David Baranowski likes his comfort zone. He’s known to be outgoing, humorous, even charming. Though he won’t crack a joke with people he doesn’t know, causing him to spend most of his time with the people he does know. And for David Baranowski, those people make everything comfortable for him.
Baranowski and his closest friends have a group, the CCC, where ‘CCC’ stands for ‘Cheesesteak Cheesesteak Cheesesteak.’ This name came from the shared interest of cheesesteaks. But cheesesteaks are not the only common interest Baranowski has with his friends.
“I love playing football, playing music, video games, just anything,” Baranowski said. “I definitely enjoy everything.”
Baranowski is a very eclectic person, but one of his earliest passions was baseball. From being a young child playing in Little League, Baranowski grew older and his hobbies expanded. His fascination for baseball started to fade.
“I don’t like the dirt. A lot. I don’t know, it just made me feel weird and icky, I guess. And just going to practice every day, just for me to strike out because these kids are throwing 90 miles per hour. It’s just like there was no point in playing baseball anymore,” said Baranowski.
In other words, it became uncomfortable for Baranowski.
The sharp crack of a bat hitting a baseball may not strike Baranowski’s heart as it once did, but he has found love for another sport: Wiffleball. While playing wiffleball he felt the comfort of his friends, and still enjoyed it–as it was similar to baseball. He plays for the CCC Wiffleball league, a league made up of his friends, some of whom are the other Mr. Norristown contestants.
Before this was an official league, Baranowski had already planned the name for his team, the team he stepped up for and coached.
In chemistry class Baranowski and his friend, Brandon Purdy, were messing around, cracking jokes. In the middle of these jokes, they came up with the idea of being “Science Demons.”
“We were like, we’re science demons. And that kind of took off,” he said. “Then we started playing wiffleball as soon as it came spring, and we were just like, why don’t we just name our team, the Science Demons?”
This team came first as a way to get friends together, but it slowly started to become more. As more people got involved, Baranowski found this to be a way not only to help people have fun but to get them out of their comfort zone.
Baranowski coaching this wiffleball team helped him step out of his comfort zone. He is known to surround himself around people only he is comfortable with, but with this team, he was directing up to 40 people. He put himself out there in a new, slightly uncomfortable position, for people to know it’s okay to try new things.
“The whole reason for the league was to get people that don’t play wiffleball, to play wiffleball,” said Baranowski. “Something to get a whole community together to play wiffleball, you know, come out of their comfort zone.”
Though he may not have led his Science Demons to victory, he still felt as if there was a win by bringing all of these people together. Baranowski found comfort within his wiffleball team, the same comfort found in playing the guitar.
Even with Baranowski finding comfort in these two hobbies, it’s shown through both how determined he is and how much time is given to music that there is more passion when it comes to him playing the guitar.
Playing the guitar is a new thing he has brought into his life. Even with how determined he is, he still gets nervous, but playing music with his friends helps calm those nerves, like with the school guitar ensemble.
“So when he started the class, that definitely helped him get started. He got a guitar outside of school,” Purdy said. “That was good, he’s been playing for a while and he got a lot better.”
Baranowski has put himself out there and hopes to show others it’s okay to do something even if it’s uncomfortable at first. Whether it’s playing a new video game, wiffleball or playing guitar on stage, with the support of his friends, Baranowski has found and stuck with what he loves to do.
“I don’t know where I would be without them.”
