UTSA baseball player wins 2 American Athletic Conference scholar-athlete of the year awards

SAN ANTONIO – After helping the UTSA baseball program to its best season in school history, James Taussig signed a minor league baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox.

Since joining the minor league development league, Taussig has been refining his skills while preparing for the start of his official minor league career next season.

KSAT 12 Sports caught up with Taussig over Zoom to discuss how his life has been since becoming a member of the White Sox organization.

“It’s certainly different, you know I’ve talked to a couple of coaches and been like man, like I know we just played a month ago, but this feels like it’s a totally different game now,” said Taussig. “All the work, it’s all skill, it’s all individualized. There’s obviously still some team aspects, but it’s been really cool just to get after it with a bunch of guys who are all chasing the same objective as you.”

The American Athletic Conference announced on Tuesday that Taussig not only won the Baseball Scholar-Athlete of the Year award but also took home the Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year award.

“Our academic advisor, Beth Noteware, texted me this morning, she had gotten the announcement that I had won, and I was just super happy for her because I know those academic awards mean a lot to Beth and to Coach (Pat) Hallmark and to all the coaches on our staff so that was always a big thing for me just trying to do as much as I could academicly incase baseball didn’t work out there’s a pretty good thing to fall back on,” said Taussig.

Taussig discussed whether his finance background at UTSA helped him choose what to do with his first professional baseball check.

“I’ve put basically all of it into a savings account and am just trying to turn that contract into something down the line,” said Taussig.

For the rest of the year, Taussig plans to train in San Antonio while waiting to learn which level of the White Sox organization he will be assigned to.

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