Golditch set to roll with Chargers
It was the early morning of July 20, 2012, and Zack Golditch was at the hospital getting his neck stitched up after being struck by a bullet during the Aurora theater shooting that left 12 people dead and 70 injured.
On Golditch’s mind at the time? Making the weightlifting session a few hours later at Gateway High School, where the Olympians’ football star was getting ready for his senior year.
“I was 17 years old, and I didn’t really understand the magnitude of what happened, and next thing you know, I’ve got cameras in my face from major media outlets, people messaging me from across the country and the world — I didn’t really know how to take it in,” Golditch said. “I had to lean on football, because it’s what I had been doing my whole life.”
Golditch, who had committed to play offensive line at Colorado State earlier in the summer, did just that. He made it to weights later that morning and proceeded to lead the Olympians to a 7-3 mark that fall, a win total the program hasn’t matched since. Then, Golditch went on to become a three-year starter in Fort Collins, a collegiate career that culminated with the 6-foot-5, 295-pounder signing a free agent contract with the Chargers last weekend after he went undrafted.
The contract marks the latest chapter in an improbable football journey for a lineman who — after the bullet was approximately 1/16 of an inch from hitting his spine and likely ending his career, if not his life — earned first-team All-mountain West honors last fall.
During the shooting, Golditch was in an adjacent theater to the gunman when a bullet came through the wall and passed through his neck below the left ear, just missing his arteries and vertebrae.
“My success hasn’t necessarily come from me opening up doors for myself, but rather doors opening in front of me, and me just walking through them,” Golditch said. “This is just another door that has opened up in front of me, because ultimately, being picked up by a team was completely out of my control.”
Golditch said he received interest from more than a dozen NFL teams but ultimately landed in Los Angeles, where he’ll compete for a roster spot as a swing guard/tackle. His professional opportunity comes after a torn tendon in his left ring finger suffered during the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl in January limited what he could do during CSU’S pro day and lowered his draft prospects.
But as Golditch’s high school coach Justin Hoffman said, the fire inside an athlete who was also a two-time Class 5A discus state champion while at Gateway has only intensified since the fateful July night almost six years ago.
“He might be the underdog in some cases — he might be the underdog now — but he’s going to use that as fuel and he’s going to continue to work hard and impress people on a day-to-day basis,” Hoffman said. “Taking ‘no’ for an answer is not in his personality.”
Golditch believes he’s ready to prove his NFL worth, as evidenced by his consistency over all 13 of the games he started in 2017 at left and right tackle.
One of those games, a loss to Alabama in Tuscaloosa on Sept. 16, was a particularly effective litmus test for the 23-year-old. Golditch was the linchpin of a Rams’ line that put up 23 points against the top-ranked Crimson Tide — the most points allowed by Alabama to a non-power 5 opponent in a decade — while Colorado State didn’t yield a single sack.
“Playing against Alabama was a huge turning point, just because Alabama’s Alabama, and they churn out a lot of guys every year to the league,” Golditch said. “They were a great team, and I think I held my own against them. I realized then that if I could play with the best in the country, when it came to the league, why not me too?
“That’s when more people starting talking to me about it, and throwing out the idea of playing in the NFL. That’s when I really started believing.”
Kyle Newman: 303-954-1773 knewman@denverpost.com or @Kylenewmandp