BRYANT – Growing up in Puerto Rico, Cristhian Rodriguez always had a love for baseball. It was his country’s national past time and everybody played it all year long.

“My whole entire life in Puerto Rico it was all baseball,” said Rodriguez who became a multi-sport standout at Hamlin. “There was no football, basketball or track or any of that stuff.”

When Rodriguez moved to the United States in middle school, he found a whole variety of other sports to compete in. However, not knowing a word of English and having to leave his childhood friends, the transition was anything but easy.

“The first year was the hardest year of my life,” Rodriguez said. “I didn’t know English. It was hard for me to make friendships.”

Soon Rodriguez was trying out different sports his school offered, including weight lifting.

“It got me to places where I don’t think I would have ever went,” Rodriguez said, noting that he got to travel to Colorado, Chicago and Pennsylvania. “I made nationals three years in a row.”

However, he gave up that sport because he was busy with a bunch of others, including football, basketball, and track and field. And of course, his first love, baseball.

Rodriguez believes it was his background in baseball that allowed him to win back-to-back state championships in the javelin.

“That baseball background probably has helped me more than anything with the javelin,” Rodriguez said.

And whether pitching or catching, it’s on the baseball diamond that Rodriguez feels most at home.

He recalls attending clinics and camps in Puerto Rico where he got to meet famous major league baseball players such as Carlos Correa and Roberto Alomar.

While baseball is also known as America’s national past time, nothing could have prepared Rodriguez for the culture shock that awaited him when he got off the plane for the first time in United States.

“When I landed over here I touched ground and I see nothing. I see fields, grass and I’m like where are we right now? I’m confused,” Rodriguez said. “We drove on the highway for an hour and I hadn’t seen anything … and I’m like where are we right now? It was something else.”

The biggest shock was still awaiting, however: a South Dakota winter.

Accustomed to temperatures in the 80s, 90s, and triple digits year around, Rodriguez soon found himself in a land with snow and frigid windchills.

“I was also introduced to the snow and cold. Oh, that killed me,” he said. “My first year, that really got me. I don’t think I left my house in the winter a lot.”

However, Rodriguez has since gone from hating the cold to embracing it.

“Now, I do kind of enjoy the cold more than the hot,” he said.

Not only that, but through a mentoring class at Hamlin, Rodriguez picked up the English language, made new friends, and eventually helped to mentor other students in the school district before he graduated this spring.

Currently a resident of Bryant, Rodriguez also enjoys the quieter lifestyle of rural South Dakota. So much so, that when looking for a college where he could play baseball, Rodriguez found the closest one to his new home, Dakota State University, just 40 miles away.

“I’m not like the other guys. A lot of guys over here care about playing DI, DII, DIII,” Rodriguez said. “For me it wasn’t that way. I just wanted another four more years of sport and then be done. I didn’t care if I played DI, DII, DIII.”

The only drawback to his passion for baseball is that he will no longer be able to compete in the javelin anymore.

“I tried talking to my coach from DSU to see if there’s any chance of doing it over there, but they won’t let me do it, since both sports happen during the same season,” Rodriguez said, “plus I’m going to be pitching. I don’t want to hurt my arm throwing jav.”

So does Rodriguez miss the life he had in Puerto Rico?

He said he gets asked that question a lot.

“Surprisingly I don’t. I’m already used to here,” he said. “The heat is too much for me over there now. I think my whole family agrees with me that we’re a lot better over here.”

While Rodriguez has already made his mark on the local prep scene in more sports than one, he is not finished just yet. He is key member of the Lake Norden-Badger American Legion baseball squad.

“I’m still playing my last year of baseball,” Rodriguez said. “We’re doing pretty good so far and the last goal is obviously to make the state tournament and win it all.”

Rodriguez has played in multiple state tournaments since his move to South Dakota and won a junior Legion state championship where he was chosen the Most Valuable Player.

“It was real fun,” he said. “I think it would be a fun to go back to that moment and relieve it this year again.”

And while Rodriguez is always around home plate on the baseball diamond, he has a new home in America that is working out just fine.

“I don’t plan to move back to Puerto Rico,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t think I’m going to go back there after college. I’m probably going to stick around over here. … Life is good right now where I’m at.”