Despite not expecting it, Gelofs have enjoyed playing together
Adam Gelof has made plenty of virtual court appearances from hotel lobbies over the past three months. So has his wife Kelly, who is also an attorney.
Since February, the Gelofs have spent most of their weekends on the road, traveling to ballparks around the ACC to watch the Virginia baseball team. It’s four-and-a-half hours from their home in Rehoboth Beach to Charlottesville; other ACC schools like Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech were longer trips. They were in Charlotte with the Wahoos last week, staying at a hotel directly across the street from Truist Field, the site of this year’s conference tournament.
A few hours prior to the Wahoos’ pool play opener against Virginia Tech in Charlotte last Tuesday, Adam was watching from the hotel as workers prepared the field for the first game of the day. He was anxious about what the week would hold for the Cavaliers and their two starting corner infielders in particular.
“Every day we go to the ballpark, in addition to the normal fandom I’m counting down the days of how many games I get to see my boys playing together,” he said by phone. “And every time they win it’s one more hope that it goes a little longer.”
Zack Gelof, the family’s older son, hasn’t missed a start in his three college seasons as the team’s third baseman. Zack has been joined in the clubhouse this year by his younger brother Jake Gelof, who took over in late April as Virginia’s everyday first baseman.
The Gelof family had that wish granted on Monday, when the Wahoos were announced as the No. 3 seed in the Columbia Regional of this year’s NCAA Tournament. They will face regional host South Carolina at noon Friday. Old Dominion, the No. 11 national seed and top seed in the region, and No. 4 regional seed Jacksonville are the other two teams in UVa’s corner of the bracket.
It will be the program’s first NCAA regional appearance since 2017. That same baseball season, the Gelof brothers were high school teammates for the first time, with Jake a freshman and Zack a junior at Cape Henlopen High School in Delaware. A year later, the boys played pivotal roles in their school’s first-ever state championship in baseball.
That 2018 postseason run is a memory the entire Gelof family will cherish. It’s also a memory they’re hoping to top over the course of the next few weeks.
“I said that was my million-dollar season, that I wouldn’t trade a million dollars for the memories of that,” Adam said. “And of course, this is a hundred times better.”
“At the time, we thought it was our last time playing with each other,” said Jake. “And we had a great group of seniors and leaders on that team as well, led by (Zack). It was a special run. You could just feel it once we got to the playoffs.”
“It was probably the greatest moment in my life right there, when we dogpiled,” added Zack. “We’re trying to do it again.”
Different Paths to Charlottesville
Growing up in the Blue Hen State, Zack Gelof considered himself as much a soccer player and basketball player as a baseball player. That changed in June 2014, when he and his family were in Omaha for a travel baseball tournament. Not only did his team win that tournament but the players also got to spend a few days at the College World Series.
Virginia was one of the eight teams in Omaha that summer, ultimately losing to Vanderbilt in the CWS Finals. Zack, who had just finished eighth grade, remembers seeing the Hoos play twice that week. While watching from the seats, he began to gravitate toward “the whole vibe” of the UVa program—“The team and the parents and the support and everything,” he explained—and instantly became a fan.
“That’s the whole reason why I wanted to come here,” Zack recalled, mentioning third baseman Kenny Towns, shortstop Danny Pinero, and right fielder Joe McCarthy among the UVa players who caught his attention in Omaha.
“I saw everyone on UVa, it seemed like they played tough-nosed baseball,” he said. “Pitching was really good. Obviously really good development. It just looked like I could be that, and looking up to the guys that were on that team.”
“He looked out and he saw what he wanted to be: High academic kids that played the game the right way,” his dad said. “I think Zack went from, ‘Well, this is just one of my sports,’ to where ‘I can do this. This is what I want to do.’ Virginia became his number one school. And when they came in [to recruit Zack], that was it. That was the whole thing.”
Zack committed to UVa a year later and arrived on Grounds in the summer 2018. Going into the following season, his parents weren’t sure what to expect. They didn’t find out until about a week before the opener against Vanderbilt in Scottsdale that Zack would be traveling. The Gelofs also made that trip and while eating lunch with their son the day before the Vandy game, Zack told them he thought he might play on opening day.
“And then we get out there and he’s leading off and playing third base,” Adam recalled.
He made a strong first impression that day, going 4-for-5 with three doubles and four RBI and scoring a pair of runs from that leadoff spot.
A career .310 hitter and the Hoos’ active leader with 14 home runs, Zack enters this year’s NCAA Tournament second on the team in all three slash lines (.294/.378/.463) plus home runs (seven) and RBI (36). He was named second-team All-ACC at third base after the regular season ended and earned a spot on the league’s All-Tournament team last week in Charlotte.
“He’s skilled, first and foremost,” Virginia coach Brian O’Connor said. “He’s a great athlete that can do some different things. Not only can he hit but he can run, he can put pressure on you a lot of different ways
“He’s a team guy,” O’Connor added. “He’ll do whatever it takes to help the team win. He’s unselfish. And he’s been a big-game performer for us.”
Zack has also been reliable, starting all 126 games Virginia has played the last three seasons. Other than three early-season games at first base this year, all of those starts have come at the hot corner. Entering this year’s NCAA Tournament, he is poised to join Pavin Smith from 2015-17 as the only players in O’Connor’s 18-year tenure not to miss a start through their first three UVa seasons.
“I take a lot of pride in it,” Zack said. “Not really being in the lineup every day, but being the same person when I come to the field, and the energy that I bring to practice and to the games. I feel like if I do my job, it rubs off on other people.”
According to Jake, his older brother’s approach has been rubbing on him for years.
“He definitely goes about his business the right way and it definitely takes an effect on me a little bit,” Jake said. “Learning from him and seeing the leadership role that he has, and hopefully taking over that leadership role at some point. And just seeing the way he does it, with a good balance of everything.”
Like his brother, Jake grew up a multi-sport athlete, though he admits baseball was always the sport about which he was most passionate. He originally committed to play baseball at William & Mary before deciding that wasn’t his best fit. The summer before his senior year, he committed to join Zack with the Cavaliers, though both brothers say playing together in college was never their intention.
“It was almost like a snowball effect,” Zack said. “Jake developed a lot in the past year or two, and it seems like his skill set is adhesive to what we do here, and then it was like, ‘Oh, the opportunity is possible. If we can do it, that’s great.’”
One of the skills Virginia coaches liked about the younger Gelof was his versatility in the field. Jake saw some time at second base and in right field but played sparingly for most of the season’s first three months. That changed when a late-April shoulder injury forced Devin Ortiz to shift to designated hitter full-time, opening up a spot at first base.
After borrowing a first base mitt from teammate Alex Tappen, Jake got a two-day crash course at his new position in practice, then was in the lineup for UVa’s series opener at Virginia Tech. Like his brother against Vandy, Jake’s debut in the everyday lineup was a memorable one: He went 3-for-6 with a pair of doubles, drove in two runs, and scored twice as Virginia beat the Hokies 18-1.
“Boy, I tell you what: He can swing the bat,” O’Connor said. “He’s an impressive guy to watch in BP. He’s young. He’s still learning about the game and how to be pitched to and adjustments you make. But he’s aggressive, and he’s really done a great job since he’s been in there every day.”
Beginning with that three-hit night in Blacksburg, Jake has been at first base for the Hoos’ last 13 games. He has slashed .311/.429/.533 in that stretch, with nine RBI and 13 runs scored.
“It means a lot to be able to produce for my teammates,” said Jake. “It’s a lot of fun doing it for them, and obviously winning is the biggest goal. We’ve been doing that a lot lately, which has been a lot of fun.”
Different Personalities, Same Principles
During a recent streaming broadcast, the camera shots cut between the two Gelof brothers at different spots in the Virginia dugout. Those shots showed examples that both brothers agree can help explain the differences in their personalities: Zack with the close-trimmed haircut and a conservative strip of eye black beneath each eye; Jake with long hair spilling out the back of his cap, eye black smeared down each cheek.
Jake describes his older brother as more even-keeled, while Zack says Jake is the more animated of the two. Adam, who coached both boys from their first days of machine-pitch baseball up through Little League to their early days of travel ball, agrees with those assessments.
“They have a lot of core principles, their work ethic and their drive are very similar. But personalities, they couldn’t be further,” said their father. “Zack is just even keel, kind of a machine. He sets his sights on something and he’s just going to go. He doesn’t try to draw attention.
“And Jake was always my little guy,” Adam continued. “He was playing on baseball teams two and three years up, and he got his growth spurt late. So he was on these teams with big kids, and you know, travel ball and Little League, you try to hit home runs. And Jake was always the little guy who was determined to show that he could play with the big guys. And he enjoys it. He’s going to show emotion. He’s going to get excited about stuff, and he wears it on his sleeve.”
The brothers are a little more than two years apart in age. At 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds, Zack is listed by Virginia as two inches taller and 10 pounds heavier than his sibling. Jake admits that he always looked up to his older brother growing up but whether it was on the basketball hoop at their old house or the soccer field, he always wanted to beat Zack, too.
“Oh, super competitive,” Jake recalled. “Really in anything, always competing. Whether we even knew it or not at the time. Just always trying to one-up each other. Or me being the little brother, always trying to find little ways around to try to beat him, because he was always bigger and stronger than me.”
Jake credited his parents for instilling that competitive nature in both of their sons. It fueled them during that state title run in high school. Now, O’Connor sees it every day at Virginia.
“They grew up as a baseball family,” he said. “They played a lot of baseball. They have a close bond in their relationship with each other. They understand the game. They play the game the right way. Their aptitude for the game is really, really good. Their competitive spirit is very, very good.”
“You could tell that they grew up on a baseball field,” he added. “You could tell that it’s a baseball family and it matters to them.”
The Gelofs are the sixth pair of brothers to play for O’Connor at Virginia, but the first to be part of the program at the same time as teammates. Jake hit his first college home run last Friday against Notre Dame at the ACC Tournament. Three innings later, Zack hit his own three-run shot, making the Gelof boys the first set of brothers to homer in the same game for UVa since 2002.
The Wahoos wound up winning that game 14-1, clinching a spot in last Saturday’s ACC semifinals and erasing any lingering doubt about their merit as an NCAA Tournament team. Once 11-14 overall and 4-12 in the ACC, Virginia has surged since early April and will enter Friday’s regional opener at 29-23 overall. Since Jake joined Zack in the everyday lineup in late April at Virginia Tech, the Cavaliers are 9-4.
Adam knows he’ll get at least one more weekend to watch both of his sons share the same infield in Virginia baseball uniforms.
Now he’s hoping this season on the road with his wife concludes with a cross-country trip the family last made seven years ago.
“You hang on every play of every game, and get so excited for the success of the team as a whole,” he said. “This is a team that we wanted to see go to Omaha and every day feel like we’re getting closer to that possibility.”
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