“A Tradition of Excellence” — the phrase physically printed on the banner that tallies wins in the wrestling room and figuratively on the hundreds of mini “banners” hanging on the walls C110. At the heart of both rooms and both traditions is math teacher and head wrestling coach Andy Fitz.
Fitz is known for his efforts to foster a celebratory atmosphere for his wrestlers, but fewer people get to see that he directs the same attention toward highlighting the successes of his students.
His classroom, C110, is adorned with college pennants of every color, gifted to him by seniors when they make their college decisions.
“When I was growing up, I collected baseball pennants, and I wanted to do something unusual when I started teaching,” Fitz said. “I came up with an idea: I wanted it to be a pennant, something that they could put their nickname on and their year of graduation.”
Fitz received the pennant that catalyzed the collection in 2005, his first year as an educator, from a student planning to attend West Virginia University.
“I knew he was going on a school visit, and I asked him to get me a pennant,” Fitz said. “It started with one on a wall. Eventually, more and more kids got one, and I ended up where I am now. It just kind of exploded once it started.”
21 years and over 600 pennants later, Fitz now has more pennants than wall space.
“They’re not even all displayed,” Fitz said. “I try to rotate a little bit of what’s on the wall each year, and I try to make sure each unique school is represented.”
Fitz noted that the Del Val administration wholly embraces the pennant tradition.
“Del Val has been very supportive of this little endeavor that I have,” Fitz said. “I’ve never had to move rooms, and they’ve hung up strips to help me hang more and more of these [pennants] over the years. We take these down about once every four or five years, and they have to be fireproofed, and Del Val pays for that.”
Alumna Abby Eckert, a student who was in Fitz’s AP Calculus AB class last year, found the pennants to be like a fingerprint of C110.
“If the pennants weren’t there, it would feel so empty,” Eckert said. “The pennants are what give it its special quality, where it’s like, ‘this is Fitz’s room.’”
Supervisor of Mathematics Ryan Murphy shares Eckert’s sentiment. Murphy views the pennants as “distinctly Fitz” and indicative of the environment and student-teacher relationships that he creates.
“[The pennant wall] was something that allowed me to kind of immediately clock Fitz as being a big deal around here — not just in terms of math — but he has a presence in the community,” Murphy said.
Murphy began working at Del Val eight years after Fitz, and the pennants functioned like a reputation that preceded him.
“I didn’t really start to get to know Fitz until later,” Murphy said. “I never doubted that he was good at what he did, but it wasn’t long after talking to him that I recognized, ‘oh, this man’s a big deal for a reason.’ He’s got a certain charisma and spirit to him, and the pennants were kind of just that personified.”
The sheer number of pennants that Fitz has amassed speaks to the type of mentor that he is.
“It just shows the quality of his teaching and how many students he’s left an impact on,” Eckert said. “The fact that all these students want to buy these pennants for him, it’s just really cool.”
For Fitz, the pennants represent more than just college decisions. Looking around the room at his collection serves as a reminder of all the lives that he has impacted.
“I am certainly closer to the end than the beginning of this whole teaching thing,” Fitz said. “So I just look back, I mean, that pennant from 2005 was older than you are. It’s like rings in a tree, you know, between math and wrestling.”
As the pennant collection grows and Fitz accumulates more “rings,” he is grateful for the continued opportunity to participate in student success, viewing his mentorship role as priceless.
“We’ll never be millionaires, but we do get to be in the memory of thousands of students over time,” Fitz said. “What a good ride.”
