was reading at a second-grade level then.
But through hard work and dogged determination, Lentz became an honor student and outstanding three-sport athlete at Miller before graduating in 2000. She played shortstop on the softball team, and also ran cross country and played basketball despite having exercise-induced asthma.
Learning how to cope with her dyslexia instilled a toughness in Lentz, then Teresa Flores, that defined her as an athlete and helped her develop a tireless work ethic.
“It definitely did,” Lentz said. “I knew I had to work for everything I wanted, and I knew how to work because, I guess, I had this fear of failing. I was determined, to no end, to make sure I read every day before I went to sleep. By the end of my eighth grade year, I was reading on the eighth-grade level. That meant a lot to me.
“And then I went into the ninth grade reading on the ninth-grade level, and I was able to pass my accelerated reader. I was so proud of myself for being able to read at such a fast speed.”
While Lentz excelled in the classroom, she also was speeding toward a college softball scholarship.
A college star
Lentz opted to sign with Texas Woman’s University in 2000 after also considering Oklahoma State. She went on to a stellar career as a first baseman and shortstop at TWU, and finished her career as one of the top hitters in NCAA Division II.
Lentz was named Lone Star Conference Player of the Year and made the National Fastpitch Coaches Association All-America team as a senior in 2004. Lentz was inducted into the TWU Hall of Fame in 2012.
“Because of her dyslexia, she made me a better coach,” said Dianne Baker, who coached Lentz during her four seasons at TWU. “I had to learn to get around it. What the dyslexia made me do was that I had to show her everything. I just couldn’t tell her things. I had to show her personally because everything she did was visual. No. 1, I had to learn to be a better coach.
“No. 2, to this day, Teresa was the hardest-working athlete I have ever coached. She would come in an hour before practice and stay an hour after practice. She was a great player. Teresa had the most feared softball swing of anybody I’ve coached. I’d like to think I had a part in her success, but Teresa did what Teresa did the way Teresa knows how to do it.”
Lentz, who grew up wanting to be a coach, was equally effusive in her comments about Baker.
“Coach Baker is one of the best coaches who has ever coached the game,” Lentz said. “How I know that is because of her passion in the moment, in the game, every game, every play, every inning. She wanted us to play the game the right way.
“The other remarkable thing about her was her attention to detail in practice. Every practice was planned. I have her books of (softball) drills and I look at them all the time. She gave me the foundation of how to approach practice.”
A student coach at TWU after completing her eligibility in 2004, Lentz earned a bachelor’s degree in adaptive physical education, with a minor in special education, in 2005. She completed work on her master’s degree in special education from the University of Texas in 2007, when she was a graduate assistant coach for the Longhorns’ softball program.
Turning to coaching
Lentz also was an assistant coach at Rockport-Fulton High School, a volunteer coach at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, and an assistant coach at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi before becoming head softball coach at Calallen in 2012.
Twenty-five years after her senior season at Miller, Lentz ranks among the state’s best high school coaches, male or female, in any sport. The Calallen board of trustees this spring approved naming the district’s softball field after Lentz, who turned 43 on June 17.
Calallen has gone 320-120-4 and reached the state finals five times in 13 seasons under Lentz. The Wildcats lost in the 5A and 4A title games in 2019 and 2021, respectively, before winning 4A championships in 2023 and 2024 and the 4A Division I title May 30. They have won at least 31 games in five of the past seven seasons.
Lentz credits her longtime assistant coaches, Vianca Pesina and Lamar Lopez, for the continuity and stability of the Wildcats’ program. Both have been on Lentz’s staff for 12 seasons.
“I think that she’s a strong leader,” Pesina said, when asked what she thinks makes Lentz such a successful coach. “She leads the entire time to motivate these young girls. She doesn’t ever give up on them.
“She’s always encouraging and giving them constructive criticism in a good way. It’s tough love, so they know she’s trying to get the best out of them and wants them to reach their full potential and not be complacent of where they’re at.”
Family bonds
Lentz is the youngest of three children, and only daughter, born to Rosa and Manuel Flores, now divorced. Her two brothers, Mario and Marcos, also were outstanding athletes at Miller and both played baseball at Texas A&M-Kingsville.
A cousin, Raymond Acevedo, lived with the Flores family and went to high school at Miller. He also played baseball for the Buccaneers.
Mario, the eldest of the three siblings, always has said Teresa is the best athlete of the family.
“It amazed me how good she was in high school, even though softball had just started in the district,” he said, referring to the CCISD.
Lentz’s commitment to succeed in the classroom and athletics, Mario said, was fueled by the challenges she faced as a dyslectic.
“Teresa always felt she had to work harder than everybody else,” Mario, 52, said. “She did not want to lose. She was always working. She never stopped.”
Marcos, 51, recalled his sister’s tenacity.
“Teresa played with a lot of heart and effort,” he said. “She was passionate about softball. Every chance she had as a kid, she was hitting in the back yard. She was the same way with dyslexia. When you’re dyslexic, you’ve got to learn to cope and she did that.”
Lentz’s first coach was her father, starting her in T-ball and guiding her every step of the way. A former Corpus Christi Caller-Times sportswriter, Manuel Flores always had a passion for baseball growing up in Hebbronville. He also coached Mario and Marcos in youth leagues and made the transition to softball when Teresa came along.
“Teresa was always around baseball and softball, and I was always around baseball and softball as well,” said Manuel Flores, who is married to Adriana Garza Flores, director of public information at A&M-Kingsville. “To me, they’re both the same except for the size of the ball.
“Teresa was always around Mario and Marcos. She was there all the time. She soaked in the strategy of baseball and softball, and she just learned a lot from playing.”
Rosa Flores, who also grew up in Hebbronville, was an art teacher at Miller from 1990 until she retired after the fall semester of the 2002-03 school year. Mario graduated from Miller in 1991 and Marcos in 1992.
Rosa Flores said that her daughter’s struggles with dyslexia made her stronger in the end.
“She had to fight, fight, fight from a young age,” she said. “That’s what made her excel as a student and an athlete, and now as a coach. She was very determined. She was used to working hard because of the dyslexia. That’s the way it is with her. It’s not just try a little bit. She goes all the way.”
One of Lentz’s biggest fans is former Miller coach John Mott, who took over the program in the summer before her freshman year. Mott guided the Bucs to the playoffs in 1999 and 2000, Lentz’s junior and senior seasons. Miller hasn’t advanced to the postseason since then.
“I am so proud of Teresa,” said Mott, now 82 and living in Portland. “I think she’s done fantastic. It goes back to the simple process of work ethic. We had a motto at Miller: ‘Keep it simple.’ She’s basically the same way as a coach now, except she’s taken it a lot further and has a lot more talent.
“One of the things I did because I knew she had the potential to be great is that we would stay after practice under the lights, probably until 10 or 11 at night, and I’d hit her ground balls. Her dad would be the first baseman. We had buckets of balls and probably had 15, 16 balls in each one. We’d go through all of them.”
Lentz spoke highly of the role Mott played in her development and the impact he had on the fledgling Miller softball program and the girls who played.
“Coach Mott was an awesome, hard-working guy,” Lentz said. “He was always trying to make our facilities better, and give us everything we needed to be successful. I always respected him because he was a faith-based guy. He ran our Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings in the mornings.
“He was just the best man you could ever ask for. He always did everything and anything he could to support us, to help us. We had a lot of great athletes at Miller back then, and he was able to nurture us and push us to be the best that we could be when people didn’t believe that we could.”
Hard work paying off
Former Miller teammates Pam Barragan and Katie Galan have vivid memories of playing softball with Lentz, who was a four-year starter.
“Teresa put in more work than anybody else on the field,” said Barragan, who graduated with Lentz. She played college softball at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “We grew up together playing ball.
“Everything Teresa ever worked for as a kid, it’s just come to fruition. She’s put in the work, the blood, the sweat, the tears, and she’s a damned good coach. I know she’s good and she knows she’s good, but she’s one of the most humble people I’ve ever met.”
Galan recalled Lentz’s intensity and competitive ferocity.
“There was always something a little bit different about her,” said Galan, who was a grade ahead of Lentz. “She played at a different level, even back then. She was always very driven. She comes from a family that is very talented athletically, so it’s always been in her blood. I’m just really, really proud of her. She deserves all the accolades that she’s getting.”
Galan grew up across the street from Lentz and the two were playing together as kids long before they were softball teammates.
“We played together outside constantly,” Galan said. “We were in and out of each other’s houses without knocking on the door. We kind of spent our whole childhood together outside playing before we started playing softball together.”
Mike Galan, Katie’s father, and Manuel Flores helped organize girls softball on the westside of the city and they also were big supporters of the Miller softball program when their daughters played for the Bucs.
“We had great parents, great support, at Miller,” Galan said. “And the group of players that we had back then worked hard and did a great job.”
Lentz remembered what it was like to play at Miller.
“I would definitely say that going to Miller, we were always the underdogs,” Lentz said. “Nobody gave us a shot, and people stereotyped the kind of people we were, or students we were. It was really bad. It was really eye-opening to see what people thought of us. We were never expected to do anything, never expected to succeed.”
But the Bucs, just like Lentz in her early struggles with dyslexia, stayed the course and were motivated by the challenges they faced daily.
David Flores is a San Antonio-based freelance writer who writes about Coastal Bend sports history.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Challenges of dyslexia drove Calallen softball coach Teresa Lentz to succeed
Reporting by David Flores / Corpus Christi Caller Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
