Bison Baseball Legacy Part I: Kevin Olmeda

Part I: Jose and Kevin Olmeda | Part II: Darrin and Zach Fowler | Part III: Jeff and Austin Cooper

When Jose Olmeda, Jeff Cooper and Darin Fowler all stepped onto the field at Oklahoma Baptist to play for Coach Bobby Cox, they didn't know that one day their sons would follow in their footsteps. Although their fathers never played together, Kevin Olmeda, Austin Cooper and Zach Fowler have spent the past few years playing as teammates for the same coach. While each of them all came to OBU for the same reason, each father and son had a different journey getting to Bison Hill.

For Kevin Olmeda the journey began before he was born, when his father came to OBU in 1987. Jose Olmeda played for OBU until he was drafted in 1989 to play professional baseball. During his career, Olmeda played for the Atlanta Braves and what is now the Miami Marlins. Growing up with a professional baseball player for a father, Kevin said, was a great experience.
 
"It's awesome," he said. "I think it's a blessing from God just to have your own dad as an instructor basically for your whole life."
 
While having a pro ball player for a father was fun, Olmeda said it also came with pressure at times. 
 
"Sometimes people expect a lot of stuff from you," he said. "There's a saying that most likely the son of a professional baseball player, they become better than them." Growing up in a small area in Puerto Rico sometimes added to that pressure, Olmeda said, because everyone always knew who he was.
 
"I would talk to people and wouldn't even know who they were, but they know my dad," he said.
 
Because of his dad's baseball career however, Olmeda said he didn't spend all of his time in Puerto Rico growing up.
 
"I did not just live all of my life in Puerto Rico," he said. "When my dad was playing professionally I would basically live half of the year wherever he was playing."
 
When the season was over, Olmeda's family would return to Puerto Rico. Olmeda said he enjoyed that part of his childhood and the perks of having a pro ball player to teach you about the game.
 
"I think it was a true blessing having him home and not having to spend time with other people rather than with your dad," he said. "And also you didn't have to pay other people just to teach you how to play the game."
 
For roughly 13 years Olmeda said baseball was his father's life and his job, until an accident forced him to retire.

"He was working with his cousin, helping him in the offseason just to get a little money," he said. "He was helping his cousin with a roofing company; He had an accident where he fell from a two story house."
 
His father had been using a water gun to clean up the roof and had set it down to get something. Unknowingly, Olmeda had set the water gun down in a puddle surrounding satellite dish.
 
"It was a little circle of water around it," he said. "He stopped to just grab something but the gun just lay in that circle of water, but there was electricity going around it, so when my dad picked it up again he was shocked."
 
Despite the fall, Olmeda said his father didn't suffer any broken bones, something he said was a blessing from God. However, his father spent around three months in the hospital. This was a hard time for Olmeda's family, he said, who was unable to see his father for the first two months.
 
"After that it was real hard for him to just come back," Olmeda said. "The doctor told him he couldn't play baseball anymore."
 
Although Olmeda's father hadn't broken anything, he suffered nerve damage that led to the doctor's order.
 
"He was in his mid-30's already, so probably he would have just kept playing at least four or five years more," he said. "It was a hard situation for my family and for him too because that was his job."
 
Olmeda said he was roughly 13 at the time. Today, Olmeda said his father has no major lasting effects, aside from a regular check-up to make sure everything is still ok.
 
"He doesn't live a sedentary lifestyle either," he said. "When me and my little brother are home, he's the one that throws and hits us ground balls and spends time with us."
 
Growing up, Olmeda said his father always made sure to spend time with his sons and teach them about baseball. For almost his entire life Olmeda's father actually coached him.
 
"He coached me my entire life," he said. "I think the only time that he didn't coach me was when I was like five or six years old; but after that he coached me."
 
At times, his father didn't want to coach him, Olmeda said, out of worry that it would add pressure to his performance. Most of the time however Olmeda said he didn't feel that much pressure because of the environment he grew up in.
 
"It was fun, I miss him coaching me," he said. "Some situations in the game are really hard or I didn't do what I was supposed to do and he was always in there just teaching me."
 
Which is why Olmeda said the last four years have been hard for him, since his father can't be at all of his games.
 
"I don't have him right next to me," he said. "He flies each year to watch me play, he was here for the opening weekend.
 
Having his father as a coach and a mentor also allowed Olmeda to learn what it means to be a professional baseball player growing up.
 
"Baseball is not just batting and catching the ball," he said. "It has a lot to do with your image that you present in the field and outside the field."
 
Watching his father and listening to his stories taught Olmeda the most about life in the pros.
 
"Stuff that I learned from pro athletes is how we need to behave in the field," he said. "Not just in the field but outside the field. How to respect the game correctly because you have to respect the game."
 
It's important to know these things as a player, Olmeda said, because of the fans that are watching you play.
 
"When you're at the professional level you play for the fans," he said. "Since they're paying for you to play; I learned how to develop routines, how to behave correctly and how to represent an organization."
 
Olmeda, who has been playing since roughly the age of five, said he has always known that he wanted to play professionally someday. As a senior at OBU, Olmeda said these last few years of college baseball have been a good ride.
 
"My career's been fun because I've experienced everything," he said. "I've experienced success. I've experienced failure; I've experienced whatever you can imagine that can happen to a baseball player."
 
The hardest part, Olmeda said, has been making the transition from playing in Puerto Rico to the U.S. especially with his father so far away. In the past Olmeda said his father has always been there to give him advice on how to improve. Nowadays most of their conversations about baseball have to happen over the phone.
 
"Until this day I haven't adjusted completely," he said. "I've always had my dad with me on the same team so I've been experiencing that too."
 
This has been the case since just before Olmeda came to college, however, when he transferred to Florida his senior year.
 
"I transferred from Puerto Rico to finish twelfth grade in Florida," he said. "I went to a high school called Montverde Academy, a couple guys have gotten drafted out of there and they're playing in the majors right now so it's a good school."
 
After graduating, Olmeda signed to play baseball at Alabama State University.
"I spent two years there, it was a fun ride," he said. "But the coaches didn't have the same goals and I thought I had to move."
 
That summer of 2015 Olmeda said he wasn't sure if he would find another place to play baseball.
 
"I didn't have a school to go to and play baseball whatsoever," he said. "I talked to my dad and I was really nervous."
 
His father told him not to give up, and to keep looking. Olmeda said his father got into contact with OBU head baseball coach Bobby Cox, who he still had a good relationship with after all these years.
 
"I think it was the last week of July, and I didn't have anything," he said. "God opened the door; my dad could communicate with Bobby Cox. They talked, and that night I called him and he told me that he had an open space for me."
 
Olmeda said he didn't hesitate to take the offer. If this was what God wanted, he thought, OBU was where he was going to play.
 
"To this day I am truly honored and blessed for the opportunity that our coach gave to me," he said.
 
Since arriving at OBU, Olmeda said he knew that this was the place where God wanted him to be.
 
"I came here and it felt like home," he said. "I wanted something special that I got to add to my career since my dad played here."
 
Olmeda said he was even offered the same number that his dad wore when he played here, 13.
 
"My normal number is number 20, since that was the day I was born and my dad too, we were born on the same day in the same month," he said. "They asked me 'do you want to use your dad's number,' and I said 'of course.'"
 
Proudly wearing his father's jersey, Olmeda said he and his dad even look alike when he has it on.
 
"It's just not a number for me," he said. "When I put it on, I can't describe the feeling. Every time I wear it I think about him and I just think that every single thing that has happened since I came here is because God wanted it to happen."
 
After graduation, Olmeda said he hopes to get drafted to play professional baseball. In the meantime, he plans to enjoy the rest of the season and focus on what God has in store for him.