Kevin Covarrubias’s (25) most vivid memory from his time as a kinesiology graduate student was when he traveled with his classmates to the Major League Baseball spring training grounds in Arizona.
As a part of their training and studies, PLNU Master of Science in Kinesiology students have the opportunity to travel to Peoria and participate in biomechanics research during the spring training workouts to help players identify ways to improve.
“We set up our mobile lab which includes eight high-speed motion capture cameras and were working with the Padres major and minor league players,” Covarrubias said.
Covarrubias, both a San Diego native and an avid fan of the San Diego Padres, quickly found himself standing next to Trevor Hoffman. Hoffman was a standout closer and Hall of Fame inductee for the Padres before his retirement from professional baseball in 2010. He still serves as a senior advisor for baseball operations to the Padres.
“I think I forgot to record the next pitch,” Covarrubias said. “He was my idol growing up and it was so wild to see him standing there. I just kept thinking this can’t be real.”
Biomechanics is made up of two areas: kinematics, which describes how things move, and kinetics, which explains why things move. Covarrubias and his classmates spent their time recording the players in various movements gathering data on both kinematics and kinetics. By analyzing this data, Covarrubias and his cohort were able to determine how players might refine specific movements like pitching or base running.
“Baseball is one of the sports where you get the most out of biomechanical analysis,” Covarrubias said. “It has a lot of starting and stopping points because the majority of plays start with the ball in the pitcher’s hand.”
Covarrubias and his classmates remained in Peoria for a week before returning to San Diego to continue learning and researching biomechanics at the PLNU Biomechanics Lab. This state-of-the-art facility was built in partnership with the San Diego Padres and provides visiting athletes with the opportunity to improve their performance and minimize the risk of injury.
In his time as a graduate student in the program, Covarrubias got to work with many of PLNU’s athletic teams, as well as Padres and San Diego FC players, schools, and youth associations.
“We had the chance to share with a lot of San Diego Unified schools and show those kids all of the technology we work with and give them a tour,” Covarrubias said. “We’d create a virtual model of their skeleton by using positional data gathered from retroreflective markers on their body.”
“We had the chance to share with a lot of San Diego Unified schools and show those kids all of the technology we work with and give them a tour.”
Covarrubias’ time with baseball players, however, impacted him the most. Even as an undergraduate at University of Puget Sound, Covarrubias knew he wanted to work in baseball.
“I interned at driveline baseball [during undergrad] which was the experience that got me into baseball biomechanics specifically,” Covarrubias said. “I was analyzing pitcher performance and I loved it so much I decided to write my thesis on the topic.”
While researching and preparing his thesis, Covarrubias found Dr. Arnel Aguinaldo’s research particularly helpful, and ended up citing him in his undergraduate thesis.
“I realized that [Dr. Aguinaldo] lived in San Diego so I emailed him and asked if I could get involved in his work at the [biomechanics] lab,” Covarrubias said.
After Covarrubias reached out and Dr. Aguinaldo responded, Covarrubias realized he wanted to continue his education in biomechanics and knew that the PLNU Biomechanics Lab was a great place to learn. He applied for the M.S. in Kinesiology program and was accepted in 2024.
Covarrubias dove headfirst into working with Loma’s student-athletes and the surrounding athletics community. Flexible evening classes meant he could continue his classwork in the lab every day, gaining hands-on practical experience and applying classroom learnings to live athletes. Covarrubias also got the chance to work as a teaching assistant, interacting with other classes to help them understand the material.
“That was the best way to learn,” Covarrubias said. “Teaching it to other people helped the concepts really sink in.”
Covarrubias continued his education with the goal of working with an MLB team once he graduated. So when the offer to work with the Milwaukee Brewers as an associate for movement solutions came through toward the end of his program, he immediately accepted.
“Working with the Brewers was so fun. I got to interact with the coaches, the strength and conditioning staff, and the players during a post-season run,” Covarrubias said.
The 2025 Brewers post-season run ended in mid-October, and while he is in the midst of reapplying for another role with the Brewers, he’s also decided to start investing in his long-term career options.
“Baseball is wonderful, but it’s a grind,” Covarrubias said. “You’re working eight months out of the year because it’s such a long season. My goal was to work with a professional baseball team and I’m really fortunate to have had the opportunity, but I want more control over my schedule now.”
To that end, Covarrubias recently launched his own private math tutoring company, Golden Ratio Academy.
“I’ve been a private math tutor for years on the side,” Covarrubias said. “Biomechanics is math and physics applied to the human body, so I’ve had some really cool examples to share with the people I tutor…I’m passionate about helping students in math and inspiring other people to go into sports and biomechanics.”
“Biomechanics is math and physics applied to the human body, so I’ve had some really cool examples to share with the people I tutor…I’m passionate about helping students in math and inspiring other people to go into sports and biomechanics.”
As his first foray into the business world, Covarrubias is learning as he goes, but he’s hopeful about helping students develop a better understanding of how they can apply math to real-life scenarios.
“I’d like to start seeing my first clients in the next few months,” Covarrubias said. “I’m building a website and a social media presence to start driving business, but also trying to be flexible while I get it all up and running.”
Even though he’s pivoted out of professional sports for the moment, Covarrubias credits his time at PLNU in the Biomechanics Lab as an extremely meaningful experience and plans to stay connected to his classmates and Dr. Aguinaldo.
“I did this with a team,” Covarrubias said. “I wouldn’t have had the opportunities that I did without the support of my classmates and a lot of other people.”
