Priorities in order

Imperial's head baseball coach addresses the important things amidst the ongoing pandemic.

Javier Ramos is a living testimony of an Imperial Valley sports figure that is giving back.

A former student athlete that was raised in the area and grew up playing sports in the Valley, has since returned home and imparts his experiences to the current generation of area student athletes.

Ramos has served as the Imperial Tigers head varsity baseball coach for the past 4 seasons, already leading the program to a CIF-San Diego Section Division 3 title game appearance in 2018.

Winning on the field is important to Ramos, but as the ongoing Coronavirus Pandemic has revealed, not as important as winning in the game of life.

Since the current mandates for social isolation, school and sports related activities have been shut down until further notice; Ramos' priorities regarding his student athletes and the community have become all the more evident.

"Now the athletics portion has been secondary, right. We want to make sure the kids and their families are healthy and well first. Second, is that they continue to stay on with their academics; with this distance learning, visual learning platforms that our students are expected now to master. That's a challenge in itself. And us knowing that our season is cut short and that no competition is going to be had, those are our two priorities we are focusing on."

Although he feels bad that the student athletes in his baseball program that are seniors may have a tough time earning an athletic scholarship to any given colleges at the next level (due to the limited exposure of a rural area like the Imperial Valley), he is confident that these kids will make it at the next level in the classroom because of how sound these kids are in academics.

Whether his seniors go on to play baseball in college or not, what matters most to him as they make it in the classroom at the next level and in life.