Louisville dedicates its season to former teammate

Dear Stephen,

You’ve been gone for a while now. A year and a half. But no one is forgetting you.

Your No. 56 is everywhere. It’s painted in the end zones at Louisville Stadium. It’s printed in the team program and listed on the roster. You’ll find “Stephen Ellenberger” on wristbands, flags, banners, walls and T-shirts.

But all these reminders, in what would have been your senior year, can be difficult. Because, well, you are missed.

“It’s hard that he’s not there,” says your mom, Stephanni Ellenberger. “I have a hard time sitting at the games. I like to watch the other kids play, but it’s like — he should be there.”

Nobody wants to let go. Your teammates certainly haven’t.

They’re back in the high school football playoffs after another 10-0 season. They won the Division II Associated Press state poll title. You’d be proud because it hasn’t been easy.

They didn’t feel sorry for themselves when Jordan McQuilkin, figured to be a key contributor, was lost for the year with a severe leg injury in the first scrimmage. They didn’t make excuses when quarterback Bobby Swigert, arguably the best player in Stark County, went down with a foot injury that still has him out.

There is a resiliency in them, a belief they’ll overcome no matter the odds. Part of the reason is they’ve already experienced hell. They buried you — a teammate, a friend.

“We think about him all the time,” senior defensive tackle Joe Poyser says. “We play the game the way it’s supposed to be played for him. We know he’d give anything to come back and be able to play with us. We’d do anything to get him back.”

If only your back wouldn’t have been hurting on that April day in 2008. You would have been in the weight room instead of driving.

If only you wouldn’t have driven so fast.

You lost control of your truck and crashed head-on into a school district van. My God, what a tragedy. The community didn’t just lose you — a 16-year-old boy with his whole life in front of him. They lost a good man, 67-year-old Julius Weidinger, who was driving the van.

And this was a town still healing from the death of 17-year-old Ethan Appel the year before, another talented young athlete taken before his time in an automobile accident.

But it wasn’t in your personality to be careful, was it? Your mom knew this when you broke your leg at the age of 3, riding the lid of the toy box down the stairs. You lived on the edge a little, always on the go, learning things the hard way and never taking life too seriously. Stubborn, your mom calls you, citing the time your big brother had you in a wrestling chokehold and you nearly passed out because you refused to tap out.

You were the person everyone wanted to be around.

“Just a lovable kid,” says Mike Norris, your second cousin and a Louisville assistant coach. “Always had a smile on his face. Ornery. Always wanted to have a good time no matter what. And he was a heckuva football player, too.”

You welcomed everyone — jocks, band members or even fellow paintball enthusiasts. You could fix a car with a buddy one minute, gossip with a girl the next, then hang out with the athletes. Forget about the auto body career you had thought about. You could have been some sort of politician or salesman.

“That’s what I think a lot of people liked about him,” Poyser says. “He didn’t really mind who was with him. It didn’t matter if you were popular or not popular. He’d hang out with you. He knew how people felt.”

We know you didn’t like people to make a big deal about you. You thought it was silly for all those reporters to come calling when you lifted a 900-pound steel work table off your elderly neighbor. You saved that man’s life. Your mom didn’t find out about it until the man’s wife thanked her later.

The Louisville Rotary

presented you a citizenship award. Of course, your mom told you your grandmother was getting an award because she knew that was the only way to get you to the banquet. Man, were you irritated when your name was called.

But like it or not, you meant a lot to a lot of people.

At your calling hours, an estimated 1,000 people came through the high school gymnasium. They still remember you wearing your blue Louisville football jersey.

“It was so hard to try to keep your composure,” Poyser says. “Nearly impossible. Just seeing him laying there for the last time in his jersey.”

Your friends wanted to celebrate your birthday last summer. So your mom ordered some pizzas, and your buddies sent out text messages. Around 200 people came through the house that night.

They had a candlelight vigil at the stadium on the one-year anniversary of your death. The middle section of the visitors’ stands was filled.

“Of course the wind blew like 90 miles per hour, so we could never light the candles,” says your mom, “which I still think was Stephen messing with me.”

Your mom, a 1980 Louisville grad, is there every Friday night because, well, that’s the thing people do in Louisville. They go to the football game. Your teammates see her and think of you.

“The worst thing is knowing he’d be out there with us this year and last year, just knowing that we could look down the line and see him,” Poyser says. “Now, it’s just ... ”

“We have to look up for him,” fellow defensive lineman Joe Henderson adds.

You would fit in so well with these guys. The coaches say you’d be starting at defensive end. With you on the line would be kids you’ve known forever. Poyser. Henderson. Bob Gothot. Matt Wharmby.

They play with a reckless abandon that strikes some as a little crazy at times. Sound like anybody we know?

“He was balls to the wall all the time,” your brother Andrew, a former Louisville player, says of you. “He played Louisville football. Like (head coach Paul) Farrah says, ‘Play every play like it’s your last.’ That’s the way all of them do. That’s the way Stephen played.”

Henderson agrees, saying, “He was pretty much like us. I don’t want to say cocky.”

“Confident,” Poyser says.

Your mom has a different take.

“They’re nuts,” she says with a laugh. “The harder they could hit each other, the better. He fit in to that mentality. The kid had a football in his hand from the time he was born.”

You had no choice. Your grandfather was Butch Peer, one of the original coaches of the Little Leopards program. Your family’s had the same tickets for probably 40 years.

Watching football games hasn’t been easy lately.

“Last year it wasn’t that bad. This year, I’ve been having more of an issue with it being his senior year,” your mom says as she chokes back tears. “I know he would have started this year. He lived and breathed football in this town, and he would have been graduating, you know? That’s tough.

“But it does help to know people still think about him and consider him a part of the class.”

When the Leopards burst through the banner to take the field before Friday night’s game against Marion-Franklin, they’ll huddle near the 50-yard line. As they’ve done all season, they’ll shout one final call before kickoff.

“5-6.”

No one is forgetting you.