Minium: ODU First Baseman's Life was Changed Forever by Deadly Stoneman Douglas Shooting

NORFOLK, Va. – Hunter Fitz-Gerald sometimes feels uneasy when he steps into a classroom. And when he goes to the grocery store, he always scopes out the nearest exit.

Just in case, he said.
 
"When I'm sitting in class, it's hard to focus sometimes because what's running through my mind is that anyone could just walk into that building," the Old Dominion baseball first baseman said.
 
"I know that's not the best state of mind to have, but sometimes, my mind just wanders."
 
There is always collateral damage during a mass shooting, people who weren't in the line of fire whose lives, nonetheless, are changed forever. And Fitz-Gerald was among those who suffered collateral damage from the worst high school shooting in American history.
 
On Feb. 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old Stoneman Douglas High School student, walked into the Parkland, Florida school armed with an AR-15. In just five minutes, he shot and killed 17 students and staff members and seriously wounded 17 others.
 
The killing didn't stop until his rifle jammed.
 
Fitz-Gerald was a junior at Stoneman Douglas and had the good fortune of being on the opposite side of the school from where the shooting occurred. He was thus spared the horror of being hunted down or seeing friends and classmates shot.
 
But he lost friends and will carry the scars of that day forever.
 
Parkland, Florida, a Miami suburb, is an affluent community and one of the safest small cities in the nation.
 
"That's part of why this was so shocking to everyone," Fitz-Gerald said. "It was really scary to think that someone could just walk into our school and do that. You would never think anything like that could happen there."
 
Alas, the shooting did not occur in a vacuum. Just weeks before, Fitz-Gerald was sitting in a restaurant in Coral Springs, Florida, with his parents, Todd and Colleen, and younger brother, Devin, when a SWAT team stormed in through the front door.


 
The family ran to the back of the restaurant and hid under a table while stun grenades went off and the police arrested a suspected gun dealer.
 
"The guy was dealing guns out of the back of his car," said Fitz-Gerald's father.
 
That alone was enough to traumatize a teenager.
 
But then came the shooting and a few months later, Fitz-Gerald's grandmother, Judy Fitz-Gerald, succumbed to cancer. Two years ago, his grandfather, Edward Fitz-Gerald, also died after a long bout with cancer.
 
"Hunter was very close to his grandmother," Todd Fitz-Gerald said. "That hit him hard.
 
"He's been through a lot, but he's pretty strong mentally. He's seen more than most kids should ever have to see, but he's handled it well."
 
You would never know the trauma Hunter Fitz-Gerald suffered by watching him on or off the field. He's quiet and polite. He has hair down to his shoulders, but says yes sir and no sir. He smiles often and is easy to talk to.
 
A Catholic cross dangles from his neck and there is a tribute to his grandmother, or "Nana," as she was known, depicted in tattoo ink on his left arm. At times when he's traveling with ODU on the road, he reads from a Bible app he has on his cell phone.


 
He crosses himself before every at bat and did so after all of his 13 home runs this season, to honor his grandparents and the 17 deceased classmates.
 
At 6-foot-5 and 230 pounds, Fitz-Gerald is a big guy with a powerful bat. Although he's been in a slump lately, he's batting .333 with a team-high 13 home runs, 51 hits, 44 RBIs and 96 total bases.
 
He comes from baseball royalty. But oddly enough, his baseball career, as with his life, has been full of adversity.
 
Todd Fitz-Gerald may be the nation's best high school baseball coach. In his 22 seasons as a head coach, he's won four Florida state and four national titles, been named national coach of the year four times and taken his teams to the state tournament 20 years in a row.
 
Stoneman Douglas has won three of the last seven state titles, owns a 41-game winning streak and has won 39 in a row at home.
 
Fitz-Gerald's career record is 494-121, an 80 percent winning percentage.
 
He's put seven players in the Major Leagues and had 37 drafted. "I have a few more in the pipeline that will be there as well," Fitz-Gerald said.
 
So, you'd think that when Hunter Fitz-Gerald was a senior, he'd have been overwhelmed with Division I offers.
 
As a high school senior, Fitz-Gerald hit .515 with nine home runs and 31 RBIs. The South Florida Sun Sentinel named him the Broward County Player of the Year. He was also taken in the 33rd round of the 2019 Major League draft by the Colorado Rockies.
 
But at season's end, he had no Division I offers.
 
"He's always been kind of overlooked," Todd Fitz-Gerald said.
 
He considered signing with the Rockies but is glad he didn't.
 
"I didn't think I was ready" for pro ball, he said. "I felt like going to college would give me a chance to develop a little more as a player.
 
"And when I look back on it, I think I made the right choice because after COVID, pro baseball got rid of a lot of players and a lot of teams."
 
His journey to Norfolk was circuitous – ODU is the fourth college he's attended in four years.


Hunter Fitz-Gerald with his family on Senior Day at Stoneman Douglas.
 
As a freshman he enrolled at Florida Southern, a Division II school, where he played sparingly during a 2020 season shortened by COVID. He enrolled at Hillsborough Community College in 2021 and then last year at Florida Florida Southwestern State Community College, where he hit .359 and had 10 home runs and 48 RBI's. 
 
By the time he enrolled at Florida Southwestern, Division I schools had finally figured out that he could hit. East Carolina, Florida Atlantic and Florida International all offered him. Florida State asked him to hold off before signing to see if they might have a scholarship available later in the year.
 
But Todd Fitz-Gerald had met ODU head coach Chris Finwood a few years earlier at a coaches' clinic and they had developed a good relationship.
 
ODU was the furthest school away from home, but Hunter Fitz-Gerald was attracted by the reputation the Monarchs had earned as a power-hitting team.
 
Led by Matt Coutney (27) and Andy Garriola (25), the Monarchs pounded out 128 home runs last season, the third most in the nation.
 
On the ODU web site, under the section that says "Why ODU?" Fitz-Gerald responded, "Because they hit a lot of home runs."
 
It wasn't that simple, of course. Then assistant coach Logan Robbins did a masterful job of recruiting him. "He kept calling and texting me and sending their stat lines," Fitz-Gerald said.
 
"But it meant a lot to me that my dad thought a lot of the entire coaching staff here."
 
The senior Fitz-Gerald coached his son from tee ball through high school and wanted him to play for someone with a coaching philosophy similar to his.
 
"Finny, we're alike in a lot of ways," Todd Fitz-Gerald said. "He's got that fathership style.
 
"I knew he would be in really good hands there. If he needed discipline, I knew he'd get it, and if he needed love, I knew he would get that.


 
"I knew Finny would take care of him. It's always hard to let your kids go. But at the end of the day, you have to let them make their own path."
 
His son committed to ODU sight-unseen. "They sent me pictures of the campus and the stadium," Fitz-Gerald said. "They were honest with me about everything. I trusted them.
 
"They said that I would develop here, and they've kept their word."

So has Fitz-Gerald, said ODU hitting coach Jonathan Hadra.

"He's been awesome to work with," Hadra said. "The best players want to be coached, and as good as he is, he always wants to be coached and find ways to improve.

"I have really appreciated that about Hunter."

There was a fire drill on the morning of Feb. 14, 2018 at Stoneman Douglas High, and the first inkling many people had that something might be amiss was when there was a second fire drill later that afternoon.
 
No one is sure whether someone pulled a fire alarm or whether it was set off by smoke from Cruz's gun. But when it sounded, Hunter Fitz-Gerald knew something wasn't right.
 
"We were all walking outside the building and wondering why there was a second fire drill," he said. "That never happens."
 
Then he heard what he thought were fireworks, and then got a call from his dad.
 
Someone is shooting people in school. Run, as fast as you can, he told his son. He and some friends did not stop running until they were far way.
 
"It was really scary not knowing whether your son was safe," Todd Fitz-Gerald said.
 
One baseball player saw Cruz walking down a hallway shortly before he began murdering people.
 
"The gun wasn't loaded yet, and the kid happened to be walking down a stairwell," Hunter Fitz-Gerald said. "He told the kid, 'You'd better get out of here. Something bad is going to happen.'
 
"He spread the word and ran as fast as he could to get away."


Hunter with his father, Todd, and brother, Devin. 

Several students were shot and killed near Todd Fitz-Gerald's science classroom, but it was early afternoon and he was at the baseball field, 300 yards away.
 
He watched hundreds of students pouring out of the school and heard sirens and then heard the dreaded words "active shooter" over a walkie talkie.
 
Then he saw Jeff Heinrich, an off-duty police sergeant whom Fitz-Gerald had coached since he was seven. Heinrich took care of the baseball field as a volunteer and at time of day, was usually working on the turf.

Instead, Fitz-Gerald saw him running out of the building with a student in his arms.
 
The student had been shot in the foot and was bleeding profusely. "The hole in the boy's leg was bigger than two baseballs," Fitz-Gerald told the Bleacher Report days after the shooting. "It was wide open, wide-ass open. Looked like hamburger meat, man."

"That's something I never, ever want to see again," he added.
 
They took the boy into the clubhouse and Fitz-Gerald used a first aid kit to bind the wound. Heinrich then went running back into the building to try to rescue more students.


 
There were a lot of heroes that day, including athletic director Chris Hixon and assistant football coach Aaron Feis. Both ran toward the shooter to save students. Both died.

Feis, who was also a security guard, shielded three female students when Cruz took aim at them.  Hixon died trying to disarm the shooter.

In the weeks and months following the shooting, there were funerals and vigils honoring the dead, as well as student-led protests.

Fitz-Gerald said he attended vigils but didn't get involved with the protests. Instead, he relied on baseball, his teammates and his Catholic faith to heal.
 
"I prayed for the families, for peace in the community," he said. "I prayed for everyone involved and for the families to heal and get through it, although they never fully heal.
 
"No parent should ever have to bury a child. I can't imagine what the parents have gone through."
 
The day after the shooting, Todd Fitz-Gerald gathered the team together for a meeting at a nearby baseball complex.
 
The coaches and players talked for hours. Fitz-Gerald told his players that nothing they could do would bring the slain students back to life and that they would want to team to move on with life.
 
He felt good about how the team reacted and then was stunned when most of them said they wanted to practice.
 
"The best therapy was being out there on the baseball field with my teammates, with my friends, every day," Hunter Fitz-Gerald said. "Because that got our minds off of it. That was our therapy because you weren't thinking about anything except having fun playing a kids' game.
 
"It was really good for all of us because our teammates, those are the people you're with every day. We all kind of grew up playing together."


 
Major League Baseball stepped up, with some teams making donations and others hosting the Stoneman Douglas team on their practice fields during spring practice. The Miami Marlins opened up their stadium, and their locker room, to Stoneman Douglas to host a game.
 
Derek Jeter, the former New York Yankees great and then Marlins CEO, told the Stoneman Douglas players how baseball helped heal New York City after 9/11.
 
Yet in spite of all of the support, healing has been a difficult process. Players sometimes burst into tears during practice.

Two students injured during the shooting have since committed suicide. Stories from the South Florida media indicate so many families of the fallen are still grieving.
 
Todd Fitz-Gerald said he and his wife often avoid public places. When they go out to eat, it's at a neighborhood place, "a place a lot like Cheers," he said. When they eat elsewhere, he always sits facing the door.
 
There is no accurate way to quantify the damage done in that five-minute killing spree.
 
"The pain, it won't ever go away," Todd Fitz-Gerald said. "But we'll never forget our 17 angels."
 
He isn't kidding when he says angels.
 
"We honor them before every game," he said. "We have had bands play and we pray before every game.
 
"I know it sounds crazy, but we do have angels at our place. We've won some games there we never should have won. They're always looking over us."
 
Stoneman Douglas puts its 41-game winning streak on the line Tuesday at Park Vista High School, which is 15-2-1. The playoffs begin in two weeks.

But even during the midst of his season, Todd Fitz-Gerald is keenly following ODU.
 
He watches every game, mostly on ESPN+, and on replay if game times conflict, and talks to his son frequently.
 
ODU travels to VMI Wednesday before beginning a key Sun Belt three-game series Friday at Appalachian State.
 
"I really like ODU as a team," he said. "I love what Finny is doing. The guys love each other. They've just got to stay with it and stay even keeled."
 
ODU (24-11) just finished the toughest stretch of its schedule and lost six of its last eight games. But Hunter Fitz-Gerald said ODU "is a resilient team that really fights. We're definitely capable of getting ourselves in a regional and winning it.

"This is a close team. My teammates, they're just great guys."
 
Regardless of how the season ends, Todd Fitz-Gerald is proud of his son.
 
"He's a late bloomer, but he's really worked hard on his craft," he said. "He's dealt with adversity so well.
 
"He's going to be a really good family guy. He will protect his family. He's a homebody who just enjoys hanging out with his friends, with the small circle he knows and trusts.
 
"He's really a good person in spite of everything he's been through and that's what a parent wants to see in a son.

"We're very proud of him."
 
Contact Minium at hminium@odu.edu or follow him  on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram