Logyn Rountree couldn’t foresee the impact she’d make on Tarleton State

BY GAVIN PATRICK

Sports Editor

On the afternoon of March 7, Tarleton State Baseball was in the middle of a four-game road series with the University of New Mexico. Logyn Rountree was in her second month as the team’s sports information director (SID).

The game was out of state, so she stayed back in Stephenville, clipping highlights from the broadcast for social media. She was stressed to the maximum. Rountree had always been terrified of the unknown, and she was still navigating through uncharted waters. She had no idea how good a job she was doing.

Until someone else did.

The second inning came around, and the lone announcer for Mountain West Network was studying the game notes Rountree had prepared for the game — live on the air. He said exactly what he was thinking.

“Logyn Rountree is just a graduate assistant over there?” he asked, rhetorically.

The game was still 0-0, and she finally had something to clip.

“I have a sneaking suspicion that when Logyn Rountree’s graduate assistantship is over, some school, very smartly, will see the quality work that she is doing with Tarleton State and snag her and put [her] in their office,” the announcer went on.

“That would be probably the smartest move a group could do.”

One of Rountree’s roommates, Ella Klein, was sitting next to her when the shoutout happened.

“Whenever he said Logyn Rountree, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and then she started recording it, and we were just giggling and laughing at the compliment,” Klein said. “It kind of turns out how not just her personal friends notice how good of a job she does. ... It doesn't go unnoticed from [the] outside, too.”

If there’s one thing the announcer could correct himself on, ironically, it’s that Rountree isn’t even a graduate, yet.

When Rountree was offered the role of Baseball sports information director (SID) in December 2025, she didn’t know what to think of it. The role is typically reserved for a university graduate, one with multiple years of experience covering collegiate athletics. But this time around, no graduate was in line ready to fill the position.

So, in came Rountree, who had only been in Tarleton’s sports internship program for one semester.

“I was working at a bank in Hico, and I was in the middle of my shift, and I got a text from Grant [Cohen] (her mentor in the sports internship), and he was like, ‘Hey, how much do you know about baseball?’” Rountree said.

To that point, not a lot.

Rountree was a basketball player from third grade up until the end of high school. She watched baseball growing up in Goldthwaite, Texas, but never too seriously. Her dad is a huge Texas Rangers fan, and her mom a huge Houston Astros fan. She at least knew what an RBI was.

After Tarleton’s senior athletic director for communications, Jake Withee, talked Rountree into taking the job, it was like she had caught a fly ball that’d been hanging in the air forever, waiting to fall into her grasp.

That is to say, there was a lot of learning on the fly ahead.

“I feel like from January to now has felt like two weeks. It’s just flown by,” Rountree said. “As I go, I pick up stuff. ... I scroll back sometimes to last year and see what the last people had posted before me. And the guys (players) give me a lot of ideas.”

Rountree said her favorite part of the job is creating content for social media. It’s what she wants to do after graduation. But she still had all the baseball stats to learn.

That’s when a fellow SID — Andrew Loewe, who played college baseball — swooped in to help.

“Probably the week before our first game in February, Andrew actually pulled me in his office [and said], ‘We're gonna watch baseball games, and we're gonna figure out these stats,’” Rountree said.

Loewe has been a source of wisdom for Rountree throughout the baseball season. He wasn’t going to leave a colleague guessing about their job.

“She knows basketball really well, so I was trying to kind of explain it in basketball terms to show her the similarities and differences between the two so that she had an understanding,” Loewe said, “because she needed to understand a little bit to be able to take pictures and videos and write about it.”

Soon enough, Rountree learned all the stats and terminology, and the inexperience she had coming into the season was reduced to irrelevance. Even her little bit of experience from high school taking pictures for her men’s basketball team helped smooth the transition, she said.

That’s not to say she isn’t still finicky, though.

“My first Instagram post, I think it took me 20 minutes to hit the post button, because I was so nervous to post on social media,” Rountree laughed.

In times when she gets overwhelmed by her fear of the unknown, Rountree turns to her faith.

“I think trusting in Him [God] has gotten me through literally everything,” Rountree said.

“I always joke, I'm like, ‘I need God to send me a schedule so I know when things are gonna happen,’” she laughed.

But sometimes, the unexpected can be a good thing — like Rountree’s announcer shoutout on March 7. It came out of nowhere.

Rountree said that moment meant so much to her, and it will forever be in the back of her mind in times of self-doubt and uncertainty.

“That week had probably been one of the hardest weeks for baseball and what I was doing,” Rountree said. “And so, when I heard that, I think God was reassuring me, like, ‘Hey, you're fine. I've got you. It's not as bad as you think it is.’ It was definitely a breath of fresh air.”

Another way Rountree remembers her faith, and pays it forward, is through her work at First Baptist Church in Stephenville.

Since August, Rountree has served as a Paradigm challenge leader for a group of freshmen girls, alongside Clara Sims, another senior at Tarleton. They meet on Wednesdays to go over a lesson from the Bible before attending the Paradigm College Ministry service on Thursday nights.

“You get to watch these freshmen grow in their faith, and it’s just like, ‘Wow, they have no idea what's ahead of them,’” Rountree said. “... That's definitely one of the biggest blessings of my life right now.”

Rountree’s influence has been felt on multiple fronts. Since she took over Tarleton Baseball’s Instagram page, its following has grown by nearly 30% — up from 12,500 at the start of the season to 16,000 today.

The team’s success has certainly been a factor, but so has the nature of her content.

“She's been great,” Loewe said. “[Coach] Fuller is very big on social media coverage. That's kind of how he brings in recruits, by showing different kinds of videos and graphics and that kind of stuff throughout the year. She's been really good at getting those posted and making them.”

No bigger showcase came than when the baseball team knocked off No. 2-ranked Texas in Austin on March 17, with a score of 6-1. The win was a significant upset that garnered national attention, and Rountree was the only person Tarleton sent to cover the game.

Loewe praised Rountree for being able to promote the win as well as she did.

“That made the coaches and the athletes really happy that she was able to cover that and show their story to the world,” Loewe said. “Her pictures were everywhere, her videos were everywhere, everything that she was posting was getting picked up by other news outlets. Without her, none of that would have happened.”

The lack of experience hasn’t shown much for Rountree. She’s only matured. The one thing that does show, though, is her personality on the baseball social accounts.

“Sometimes I definitely know you can tell a 21-year-old girl runs that social media,” she laughed. “But I have fun with it.”

Part of Rountree’s charm is the same personality her roommates see every day.

“When you first meet her, she's definitely just the happiest person ever,” Klein said. “She is filled with joy, and she kind of radiates that.”

Klein also sees firsthand the amount of work Rountree puts into her job with the baseball team, especially on game days.

“Her work starts three hours before the game and it doesn't end until three hours after the game,” Klein said. “... She works so hard at it. She'll be up at, like, 11 o'clock at night when the guys are off celebrating; she's still working for them.”

The long hours, Rountree said, are far from her favorite part about her job. She even admitted that she hates when her friends have to plan things around her busy schedule. But to Klein, her friend is always worth the wait.

“She's a good support system, definitely, for advice or just having a good friend,” Klein said. “It means a lot to me having her in my life.”

As for Rountree’s future endeavors, she will pursue her master’s in marketing at Tarleton State upon graduating with a bachelor’s degree in sports communication and a minor in kinesiology.

She hasn’t decided if she’ll come back as Baseball SID, but the door is wide open for her return.

“You don't want to force her to do something that she doesn't want to do,” Loewe said. “But if she wants to be a part of it — and I'm sure she does — we'd love to see her back.”

Rountree is being diligent in the job market as well and wants to keep her options open for now. She’d love a future in the Stephenville area. But with options also comes uncertainty. 

Rountree said she has to remind herself to stay faithful through the closing of her undergraduate chapter, as her fear of the unknown begins to set in again. She said she’s seen doors shut in her face and offsets them with constant prayers.

But through great struggles and great successes, Rountree has found perspective — and peace of mind.

“I know it's cringy, but — get back up and try again,” Rountree said, laughing again. “You're gonna fail. It's just how college works; it's how life works. It's definitely been something I've had to learn as a 21-year-old girl trying to get a job. I can't really be scared of everything. I've got to get over that anxious feeling and just kind of go on with life, because being scared is just gonna hold me back.”

She’ll say Amen to that, along with the freshmen she leads in the college ministry who can all learn the same with time

“She has a really good head on her shoulders,” Klein said. “So anything she ends up doing, I have faith in her.”