'My dad’s my hero.' Senior leads Roncalli with lessons learned from dad, who died in May.

When Luke Swartz looks out over the Roncalli High School football field on a recent gray, fall afternoon, it is not just football that he sees, though there is that, of course. You can’t help but look at Swartz and see football. When he came home as a freshman and told his parents, Pete and Ronda, that he was kicking butt in practice and was suiting up for varsity, they looked at each other, rolled their eyes and smiled.

Sure, kid.

Then he did. And he played with abandon and relentless will. “A pain in the …” said Roncalli coach Eric Quintana, who was coaching against him at the time on offense at Bishop Chatard. That never-wavering persistence has carried Swartz for four years at Roncalli. He has 245 tackles as undersized — at least in height — defensive end, who is an unquestioned leader for Roncalli in all areas. “The backbone of our team,” Quintana said.

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But there is more than football that Swartz sees as he sits in the football stadium bleachers. It is family. His grandfather, owner of Roy Swartz Sand and Gravel in Beech Grove, literally helped build the original football field here. Luke’s father, Pete, played here, graduating from Roncalli in 1982 before going on to play at the University of Indianapolis and coaching football for many years.

This place is ingrained in Swartz. “Around the Swartz family,” Luke said, “you live, eat and die football.” For years, Luke and his dad built their schedules around it. “Tough love,” Luke said. They got up at 6 a.m. to lift weights in the garage, push cars, run the bleachers and the track at UIndy. “Times were I’m like, ‘I hate this’ and ‘He’s ticking me off,’” Luke said with a smile. “But in the back of mind, I knew this is what’s going to make me better.”

And it did. It certainly made him tougher. Luke, 18, needed that tough, never-quit motor, to be an impact player at his size on the defensive line. He also needed mental toughness to persist through immense personal tragedy.

“You have two choices,” Luke said. “You can be a victim or you can be somebody who responds to something. I don’t want to be a victim. I don’t like thinking, ‘My life is terrible.’ You have to respond. It’s all about how you respond to the negative.”

Pete Swartz, Luke’s father, died May 26 at age 58. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in 2018, went through chemotherapy treatments and stomach surgery. But the cancer returned on his stomach, liver and lungs in May of 2021. “Our hope that was that he could see Luke graduate,” Ronda Swartz said.

In one of the last conversations Ronda had with Pete, he agonized their children would have to grow up faster than he wanted them to. The night before Luke talked with his father for the last time, several of Luke’s football teammates visited Pete. The former coach offered this advice, as he often did, to Roncalli seniors Trevor Lauck, Luke Skartvedt, Luke Billerman and Andrew Baugh: “Together,” Pete told them, “you can’t lose.”

Roncalli’s football team adopted that slogan this season, an already-memorable fall that has seen the Royals post a 10-1 record and No. 2 Class 4A state ranking going into Friday’s home game against Brebeuf Jesuit for the Sectional 21 championship. The players have been wearing a “PS34” sticker on their helmets this season to signify Pete’s initials and jersey number when he played at Roncalli.

“As a captain I’ve tried to instill in the locker room that the end is not in sight for us,” Luke said. “This group of guys, if we stay together, we’re hard to beat. I’ve had a successful career here, got to play on both sides of the ball, and want to end my career adding to the family legacy until I have children who come here. Selfishly, I want to win a state title. When you think of the big names that have played at Roncalli, that’s the expectation. If you don’t have that, nobody cares about a sectional, regional or semistate title. We want that (state) banner hung up in the gym for eternity.”

***

Luke was playing CYO basketball with his St. Jude classmates, including Baugh and Lauck, at St. Simon as a fifth grader when he noticed his parents leave the game. He asked his aunt and godmother, Renee Davis, what happened. She told Luke his mom and dad would have to tell him.

When Luke got home his mom was on the phone, crying. His dad hugged him and explained that his older brother, JP Swartz, had died. Luke did not know at the time, but JP, short for Joseph Peter, committed suicide. He was 20 and a student at Troy University in Alabama.

“I remember my dad hugged me and said, ‘Everything is going to be alright,’” Luke said. “My sister (Lucy) was too young to know what was going on at the time. But after that he just took me under his wing even more. Me and him were really close. We had our father-son normal disagreements here and there, but we were close and that increased when he was diagnosed with cancer when I was in eighth grade.”

Luke called his brother’s death “a shock.”

“I saw death first-hand in my family as a fifth-grader,” he said. “It was real world to see how stuff can happen so fast.”

Luke was close with JP despite their age difference. “He was a huge role model for me,” Luke said.

It was the first in a series of tragedies for Luke. After his father’s cancer diagnosis in 2018, his uncle, Steve Swartz, died after cancer battle in 2019. In 2021, his grandfather, Roy, passed away, followed by his dad in May.

“I get kind of emotional saying this, but all of the influential men on the Swartz side of the family passed away,” Luke said. “It’s just been a big eye-opening — I don’t want to say challenge — but it’s been a challenge to deal with.”

But there are only fleeting moments of sadness, Luke said. He remembers often of his father’s “Never ever give up” mantra. It drives him. It is him. During practice, Quintana often has to keep an eye on Luke. Not because he needs motivation.

“He goes 100% everything he does,” Quintana said. “So I have to remind him sometimes that we’re not going full speed because there’s not a down where he doesn’t want to go all out. He just doesn’t have that switch to turn it off.”

Pete, the coach and father, would love to see that scouting report.

***

When Luke first heard the word “incurable” attached to his dad’s cancer diagnosis, he did not believe it. His dad? He was way too big and strong for anything to be “incurable.”

Pete, after playing at Roncalli and UIndy, coached at the college level at Northwestern State (La.) and Western Kentucky and in high school at Bowling Green and Hopkinsville in Kentucky, along with Decatur Central and Center Grove. He had two kids, Katie and JP, from a previous marriage before returning to Indianapolis and marrying Ronda in 2002.

Luke thought his dad had cancer beat after surgery and chemotherapy.

“I thought he was good,” Luke said. “He lost about 100 pounds after surgery. We always knew there was the possibility it could come back, but we weren't thinking it was going to happen. He was always positive. Then my junior year, it came back again and it was in the liver and lymph nodes. Once it gets into the lymph nodes, it’s pretty scary and serious. To cope with the constant pressure and fear — I don’t want to say fear, but there was fear — I turned to football and wrestling.”

It was around spring break of Luke’s junior year when his father’s health took a turn for the worse. There was a realization, after the cancer returned, that the end could be near. Pete, Ronda, Luke and Lucy, a seventh-grader at St. Jude, went to Florida for spring break. Even on that trip, Pete and Luke got up early and Luke ran in the sand to get his workouts in.

But it was not long after, in May, that Luke knew things were changing. Every day, he would visit the hospital, then go to football practice. That went on for about two weeks until his father died on May 26.

“Right then I knew I had to be the man of the house and be a leader for my little sister,” Luke said. “It was a pretty challenging moment in my life. But life happens sometimes and God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers because he knows I can take it.”

One of the last things his father told him, as Luke held his hand in the hospital, was that it was time for him to be a man. And that he loved him. Luke took those words to heart. He dedicated himself to weightlifting and workouts after his father’s death. Even though Pete was not by his side, pushing him physically, he was still there with him in spirit.

“My dad’s my hero,” Luke said. “He kind of instilled that work ethic in me. I think if you ask anyone who knew him really well, they would say I’m a lot like him.”

At Pete’s funeral, the priest joked that Pete “wasn’t your cup of tea — he was your shot of whiskey.” Ronda laughs at that line now. There is a lot of Luke in there, too, though his mom said he’s a little more diplomatic than Pete.

“There’s a void in Luke’s life not having his dad here his senior year,” she said. “They were always on the iPad, watching film and looking at things he could improve.”

Quintana called Luke a “once-in-a-generation type of kid.” He’s well-respected by his peers, voted homecoming king a few weeks ago. He’s the last one in the locker room after practice, making sure everything is cleaned up and in place for the next day.

“We talk a lot in the block house about playing for something bigger than yourself,” Luke said. “I play for God, my school and my family. The Swartz family name is important to me. My dad helped prepare me for who I am today. He always said, ‘You have to outwork everybody else.’ That’s how I’m going to approach everything I do.”

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IHSAA football: Roncalli DL Luke Swartz plays to honor his dad, Pete