In this age of specialized sports stars, Westminster Christian senior Nick Auerbacher is a throwback. He’s a three sport athlete playing soccer, baseball and football.
He’s played baseball since he was three and is a pitcher on the Westminster team. The team has had a good start to the 2016 season.
“We could potentially go to states,” Auerbacher says. “That’s always the goal. We’re looking for back-to-back.”
The Warriors won the state championship in 2015.
In the summers, Auerbacher plays travel baseball on the Miami Suns team.
He started playing football his junior year when he learned the team needed a kicker. He tried it out and found he liked it. This year, he made 35 extra points and only missed three at the beginning of the season. Westminster won the district championship before losing in the regional semi-finals against American Heritage.
Auerbacher says he’s interested in playing football in college. He’s looking at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., a division three school.
If he does not end up with a football or baseball scholarship, Auerbacher expects to attend the University of South Florida and major in business or accounting. His brother started as USF before transferring to FSU and Auerbacher says that being at USF would allow him to go home more often.
He hasn’t looked into playing soccer in college.
“I just pursued it as a high school sport,” he says. “I just liked it.”
He liked it enough to play for five years. Playing soccer helped keep him in shape for the other sports. He jokes that all the running required in soccer allowed him to eat anything he wanted.
Although he has kept busy playing sports, he’s also taken the time to help the community. He’s a member of Students Offering Support (SOS), a community service club outside school. The organization raises money to help children.
SOS sponsors events such as Bowling Against Bullies, where they raise money and raise awareness of the problem of bullying. They also host garage sales as fundraisers. Auerbacher brought friends into SOS to help with the projects. Last year, SOS raised more than $9,000.
He’s also participated in the Patriots Outreach, an organization that collects baseball equipment and sends it to the Dominican Republic where the equipment is distributed to needy children.
“The drive where we collected helmets and bats,” he says. “I brought the stuff I had and asked people if they had stuff and brought the equipment I had and they had to the drive.”
At school, Auerbacher is a member of the French Club, even though he’s never taken French. He takes Spanish instead. But he had friends in the French club and found the club meetings interesting and fun. Because of his participation in the club, he’s learned enough French that he can order food at a French restaurant.
“I like learning about how other people communicate and how we can communicate in different languages,” he says.
He has taken part in a history competition. Last year he worked on a display board for National History Day. The board featured the life of Napoleon Bonaparte because the category was the biggest leaders in the world ever.
“It was compared to a 100 other boards at the state level,” Auerbacher says.
The group won first or second place in the Miami-Dade competition. That qualified them to go on to the statewide contest.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
