(NOTE: This story is part of our Top Sports Stories of 2020 series, which runs throughout this week.)
Growing up in Deerfield, Bennett Pitcher wasn’t quite sure where the future would take him.
The Deerfield Academy senior made a big decision in that direction over the summer.
Pitcher, who had big-time collegiate offers to play football at some of the top Division 1 programs in the country, ultimately chose a different path. The 6-foot-7, 270-pound center decided to pursue basketball at the next level, committing to play at Ivy League powerhouse Harvard University.
Pitcher’s story, and subsequent commitment, were on the national radar. I caught up with him in July, just days after he made his decision to play hoops at Harvard, and he told me that choosing basketball over football, a sport where many thought he could have a special future, wasn’t something he took lightly.
Part of that decision stemmed from an injury he suffered playing football in 2019, though it wasn’t so much the danger associated with the sport that shifted his focus to basketball. Yes, he had suffered stress fractures on his T1 and T5 vertebrae in a game against Hotchkiss, forcing him to miss the rest of the 2019 season and a chunk of basketball, but the subsequent rehab gave him plenty of time to think about what he really wanted out of life in the years to come.
“The biggest thing I took away from the injury wasn’t necessarily how dangerous I thought football was or my health in the future,” he told me back in July. “Being off for five months, that’s a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do. I have a limited number of years in general, and I kind of just found my heart wasn’t in football as much as it was in basketball. I didn’t necessarily want to have this idea in my head where I’d go play at a big time football school just to do it.”
A four-star prospect in football, Pitcher’s offer list included Baylor, California, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Purdue, UCLA and Virginia. But he chose hoops, and a journey to the Ivy League.
“When I thought about the basketball side of it, on top of everything academically at Harvard, it was a no-brainer,” Pitcher said. “The Ivy League is a great league for basketball. It seemed like a really good situation. A big thing that was really attractive to me was how much young talent they had on the team. With the roster they have, I didn’t really see any possibility that they won’t be good in two years.”
Harvard isn’t playing basketball this winter, as the Ivy League decided to cancel its 2020-21 season due to pandemic. Pitcher is expected to join the fray next year, where the Crimson hope to pick up where they left off after an impressive last decade of success.