Mark Santiago

Directing this summer's camp is veteran baseball instructor and former Division 1 Standout at the University of Illinois, Chicago, Mark Santiago.

Mark grew up in Chicago and played for Homewood-Flossmoor HS where he earned All-State Honors as a Senior. He also earned an Honorable Mention nod as an All-American at the 3rd Base and Short Stop positions. He went on to play for the #1 Junior College in the country at the time, Triton College, where he played for Hall of Fame Coach Bob Simmons.

From there he received a Division-1 Scholarship to the University of Illinois at Chicago where he started at 3rd Base and hit .330 in his first year as a switch hitter.

Upon retiring from baseball, he got into rugby where he played professionally in South Africa and won a Gold Medal in Israel at the World Maccabi Games. After his playing days Mark got into coaching where he capped off a 10-year professional coaching career by coaching for USA Rugby in 7s (which you saw last summer in the Olympics) where he headed up the developmental program. After leaving rugby, he decided to coach his own kids in baseball, softball, and football.

For the past few years Coach Santiago has coached within the Dallas Dodgers Organization and for the D-BAT Stingrays teams. He has coached ages ranging from 9u-18u.

Aside from coaching, he has spent the last year at D-Bat Keller as the Events Coordinator/Program Manager and was tasked with growing all their programs and grew them over 38%.