Former Kecoughtan High, Lionsbridge soccer goalie who died in I-95 car crash remembered for positive spirit, zest for life
The local soccer community is mourning the loss of a 22-year-old Hampton man known for his zest for life and exuberance on and off the field.
Joseph “Luke” Messick — an all-conference goalie for Kecoughtan High School who also played for Randolph-Macon College and the Lionsbridge Football Club in Newport News — died in a car crash Monday outside of Richmond.
Messick, who played with several other local and East Coast travel teams in recent years, won the “Golden Gloves” award in 2019 at the North American Sand Soccer Championship in Virginia Beach.
He also organized efforts to send soccer equipment to Ghana after learning of the plight of a soccer orphanage in that West African country a couple years ago.
“He’s just one of those guys that would smile, and the next thing out of his mouth, you do whatever he asked you to do,” said his father, David Messick, 59, of Hampton. “This smile is a smile that opens doors. This smile gets kids in Africa equipment. This smile gets a youth team up and running. He was that kind of guy.”
Luke Messick was at the wheel of a 1997 Honda CR-V as it headed southbound on I-95 in Hanover County on Monday night.
He was with a friend on his way to a late-night indoor soccer match for “Transporte Juanita” — a club team of mostly Hispanic players where Luke was affectionately known as “‘El Gato Blanco,” or “the white cat,” at the goal.
At about 10 p.m., Luke’s Honda was struck from behind in the center lane by a 2010 Toyota Camry. The Honda ran off the road to the left into the median, then hit a guardrail and overturned, ending up in the right northbound lane of I-95, the Virginia State Police said.
Messick and his passenger were wearing seatbelts, police said. But while his friend walked away from the wreck, Messick died at the scene. The driver of the Toyota, Alexander Muir, 23, of Manassas, wasn’t injured and was charged with reckless driving.
David Messick, the Daily Press’ former director of circulation and audience development, said he noticed his son’s natural leadership traits when Luke was about 6 years old. When he would “see kids in the corner who weren’t participating” in an activity, he would “hug them and bring them into the group.”
That trait continued as Luke grew older. “I told him, ‘Look, you’re the kind of guy people will follow,’” David Messick said. “‘So if you jump off a bridge, they’re gonna jump off a bridge. You have a responsibility the rest of us don’t have.’”
When a laugh was needed off the field, Luke was there to provide it — “he was over the top, the John Belushi when you needed a John Belushi,” his father quipped. But when cheers were needed on the soccer field, he brought those, too.
“If a game was falling apart ... he was going to yell and scream and cheer his team into getting something accomplished,” David Messick said.
Matt Busch, who coached Luke between ages 11 and 14 with a Rush club team in Virginia Beach, said Luke was “always a very competitive person.” but “always had a smile on his face.”
“He had a kind of joking demeanor about him,” said Busch, who now lives in the Kansas City area. “So it’s almost like he was so serious about the soccer game, but then he realized, ‘OK, I’m a kid playing this, and I should also be having fun.’ All the boys liked him.”
The “high standards he set for himself,” Busch said, “led the others to set high standards for themselves, too.”
In Spain during high school, Luke made the winning save in an Olympic Development Program tournament in Barcelona. “They’re screaming his name and they’re jumping out of the stands and running on the field,” his father said of the reaction from the crowd that looked like “something out of a movie.”
“As the goalie, you have to be willing to throw your head in front of someone else’s cleat,” said Luke’s mother, Marcy Messick. “You have to withstand a whole lot of pressure because as a goalie you’re either the hero or the villain.”
Mike Vest, a co-founder of Lionsbridge FC — a USL League Two team that plays home games at Christopher Newport University’s TowneBank Stadium — said Messick’s “personality stood out in such a big way” in the organization.
Messick made the team during 2018 tryouts with several amateur local players selected from about 50 vying for the spots, joining some ringers brought in from overseas.
“He was just a relentlessly positive and seemingly just happy-all-the-time guy,” Vest said. “In the last couple days, I’ve heard from so many of our former players who may have only played with him for a summer. And everyone says the same thing — he was just so energetic, was so happy to be there.”
Messick played for Lionsbridge FC in its first two seasons, 2018 and 2019. But he’d be happy on a soccer pitch, Vest said, “no matter who he was playing for.”
The club posted a video to its Facebook page this week of Messick working the goal in 2019, with an opposing player missing a penalty shot to secure the Lionsbridge win.
An exuberant Messick ran from the goal toward the stands, pulled off his gloves, blew kisses to the crowd and tore off his shirt, his teammates trailing in happy celebration. “Everyone loves being around somebody who’s really positive, and Luke was certainly that,” Vest said.
Messick wasn’t tall for a goalie — 5-foot-9 “generously,” Vest said — but “would make these incredible saves.”
“It’s like having a cat back there,” Vest said. “It just doesn’t seem like he should be making the saves that he was making, but he was getting the most out of his talent.”
In 2019, his second season with Lionsbridge, Messick already had a spot on the roster. But Vest said he showed up at tryouts anyway because “I just figured you needed another goalkeeper” for the day’s events.
“He was just everywhere,” Vest said. “And he just had a huge impact on people’s lives. To see that taken away so fast, and obviously at such a young age, it’s just heartbreaking.”
Over the years, David Messick said his son got much of his “heart for helping the community” from watching Steve Shaw, who coached CNU’s soccer team for 23 years and also raised money for local charities and overseas missions — fundraisers that the Messick family helped out with.
“Coach Shaw taught these boys to be men who cared for others,” David Messick said. “It’s great to kick a ball, but it’s more important to take care of communities.”
The effort to send soccer equipment to Ghana, he said, began a couple years ago, when Luke saw pictures on Instagram of children at a soccer-based orphanage there playing without equipment.
“Luke contacted the guy and said, ‘What are you doing? Don’t you have soccer balls? Don’t you have jerseys? What do you need?’”
That led to an effort to send a couple of big shipments of soccer equipment for that team through some friends in the military. Later, that evolved into just sending money so that the contributions could help the local economy, too.
David Messick said his son was “a big-picture guy,” but did not enjoy the legal minutiae of creating a nonprofit organization. “When I wanted to sit down with him to do the paperwork, now that was never going to happen,” he said.
But Messick said he’s now formalizing a newly registered nonprofit organization in his son’s name. It will be called Luke Messick Futbol Charities, Inc., to support youth soccer in Ghana and elsewhere. (Until that’s set up, donations can be made to First United Methodist Church Fox Hill in Hampton.)
David and Marcy first got wind of Monday night’s accident in a phone call from one of Luke’s friends. They drove up to Richmond and called several area hospitals looking for him before Virginia State Police troopers came to one of those hospitals to break the bad news.
By that point, Messick said, he already knew from news sites that there had been a fatal accident. “As soon as I saw the (trooper) come up, I just had to hug him because I knew,” Messick said, crediting the trooper, Sgt. James Cooper, and his supervisor for their demeanor.
Messick said the family is forgiving of the other driver. “You can hang on to those things and not forgive, and it’ll kill you,” he said. “And we’ve been praying for his family too. ... I have to because otherwise I’ll go crazy. You need to pray for everybody that was involved in this.”
Aside from his father, Luke Messick leaves behind his mother, Marcy Messick, 55, and his 25-year-old brother, Joshua Messick, all of Hampton, and many other relatives.
A Memorial Service will be held at 4 p.m. today at First United Methodist Church Fox Hill, while a Celebration of Life will be held at 1 p.m. on Sunday, May 30, at the River Birch Pavilion at Gosnold’s Hope Park in Hampton.
“He was not one for morbidness,” David Messick said. “It will be a celebration with bounce houses and silliness. Some people will find that sacrilege, but Luke would have gone, ‘I’ll be there for that.’”
Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com
