• School, community rise up to help Narragansett's Nate Rasch realize college dreams

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Narragansett Regional baseball player Nate Rasch listens to a coach between innings of a game against Gardner High on May. 5. Rasch will attend Duke University on a Washington Duke Scholarship worth $72,000 a year for four years. T&G Staff/Rick Cinclair
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• By Rich Garven
  Telegram & Gazette Staff

  
  Posted May. 21, 2016 at 8:03 PM
  Updated May 22, 2016 at 9:46 AM
  
  

  BALDWINVILLE — Nate Rasch walked into the guidance department at Narragansett Regional High School early last month and sat down at a computer to check his email.

  The thoughtful, helpful, gifted and well-liked senior had been accepted to a number of prestigious universities, including Cornell, Duke, Virginia and the UMass Honors College at both the Amherst and Lowell campuses.

  Now Mr. Rasch was waiting on financial aid awards. This 2016 T&G Student Achiever understood his situation, and getting into those schools didn’t mean going to them.

  While Mr. Rasch lacks monetary means, he is a driven individual with an enormous wealth of support from family, friends and a community. That priceless combination had nurtured and nudged him to get this far.

  Mr. Rasch looked into the screen and saw his past and his future, the reality of the present and a long-held dream in limbo. It was all just a keystroke or two away.

  •••

  Mr. Rasch, 18 and the youngest in a family of three, is legally blind in his right eye as a result of amblyopia — more commonly known as lazy eye. He is red-green color blind in his left eye.

  Contacts allow him to maintain a typical and active teenage lifestyle.

  Mr. Rasch has his driver’s license, with no restrictions; works part-time as a gas station attendant or, as he likes to joke, “field transport technician” at Huhtula Oil & Propane in Templeton; and is a three-sport captain for the Warriors.

  Mr. Rasch started playing T-ball when he was 4, but he was already well schooled in the act of catching and hitting a ball thanks to his older brothers, Josh, 24, and Kyle, 23.

  “They took me under their wings,” he said.

  The 6-foot-2, 185-pound Mr. Rasch joined the soccer, basketball and baseball teams at Narragansett in seventh grade. He was the starting goalie for the varsity soccer team for four years and a Wachusett League D all-star as a senior, spent two years on the varsity basketball team as a multi-positional player and is in his second season as the starting catcher for the varsity baseball team.

  He enjoys and is always up for the challenge that comes on a field, court or diamond.

  “I’m sort of a competition junkie,” said Mr. Rasch, who comes across as anything but with his quiet voice and laidback demeanor. “Anything that is competitive and makes me work; anything that I have room to improve on, it stimulates me.”

  Some concessions are made for his impaired eyesight. For instance, fellow senior Eric Thomas would position himself on the edge of the 18-yard box as a marker whenever Mr. Rasch went to punt a soccer ball.

  But other than that, you’d never know. That’s the same way Mr. Rasch looks at it.

  “I’ve dealt with it my entire life, I just naturally compensate for it,” he said. “I don’t really notice what I’m doing most of the time. I just kind of adjust and go with the flow.”

  •••

  Going with the flow became more difficult by the time Mr. Rasch was a sophomore after severe medical issues led to both his parents landing on disability.

  Tom Rasch, 46, had complications nine days after undergoing gastric bypass surgery in August 2012. A former delivery driver, he later underwent a pair of knee replacements and still has a bad back in need of repair.

  His wife, Jennifer, 43, had a heart attack three years ago and was later told by a doctor she had gone into cardiac arrest. She endures chronic pain on a daily basis.

  Ultimately, the family lost their home in Templeton. They live at a relative’s camp in Winchendon and Nate Rasch commutes to Narragansett as a school-choice student.

  Mr. Rasch had always dreamed of becoming the first member of his family to attend a four-year college “and really make my parents and my family proud.” This outstanding student, especially when it comes to math and science, came to believe that was no longer a goal within reach.

  “I was devastated,” Mr. Rasch said.

  Others stepped in to pick him up, providing financial and emotional support.

  When Mr. Rasch was short on gas money, the school staff donated prepaid cards to ensure he wouldn’t miss a day of classes. (His family has since, in turn, donated some gas cards back to the school.)

  Members of the Templeton police and fire departments included Mr. Rasch among the list of area youngsters who received gifts to ensure he’d be able to celebrate Christmas properly.

  “I’m certainly thankful for it,” Mr. Rasch said. “I don’t know how I would have made out.”

  Perhaps more importantly, Mr. Rasch’s teachers encouraged him to apply himself even more in school, recognizing his prodigious potential in the classroom had yet to be fully tapped.

  And his parents made sure their youngest son continued to devote his energy to being a great teammate and an even better student. The only problems he should be concerned with were the ones presented him in classrooms and after-school competitions.

  “The whole goal was to keep him going in school, keep him playing sports — keep his mind off it,” Tom Rasch said. “We didn’t want him getting dragged back and forth (to the hospital).”

  And then there was Patricia Weiss. The school’s longtime guidance counselor promised Mr. Rasch she would use every means possible to not only ensure he’d go to college, but would do so debt-free.

  •••

  Mr. Rasch took honors classes in geometry and calculus as a freshman. He posted a perfect score on the exit exam for an advanced placement college-level calculus class as a junior and is taking a more challenging college-level calculus class through a virtual high school this year.

  “Nathan Rasch has a formidable intellect, especially when it comes to mathematical and science reasoning,” Ms. Weiss said.

  Mr. Rasch, a member of the National Honor Society, who will be either the class valedictorian or salutatorian, took all three SAT exams in math. He missed a total of two questions.

  Mr. Rasch is both a student and a teacher. He absolutely enjoys serving as a volunteer tutor to his peers.

  All one need do is ask for help, which is easy because the answer is always the same.

  “That’s my favorite thing to do,” Mr. Rasch said. “I just like it; it’s a lot of fun. Honestly, I like seeing other people succeed. If I help someone on a test and they got a higher grade on it than me I would feel proud like I did my job the way I was supposed to.”

  Jason Donovan, a teacher and the varsity baseball coach at Narragansett, seconded the emotion.

  “He’s just a responsible, generous young man,” Mr. Donovan said. “He’s willing to do anything, anytime for anybody. … And he’s very genuine.

  “Genuine is probably the best word I can say about him. He is exactly what he is when you meet him, whether you sit with him for five minutes or almost five years for me.”

  •••

  You give and you receive.

  Mr. Rasch stared at the computer in the guidance department. Then he opened the email from UMass.

  The financial aid package was in excess of $27,000 a year. It wouldn’t cover all his costs, but enough to ensure the dream would become reality.

  “I’ll never forget the look on his face,” Ms. Weiss said. “It really hit him that, ‘I’m going to go to a four-year college.' ”

  Things would soon get better. Make that way, way better.

  Duke accepted just over 10 percent of the 33,000 applicants for admission to the class of 2020. Mr. Rasch was one the fortunate few after finally applying at the repeated urging of interim principal John Jasinski, who is friendly with Mike Krzyzewski, the Blue Devils’ legendary men’s basketball coach.

  In addition, the prestigious, private university in Durham, North Carolina, offered Mr. Rasch an inaugural Washington Duke Scholarship. Thirty incoming freshmen who are first-generation students from underresourced high schools were selected.

  The scholarship is worth $72,000 a year for the next four years. It covers tuition, fees, and room and board with about $4,500 built in for personal expenses. The only hitch, if you will, is that in return each recipient agrees to mentor another first-generation student as a sophomore as a pay-it-forward gesture.

  “They rolled out the red carpet and lined it with gold,” Ms. Weiss said.

  Mr. Rasch, being as intelligent as he is, accepted the generous offer. He even did it sight unseen, visiting Duke for the first time - courtesy of the school - three days after settling on his next stop after Narragansett.

  Mr. Rasch didn’t know what to expect on his Southern sojourn, but came away impressed by the campus, the student body and, especially, the faculty and staff.

  “They made me feel 100 percent secure that they would take care of me,” said Mr. Rasch, who plans to major in engineering. “As long as I keep trying, I can’t fail.”

  •••

  Mr. Rasch will walk out of Narragansett as a decorated and devoted graduate next month.

  In early July, he’ll depart for Duke to take a one-credit summer course and some seminars. It’s all designed to help ease the transition to the academic challenges and personal adjustments that lie ahead.

  At some point, Mr. Rasch will flip open a laptop provided free of charge to him by the school. When he looks into the screen, he’ll see a reflection of one and, yet, so many.

  There’s Ms. Weiss fulfilling her promise. There’s a school and a community that provided academic, athletic, emotional and financial support. There’s a father and mother awed by a son who never gets flustered and makes the difficult look easy.

  And, most importantly, there’s a determined young man who did all he could to ensure reality didn’t derail his dream.

  — Contact Rich Garven at rgarven@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @RichGarvenTG.