The University of Tampa baseball team is looking to repeat as NCAA champions yet again. This year, senior right fielder Zach Gawrych will play a huge role in getting Tampa back to the top.
Last year, Gawrych made the NCAA Division II Championship Series All-Tournament team and started 55 of 57 games throughout the season. He ended the season with a .305 batting average and had five home runs and 43 runs batted in during his junior season.
Gawrych’s speed on the base paths was relentless as he stole 21 bases without getting caught once. He also started all 13 postseason contests in which he had 13 hits, stole two bases and scored 11 runs in helping to leading the Spartans to glory.
Gawrych is from Tampa and a graduate from Wharton High School. He was considering many different offers during his senior year of high school from other universities to play baseball. In the end, he chose to stay close to home and decided that UT was the best fit for him.
“[Being at UT] I can have the chance to win a ring every year and the university will help me in my life after baseball,” Gawrych said.
He later referred back to his experience of winning the national title in Cary, North Carolina last season as “a blast and an awesome feeling.” He also mentioned that the quality of the business school was another major factor in his decision. Since his freshman year, Gawrych has been an impressive asset to the Spartans in more ways than one. He only started 16 games during his freshman year, but his workload increased and he started to blossom as a ballplayer
during his sophomore season.
Gawrych led the Spartans with a .365 batting average with three home runs, 14 runs batted in and an impressive .548 slugging percentage during his second season with the baseball team.
Gawrych also played 40 games and was named Daktronics All-South region first team member and an All- Sunshine state conference first team member. Overall, he has able been able to lead by example with his play on the field, which has clearly rubbed off on the rest of the team.
This year, Gawrych will need to put his leadership skills to the test. In fact, he has big plans to help with the younger players on the roster.
“I want to be more open with the guys and help them improve as players so they can contribute to the team,” Gawrych said.
He hopes to utilize the skills he learned from players who have already graduated, but now that he is a senior, he has more of the responsibility this season and says that they must be patient throughout the entire process.
“We need to take it one game at a time and it will be a long road to get to where we want to be,” he said.
Anybody who has played baseball will tell you that the game is a marathon, not a sprint, and this 50-game regular season that the UT baseball team will have (not including regionals, conference tournaments, and potentially nationals) will be just that.
Phil Novotny can be reached at philip.novotny@spartans.ut.edu.