RIO GRANDE VALLEY – The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) Director of Track & Field/Cross Country Shareese Hicks announced on Tuesday the hiring of Marco Guajardo as an assistant coach for the Vaqueros. Guajardo, a former UTRGV jumper, will specialize in and coach the jumps and multis.
Guajardo joins UTRGV after spending the last two seasons at UIW as an assistant coach and graduate assistant. He managed the horizontal jumps and helped with the multis, hurdles, 400/200 groups, pole vault and throws. He organized daily practice agendas for the jumps and sprints, met individually with athletes to make sure their goals were addressed, and helped with recruiting.
"Being an alumni getting to experience what it means to be a Vaquero was amazing. I am forever grateful to God for allowing me to have the opportunity to now coach these amazing athletes in my hometown," Guajardo said. "I want to thank Coach Hicks for giving me this opportunity. With this coaching staff, we are ready to strive with this Vaquero Community. V's up!"
Before UIW, Guajardo worked in youth track and field and athletic development. From January 2023 to August 2024, he was an assistant personal trainer at Premier Athletics, where he helped build a performance facility for youth athletes and developed techniques for sprinters and jumpers. There he also formed and coached South Texas Speed, a track and field team that competes in TAAF. In the summer of 2022, he was an assistant track and field coach for the City of Edinburg Parks and Recreation, where he coached TAAF state-qualifying athletes in long jump and triple jump technique.
A standout in the jumps for the Vaqueros, Guajardo competed at UTRGV from 2021 to 2023 while the program was in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). He earned All-WAC Second Team honors in the triple jump three times: outdoors in 2021, indoors in 2022 and outdoors in 2022. His indoor personal best of 14.26 meters in the triple jump came at the 2022 WAC Indoor Championships, where he placed eighth. In 2022 he also placed sixth in the triple jump at the WAC Outdoor Championships and helped the 4x100-meter relay to eighth. As a junior in 2023, he posted five top 10 finishes in the triple jump, including a 14.16-meter season-best mark at the WAC Outdoor Championships. He also set a long jump personal record of 6.65 meters indoors that year.
Guajardo was versatile as well. As a freshman, he scored 5,740 points in the decathlon to finish 11th at the 2021 WAC Championships, the fifth-best total in program history. In 2022 he won javelin gold with a personal-best 50.51 meters at the Roadrunner Invitational and set personal records of 11.28 in the 100-meter dash and 23.55 in the 200-meter dash.
Away from the track, Guajardo served as vice president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee from 2022 to 2023 and was a section leader for The Herd student section. He earned a bachelor's in business administration in management, cum laude, from UTRGV in May 2023 and an associate's in interdisciplinary studies from South Texas College in May 2020.
"Welcoming Marco back to UTRGV as a member of our coaching staff is a proud moment for me," Hicks said. "Having coached him, I've had the opportunity to watch him grow from a student-athlete into a young professional who is passionate about helping others succeed. He understands what it means to represent the Valley and wear UTRGV across his chest. His experience, connection to this community and commitment to our student-athletes will help us continue to build our jumps and multis program. I'm excited to see him make his own impact as a coach."
Guajardo will work with the jumps and multis group. A product of the Rio Grande Valley, he returns to the campus where his own collegiate career began, this time to help develop the next group of Vaquero jumpers.
