University High of San Francisco’s Rohan Hartigan (left) is shown after throwing a no-hitter in junior year. At right is Ro’s senior portrait. Photos: Courtesy family.
In the midst of our end-of-school-year honors, we have added one for a baseball player as the 2024-25 Most Inspirational Player of the Year. The graduated senior from University High of San Francisco came back from a near-death medical emergency from two years ago to go 7-0 with a 1.28 ERA. No one would have blamed Ro for no longer playing as his potential college/pro future was over, but he had a stronger drive to be there for teammates.
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It’s easy to see how and why Rohan Hartigan had dreams of playing baseball beyond high school. He loves going to Oracle Park in San Francisco for Giants’ games, he’s been at other MLB venues such as Yankee Stadium in New York and by the time Rohan was a sophomore at University High of San Francisco he was a strapping 6-foot-2, 215-pounder with the fastball velocity and quick-trigger power bat to be an enticing prospect for colleges and pro teams.
But not every young player like Hartigan ends his high school career with a signing day or hearing their name called during the 20 rounds of the MLB Draft. In his case, a life-threatening battle with an unknown virus two years ago ruined his body to the point in which a baseball playing future was over. How Ro came out of that battle, how he continued to lead his team and how he’s readjusted his dreams for adulthood has made him someone we at Cal-Hi Sports wanted to provide as an example to others facing adversity. We’re therefore naming him as the state’s most inspirational player of the year for the 2024-25 baseball season.
Ro is shown warming up to pitch in the bullpen at Oracle Park in SF. Photo: Courtesy family.
Sophomore/Junior Years
Just like in boys basketball, cross country and other sports, small-private school University of San Francisco has an outstanding tradition of success in baseball. Alum Tyler Walker pitched in the major leagues from 2002 to 2010 and its teams have won at least 20 games in every season since the pandemic of 2020.
The Red Devils went to the CIF NorCal D5 regional championship in 2023 during Rohan’s sophomore year and lost to Lowell of San Francisco (large public high school). The young sophomore was among the team leaders with 26 RBI and he was one of the top pitchers.
Before the start of the 2023-24 school year, Hartigan traveled to Liberia in Africa for humanitarian work. All seemed fine when he returned at first, but in October he woke up in the middle of the night throwing up blood. His mother, Vanessa, took him to UCSF medical center and the nightmare fully got underway.
“It turned out he had severe heart and lung internal bleeding (pericarditis), the doctors think caused by a rare virus (after the humanitarian work in Africa) that affected his auto-immune system,” his father, Peter Hartigan, said. “He went from 220 pounds to 170 pounds. We were not sure if he was going to get out of the hospital at all. He had to relearn to walk and get back his eye-hand / feet coordination in general.”
“Ro’s story is pretty incredible,” said University baseball coach Peter Lo. “What started as a cold ended up having him hospitalized for a month.”
The damage that the virus did had even worse long-term effects, especially for someone who had dreams of playing baseball for a long time. Eighty percent of Ro’s lungs collapsed in the hospital and there were times when he thought he might never play again. Then, after the worst of the medical emergency had passed, the University team paid a visit to Hartigan in the hospital.
“They inspired me to fight to get out of the hospital and back on the baseball field with them,” Ro said. “It’s hard to put into words how important their visit was to me, providing hope, joy, and a collective goal.”
A plan was put in place by Ro and his dad to get back to playing for the 2024 season, but it would not be easy. He couldn’t get released from the hospital until the UCSF department of rheumatology figured out a drug that he could be given to manage the auto immune issue in his heart and lungs.
“Everything was test and go, initially on an hourly basis, then daily, then weekly,” Peter Hartigan said. “Because of the blood clots, when he left the hospital, he was not allowed to bat – fear of being beaned and brain bleeding.”
”After Ro recovered, he was extremely focused on getting back to the team especially with two of our pitchers down for the year with elbow injuries and a thin senior class,” Coach Lo said. “Initially, he had to pitch with a helmet on.”
There were plenty of doubts about whether Hartigan could do much other than just cheer from the dugout during that 2024 season. He could not run past first base and Ro thought more than once about asking his coach to bench him. He was working on being a pitcher with much less velocity, however, who could get outs with different pitch shapes, mixing up deliveries and any other way to get his defense off the field.
The turning point for Ro came in April of that junior season. Despite throwing up before a game against Stuart Hall of San Francisco and almost being taken back to the hospital by his dad, Hartigan made the start.
“During my first eight pitches, I felt light-headed and all were horribly wild,” Ro remembered. “Then, something clicked. Focus. Clarity. I locked in. My team was there for me in the hospital and I had to be there for them. Next thing I know the game ended. I threw my first no hitter.”
Hartigan ended his junior season being named the MVP of the Bay Counties League, but the team (20-9) had its season end with a loss to league rival Head-Royce of Oakland in the CIF North Coast Section D5 playoffs. Ro led the team in RBI with 23 despite others having higher batting averages and he finished 8-3 with a 3.43 ERA in 51 innings pitched.
After graduating from University, the next stop for Hartigan will be the campus of Stanford University. Photo: Courtesy family.
Senior Year
While Ro’s body was still weakened quite a bit from the virus, he had healed enough for his senior season to be able to run to second base. His power at the plate and his velocity as a pitcher never got back to where it was. Still, he was as determined as ever as a pitcher and made the move to a lower place in the batting order to deepen what he and Coach Lo thought would help the team score more runs.
One of the highlights in the regular season was collecting a game-winning RBI hit in a 5-3 win over Head-Royce in a game that was played at Oracle Park. And in the second game against Harker Academy of San Jose, Hartigan pitched five no-hit innings and struck out nine in a 13-4 win. He also had an immaculate inning with three strikeouts in one inning vs Lick-Wilmerding of San Francisco plus a second no-hitter combined with a teammate.
“His senior year was just as impressive as our team went on to win 23 games this past season,” Coach Lo said. “Rohan was once again our ace.”
Hartigan used all of his experience and focus to record a 7-0 record as a pitcher. He had a 0.00 ERA in league games and had a 1.28 overall ERA. He also became the school’s first-ever 20-game winner for a career. He also batted .370 with 12 RBI.
On this year’s all-state small schools team, University was represented by junior Jett Messenger, who put his name into the Cal-Hi Sports state record book with 11 triples during his sophomore year. Messenger had a team-high 39 hits and batted .557 as a junior. Hartigan and others, such as senior Sabin Verplaetse (.564 on 22 hits) and junior Mattie Grisso (.457 on 32 hits), were considered but at the time it was deemed too difficult to choose one over the others.
The team itself also had one of the best seasons in school history. The only loss in the regular season was 3-1 to Lowell. A perfect run through the Bay Counties League, however, did not result in playoff success. That’s because competitive equity playoff pairings in the NCS stuck the Red Devils in D2 (instead of D5 or even D4) where they had to play higher-level large schools. They lost in the D2 section playoffs, 4-0, to Tamalpais of Mill Valley and finished with a 23-2 record. It’s a situation the boys basketball team has had to deal with many times in recent seasons.
“To recover from such a serious and severe life threatening illness and come back better than ever, Rohan has not only cemented himself as a baseball legend at UHS – he is an inspiration,” Coach Lo said.
So what’s next for Hartigan? He still was accepted to Stanford due to his academics and social work and he plans to continue to do that work in places like Liberia despite what happened.
“He still has to take his weekly shot to manage the auto-immune issue so the blood in the heart / lungs thing does not come back,” Peter Hartigan said. “He still has long term issues due to the collapsed lung. So for him, the baseball career ends in high school.”
Maybe it won’t be on the baseball diamond, but the world probably has not heard the last of Rohan.
“I know my body remains fragile,” he said. “I know my success was only because of my team. They played better because they knew I was injured, and I focused harder because they were there for me in my darkest time. We forged a lifetime bond, and I am forever grateful. Together, we learned ‘What Really Matters’ – friendship and health.”
Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports
