Assistant coach Marco Fajardo enters his second season with the Judson coaching staff. Fajardo has been coaching both locally and nationally for the past 14 years. He owned his own baseball academy, which was part of Charley Lau’s School of Hitting. In the fall of 2000 he combined forces with The Chicago White Sox Training Center and since then has been a hitting coach for the organization. He also served as an assistant coach for Guerin Prep High School for two seasons before coming over to Judson. Fajardo also founded, manages and coaches The Chicago Zephyrs, a collegiate summer baseball team.

Coach Fajardo is a graduate of Boston University and Northwestern University. He played four seasons with The Cincinnati Reds Organization. After his professional baseball career he began another professional career as a general dentist practicing in Warrenville, Illinois. Fajardo is a private instructor and consultant to numerous high school, college, professional teams and players. He resides in Naperville, Illinois.

Benjamin is not unfamiliar with the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference as he has been an assistant coach at Olivet Nazarene University the past three seasons. In those three seasons, ONU went 93-49-1 and had a 44-16 record in the CCAC. At ONU, he was a part of the 2005 CCAC regular season championship team that went 17-3 and had an overall record of 40-12. They also finished as the NAIA Region VII runners-up. In all three seasons at ONU, the Tigers won more than 25 games each year and had 10 or more wins in the CCAC.

Benjamin says, “I am honored to be named the head baseball coach at Judson. I have been praying for a place to go too to become a head coach. I am looking forward to moving the Judson baseball program to the next level. Judson is a great place to coach and everybody has been friendly to me from the beginning of the interview process.”

As the pitching coach at ONU, he helped mold a pitching staff that was one of the best in the CCAC and the nation. In 2005, the ONU pitching staff had a 3.00 ERA and three to one strikeout to walk ratio. In 2006, his pitchers recorded three shutouts and in 2007 they had a 4.71 ERA. In the 2005 season, three pitchers had undefeated records with one at a 9-0 record. He also had the chance to coach under one of the winningest NAIA baseball coaches in Elliot Johnson. Johnson won his 800th career game in the 2007 season at Olivet.

Prior to Olivet, Benjamin was a student assistant coach at Martin Methodist University in Tennessee. In the 2003 season he helped guide the Hawks to a 37-12 record and to the Trans South and NAIA Region XI championship games. A MMC, he was the hitting, catching and outfielder coach.

Building his coaching skills at camps, Benjamin has worked at several baseball camps. He has been a camp coach at two NCAA Division I programs in Vanderbilt University and the University of Notre Dame. He has also coached at Camp Winadu in Massachusetts as the assistant director of baseball operations.

In two different summers, he has coached in the M.I.N.K. Collegiate Summer Baseball League and the Sandlot Collegiate Summer League. In 2007, he was a part of the M.I.N.K. which is affiliated with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He coached the FCA Grays in Kansas City, Mo., as they won 21 games and was the most wins in team history. The 2005 summer took him to Nashville, Tenn., where he was the pitching coach for the Twitty City Stars.

Benjamin will be taking over a Judson team that has been on the rise in the CCAC. The Eagles have finished in the top tier of the CCAC in the last four years and have had a .500 or better record in three of the last four seasons. Judson has also two NAIA All-Americans, three NAIA All-Region players, 16 NCCAA All-Region selections, and 12 All-CCAC players in the past five years. In 2004, Judson won the NCCAA Regional Tournament and went onto the NCCAA National Tournament. They also made an appearance in the 2007 season.

Benjamin started his collegiate career as a player at Milligan College for two years and then finished his final two years at Martin Methodist. He graduated from MMC in 2004 with a degree in English. He also just finished his Master’s of Organizational Leadership at Olivet Nazarene University. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Casey.