BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
EDINBURG — When the 2016-17 school year began, Diana Romero knew it would be her last as Edinburg Vela’s girls track coach. Romero spent 36 out of her 37 years as an educator coaching at three different schools inside Edinburg CISD: Brewster School (1980-81), South Middle School (1981-87; 1988-2012) and Robert Vela High School (2012-present). Romero coached basketball, soccer, volleyball, and tennis at different times over her first 32 years but has spent the last five coaching cross country and track at Vela. Though she will continue as a special education teacher at Vela, her tenure leading generations of Valley athletes arrived at an improbable, fortuitous end.
Romero and her family lived in Edinburg until she was in third grade. Sharing a household with her brother and two sisters, Romero did not grow up with much to call her own. The Romero kids found amusement playing baseball in the summertime. Diana practiced hitting a ball to her siblings and cousins outside, taking up most days. Romero and her family also spent parts of their summer months together as migrants.
“We worked in Minnesota, we worked in Michigan, even Indiana,” Romero said. “Every summer, we’d go and pick crops that needed to be picked. Most of the time, I was starting school either a month or two months later than everybody else. Up until third grade, that’s when it stopped. We didn’t migrate anymore.”
Romero and her family moved to a farm located 14 miles west of San Manuel. Romero considers that the place where she officially “grew up.” She attended Brewster School until the eighth grade and graduated from Edinburg High School. Romero always wanted to be a coach but was unable to play team sports in school due to living too far away.
“Maybe, I thought, I was going to see that love of competition by me being able to teach others my love of competition,” Romero said.
“Every time I went to PE as a kid, I loved my coaches, whoever they were. I never had a particular coach that believed I would make a good coach eventually when I got older or anything like that. It’s just something I had inside of me.”
After graduating from EHS in 1976, Romero went to what was then known as Pan American University. While majoring in kinesiology, Romero earned a minor in special education, becoming the first Pan American student to graduate with that major-minor combination. She felt an instant connection with her minor and the kids she worked with. Romero taught adaptive physical education during her three decades at South Middle School and currently serves as a special education co-teacher at Vela.
Romero’s first teaching job after college came in 1980 as a special education teacher at Brewster School, the same school she attended as a young girl. Romero coached softball, cross country, volleyball and basketball despite the school not having an indoor gym.
“After my first year, they wanted me to rotate schools in a community bus where I would work between McCook, Hargill and Brewster and do special ed,” Romero said. “I couldn’t do that. It just so happened that there was a special ed opening at South Middle School. I applied for it and got it.”
During her time at South, Romero and her husband, Andy, gave birth to one son, Sean, and a daughter, Katie. Katie attended South from 2001-2004 and remembers the initial awkwardness of having her mom be her volleyball coach.
“It was really funny because I’d always call her ‘Mom’ and she wanted me to call her ‘Coach Romero,’ and I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do that,’” the younger Romero said. “In those middle school years, you could be such a brat at that age. But she was the same person at home as she was at school: a very positive person. When she tried to get mad at me at school, I would be a little bit more brattier to her than any other coach. Overall, it was great having her around. She loves her students like her own kids. It was awesome to watch her do her thing.
“At that age, I didn’t really appreciate it. Now I think it was pretty awesome to have her there with me.”
In 30 years, a stretch interrupted only for the 1987-88 school year by a one-year stop at W.W. White Elementary in San Antonio, Romero won more than 100 district championships in various sports at the middle school level. Then, a brand new high school sprang up in Edinburg in 2012, and Romero was approached about moving there.
She would give the opportunity a long, serious thought, as was her custom. Romero did the same when she was previously approached about teaching and coaching at Edinburg High School, another one of her alma maters. That time, Romero decided to stay at South. She couldn’t imagine herself anywhere else.
“I thought I was never going to leave South Middle,” Romero said. “But I feel like, everything to me, is God’s will. He planted the seed and said, ‘Why not take a chance in high school? Why not do something different with your life? It’s been 30 years.’”
Romero applied for the teaching and coaching positions at Vela. Even after the jobs were officially hers, Romero experienced internal turmoil.
“I doubted myself a lot,” Romero said. “I wondered if I was making the right decision. What had I done? Why did I say ‘yes’? There were many nights where I constantly cried, thinking I had made a mistake. But it was God’s will. It was hard, but it was going to be OK.”
Romero’s first year as the track coach at Vela did not go the way she thought it would, either.
“When I got here (to Vela), it’s like, ‘Oh, not everyone wants to be in track here like everybody did at South?’ I had around 100 or so there,” Romero said. “Little by little, we started doing things to make our program work. And we kept on growing and growing.”
Romero’s last season turned into her finest as Vela’s head coach. The freshmen, junior varsity and varsity girls teams all captured championships at the 2017 District 31-6A meet in April, the first time the Vela program has pulled off the feat. Varsity contributors at district such as seniors Jaida Muhammad (won the 400-meter run) and Olivia Garcia (won the 100 hurdles) helped put the cap on Romero’s outstanding career.
Romero insists she isn’t burned out by the grind of being a head coach. The energy, Romero says, is still there, but she would like to channel it into different aspects of her life.
“There are a couple of reasons,” Romero said. “The first is my mom, who is 90 years old. She needs a little bit more of my time. Track is a year-round sport. I explained it to our athletic director (Lottie Zarate) that I need to have that time to not be tied down by track.
“I’m also going to be a grandmother for the first time. Now, I had no idea he was going to have a baby. I had already made up mind to stop coaching, not knowing why at first, but I knew God would let me know the reason why. I was presented with this news on my birthday in April. He and his wife gave me that as a gift.”
Romero will continue to teach at Vela and knows she leaves the track program in good hands as long as coaching mentor/Vela boys coach Hernan Figueroa is keeping an eye on it.
“It’s going to be tough leaving, but it’s time for me to pass the baton,” Romero said before letting out a chuckle.