The high school algebra teacher has a fastball that touches 90 and pitches out of the bullpen for Southern New Hampshire. That’s when he isn’t either grading papers or completing his next assignment in pursuit of his doctorate.
Welcome to the unconventional journey of Zach Gitschier.
You might find him teaching a senior class in statistics at Greater Lowell Tech just outside Boston. Think coming in to pitch with the bases loaded is daunting? Try facing a room full of variously motivated and unmotivated teenagers. “I’ve had plenty of jam situations like that,” Gitschier was saying over the phone between classes the other day. “So at this point you let it roll off your back and you get out there and go. But it’s nerve-wracking coming into a classroom when you know nobody.”
Or you might find him racing out of the school parking lot to make the 40-minute drive to campus for practice. Or in the car driving himself to an away game since he wasn’t out of class in time for the team bus. There was the weekend he had to make a 10-hour drive through the snow and sleet to get to a series in Ohio.
Or you might find him late at night, after practice and class prep are over, turning to his own project for his doctorate. “Some days you go in and you’re just exhausted from the day before,” he said. “It’s tough because I’m full-time teaching, I’m also in a doctorate program and I’m playing baseball. There are some days I come home from work and I’m like, ‘I need to catch up on sleep for about two hours,’ and the next thing you know I’m out four hours. So there’s a lot of catch-up mixed in.”
Or you might actually find him in those moments he loves — on the mound. Between Clark and Southern New Hampshire he has now been at it six years, his college career extended by the pandemic like so many others. He worked a perfect ninth inning just last Sunday against Saint Michael’s, striking out two in a 16-2 victory. That pushed Southern New Hampshire’s record to 28-15. No trifling baseball program, these Penmen. Just last spring they were 44-13 and in the Division II championships.
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In truth, the season has been something of a struggle for Gitschier. He has struck out 27 batters in 25.2 innings but the earned run average is 9.47. He knows enough about stats to understand that’s not good. But then, it’s a pretty full plate he’s trying to manage. Been that way since he decided to give baseball one final go.
“The biggest deciding factor was my teammates and wanting to be there for those guys and play for them and with them one last time,” he said. There was also a coaching change at Southern New Hampshire and new man Chris Shank and the staff were on board for his quest, which was vital. “They’ve been nothing but accommodating and great for me. In talking with some of my mentors and coaches along the way, the biggest thing was having no regrets about my career. Looking back, yes, it’s been a grind but I wouldn’t want to have it any other way because I would have regretted not playing this year more.
“It’s been very hard to manage it all just because I’ve got papers that I have to write, I’ve got to grade, I’ve got to teach, I’ve got to play, I’ve got to work out. I also have to eat and sleep. It really comes down to the support you have.”
That means his family, an understanding girlfriend, his coaches, his teammates, who have even volunteered to help him grade papers. “Being able to go out this way, those guys have been great, they’ve really gone to battle for me in multiple ways. And my coaches, they’ve really meant the world to me. They gave me an opportunity that otherwise I probably wouldn’t have had.”
This road started as a little boy playing backyard Wiffle ball with the neighborhood kids in Lowell. He was a Boston area kid who somehow grew up a New York Mets fan and came from a baseball-minded family, but also one that valued helping others. Gitschier had a younger cousin often visit and they’d have a game where he was the teacher, and she was the math student. Why math? How else can you calculate batting averages and fielding percentages? “That’s really where all the math came into play. Baseball is a numbers game,” he said. “I paid attention to so many stats growing up and now I teach stats. It really started with just being upstairs in a room teaching my little cousin. It’s been a long journey from there.”
He played baseball in high school, went on to Clark University and let his hair grow for more than two years. That’s when the sense of helping others came into play again. When the locks were really flowing — more than 12 inches long — he had them cut off to donate to the Children with Hair Loss Foundation, while also raising $6,000. That cause provides hair replacement for children who lose their hair because of illness.
Even Southern New Hampshire’s nickname fits the theme of Gitschier’s story. The Penmen. That came from all the Colonial accountants and clerks who banded together, going from their ledgers of numbers to the American Revolution. Now one of the Penmen is a 24-year-old math teacher. “I’m almost at that quarter-life crisis. I’m just glad it hasn’t happened just yet. I’ll possibly be done playing when it does happen,” he said. But in a way, there has also been one last spring of childhood, once he gets out of the car — the one with the school papers in the back seat — and puts on his baseball uniform.
A lot of his students don’t understand all he’s trying to do. And when they try to excuse not having homework finished because they were too busy, well, they’re pleading their case before the wrong judge.
“I was always told that hard work pays off, not just saying it but actually doing it, and it really has. I’m going to end up with a doctorate, full-time teaching and playing baseball,” he said. “There’s very few people I think that can say that they’ve done that. Hopefully it provides (his students) with some hopes and dreams for them to do something similar.
“Some days are tough; most days are really good. The enjoyment you get from helping a student who has struggled their whole life with math, that outweighs the negatives of teaching and all the bad things that come with it. I had friends growing up who were just like them. That’s really where a lot of my drive of being in an inner-city school comes from.
“It’s pretty cool to be able to say I have a game today, And they’re like for what? And then when you say it, they like, you’re still playing college baseball?”
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He is for a little bit longer, anyway. Southern New Hampshire plays Post University Tuesday night then closes its regular season this weekend with a big showdown series against Franklin Pierce, matching the top two teams in the NE10 Conference. Then comes the league tournament. Gitschier thinks he found a flaw in his pitching mechanics that helped him have a strong appearance last weekend and he’s hoping it carries over.
But soon he’ll move to the next chapter. He’ll be a pitching coach this summer in the college Futures League for the Westfield Starfires. There is the doctorate to complete and more algebra and statistics to teach. His goal one day is to coach college baseball. All in all, it has been a mission without a lot of downtime.
“I don’t think I’ll understand it until it’s all said and done,” he said. “That this was pretty special to be able to do.”
