San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘KEEP PUSHING FORWARD’
Sam Houston’s Shubert found strength on the diamond after being wounded in 2018 Santa Fe school shooting
HUNTSVILLE — A shocked Rome Shubert glanced down at his once-white shirt, in the blur and bedlam moments after multiple gunshots changed Santa Fe forever.
“From my shoulders down to my stomach was red,” Shubert recalled of that horrific May day at Santa Fe High School in 2018 that resulted in 10 dead and 13 injured. “I didn’t even know whose blood it was. My first thought was, ‘Whose is this?’ ”
Then a wide-eyed friend approached Shubert amid the chaos and screams and grimaced at the blood running down the left and front side of Shubert’s neck.
“He told me the blood was mine,” said Shubert, a sophomore in high school at the time. “He said, ‘You got shot in the head.’ That’s when it really hit me what had just happened and how serious it was, and I started running as far as I could.”
When Shubert, along with stunned classmates who’d survived the mass shooting of May 18, 2018, reached a safe area away from the school and he saw law enforcement entering Santa Fe High’s doors, his running stopped and a courageous, ongoing battle commenced.
“It’s tough, but you’ve got to stay the course,” said Shubert, now a pitcher at Sam Houston State who will be honored on Senior Day on Saturday — May 18 — along with a dozen other Bearkat seniors at Don Sanders Stadium. “You have to find people who you can lean on at any given moment because if you try to handle it all by yourself, you’re going to fail miserably.
“I tried to do it by myself for a little bit and just silence it and put it away, but you’ve got to talk about it and you’ve got to keep pushing forward. If you get stuck in that moment, it’s all going to come crashing down on you so fast and so hard that you’re not going to be able to deal with it.”
Then-Santa Fe High student Dimitrios Pagourtzis, now 23, was arrested at the school the day of the mass shooting and charged with capital murder of multiple persons and aggravated assault against a public servant.
He has been in a North Texas prison hospital since 2019 when he was first declared mentally incompetent to stand trial, including most recently in January. The shootings occurred in a first period art class and then in an adjacent hallway, and police said Pagourtzis used his father’s shotgun and revolver in the attack.
Shubert said when he first heard the shots behind him his first thought was fireworks and perhaps an over-the-top senior prank. When he turned around in his chair and saw the shooter, Shubert said he flipped a table he was sitting at and ducked behind it, occasionally peeking over the top for a chance to run.
“Luckily we had a back door to that art room that was surrounded by a brick wall probably eight to 10 feet tall,” Shubert recalled.
“The gates to that were locked, so you had to scale the wall, and everybody was grabbing the top and pulling themselves over, and people were helping push each other over.”
When Shubert reached the other side of the wall along with his classmates, his unnerved friend approached him about the blood soaking the front of his white shirt.
Shubert said of the years since the mass murders, “One of the biggest things is not letting that (shooter) win. You don’t need to get revenge on him or tell him he needs to go to hell or needs to die or anything like that — he did what he did. … If you’re giving him attention, that’s exactly what they want.
“If you’re sitting there and saying, ‘I’m gonna get him!’ … don’t do that. Just try to get back to normal as fast as possible, but don’t push it so fast you never actually coped with it, because then it will eat at you. You’ve got to find a balance, cope with it and keep pushing forward.”
Shubert, who had a bullet enter the back of his neck and exit the side miraculously without damaging any arteries or his spine, said he’s relied on his faith, family and baseball to keep pushing forward in the years
since. He has two small scars hidden by his bountiful red hair.
“When it was happening I was praying, ‘Please, please, please get me out of this,’ ” said Shubert, who has two younger sisters. “When I was in the ambulance afterward I was just saying thank you, thank you, thank you. Seeing that blood and medics who were frantic, I also thought my baseball days were over, but I kept going back to being thankful for where I was.
“With that second chance I felt God was trying to push me in a different direction, to do more than just play baseball, to be a brother to others and just help people — be more than just a guy who’s on the baseball team.”
Fellow Sam Houston pitcher Marshall Wales said Shubert has done exactly that in his time with the Bearkats program over the past two years.
“Rome embodies toughness,” Wales said. “You can see it in his upbringing and the way he’s handled what happened. He loves his teammates and holds you accountable — he’s just the epitome of a great teammate.”
Shubert originally had committed to pitch for the University of Houston prior to the shooting, but the COVID-19 pandemic canceled his senior year of 2020 at
Santa Fe and also caused some then-college players to return for another season, so he signed with Wharton Community College to earn more playing time early.
Following a successful couple of seasons at Wharton, Shubert signed with Sam Houston, where he has a 2-2 record over 35 innings as a reliever over the past two years. He’s pitched against Texas A&M and Texas among others this season for the Bearkats, who were 27-21 entering their C-USA weekend series at Florida International.
“Rome accomplished a goal he had set out to do — play college baseball,” Sam Houston coach Jay Sirianni said. “He’s the ‘quiet best’ teammate. You always hope your players will look around and see how they can be doing something (to help) … and that’s Rome. He looks around, sees something and goes and does it for us. He just has a true appreciation of what he’s getting to do.”
Shubert, a construction management major whose organized baseball days likely are done with Sam Houston’s final game this season, also used the sport in the days and even years after the shootings to keep his mind occupied.
“I started playing baseball
when I was about four years old, and just fell in love with it,” Shubert said with a smile. “I tried other sports like basketball, soccer and football, but it always came back to baseball.”
The night of the shooting that had occurred early that morning, the Santa Fe baseball team voted to play its playoff game against Kingwood Park the next night at Deer Park High. Shubert was there that memorable May 19, 2018, in uniform and with a bandage behind his left ear. Kingwood Park prevailed and advanced in the postseason, but Santa Fe’s resolve to press on left a big impression on the nation that week.
“The biggest thing was trying to get back to normal,” said Shubert, whose Santa Fe teammate Trenton Beazley also was grazed by a bullet in the back. “Being out there the next day was a feat in itself, and then baseball throughout these past six years has definitely helped keep my mind away from it.
“Even without baseball I probably would have been OK, but having so many guys around me through these years has definitely helped keep me going.”
In the summer of 2020, after the pandemic had canceled his senior season, Shubert surprised his mother, Sheri, with a tattoo on his left bicep that reads, “Santa Fe Strong.” The date “5-18-18” is tattooed beneath, and 10 simple crosses flank the date, one for each of his eight schoolmates and two teachers who died in the shooting. Shubert looks at the tattoo on the mound each time before a pitching appearance and pays homage to those who perished.
“Rome is the strongest person I know,” said Sheri, fighting through tears six years after the tragedy. “Knowing my son was in that room and what he heard in there and what happened to him, it’s still hard … we’re thankful God spared him.”
Sheri said her heart sank when she first heard the Sam Houston seniors would be honored on May 18 — Shubert’s final home game of his baseball career.
“But then a friend and I were talking and she said this is God’s way of saying to have a new memory to be happy on that day,” Sheri said. “Not to replace the memory of that horrible event, but let’s focus on a good memory for that day.”
Shubert agreed and added the last home game of his college career falling on the same date as his hometown’s worst day is more than coincidence.
“Every time that date comes around, people are reaching out to you to make sure you’re OK,” Shubert said. “This is God saying, you don’t always need to remember this day for that tragedy. You can now remember it for accomplishing something major in your life.
“And now, you’re turning a chapter.”