In his final home stretch before graduating, 17-year-old Tyler Wolowicz ‘25 has been interested in two things: baseball and engineering.
He’s been playing baseball since he was in elementary school on a little league team. The sport even holds fond memories for him as his dad used to coach him. Now, he’s a varsity player on Foothill Technology High School’s (Foothill Tech) boys baseball team, usually at second base.
“The biggest thing about baseball is that it’s a stress reliever,” Wolowicz said, whose workload consists of honors and Advanced Placement (AP) classes, as well as an internship with DTech Academy Capstone.
Currently, Wolowicz is on a break from the field after suffering a head injury when he went up to bat during a game against Channel Islands High School (CIHS).
“About a month ago now, at a baseball game, I was hit in the face with a 70 mph fastball, and I had to go to the hospital for it because I had about three major fractures in my face along the cheekbone and the nose. My entire … left side of my face was swollen and I had a bunch of other hairline fractures.
So I can’t play baseball right now and I can’t for the next four or five weeks because if I get hit again I need to go in for surgery.”
Beyond baseball, Wolowicz spends his time in the DTech lab where he helps create and sell products to local businesses such as the Channel Islands Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and Betty Belts, to name a few. As an intern, he has learned how to “fix machinery, facilitate projects, work within budgets, [and] communicate with clients.”
“DTech, the engineering side of it, the business side of it, it definitely interests me a lot.”
Inspired to build things by his grandpa, Wolowicz recalls helping him make birdhouses in his garage growing up. “And then it slowly kind of transitioned into me doing work in DTech,” Wolowicz said.
Applying these experiences to the future, Wolowicz is hoping to get accepted to California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly SLO) with a minor in business and a major in chemical engineering. When it comes to baseball, Wolowicz plans to continue playing on an intramural recreation team.
When reflecting on his passions, Wolowicz’s words of advice for students beginning their high school journey is “Try a bunch of different things, eventually you will find something that you’re passionate about.”
