And then he did just that, making a diving interception of a Kyle Kaparos pass in the red zone.
It happened late in the second quarter of the University of Dayton’s annual Red and Blue Spring Game last April and it was Lutgens first significant play as a Flyer after sitting out the 2016 football season as a redshirt.
Just as he used to do back when he was starring at Ravenwood High School in Brentwood, Tennessee, just south of Nashville, Lutgens had looked into the Welcome Stadium stands hopping to spot his mom, stepdad and two little brothers.
“They usually give me a thumbs up sign or something, but I couldn’t find them anywhere,’ he recalled Sunday during the Flyers’ preseason Media Day at Welcome.
That’s because they no longer where there.
For a about a week before she had come to the spring game, Julie Edwards, Andrew’s mom, had been dealing with what she thought were sinus issues.
“I felt pressure on my left eye, just like a sinus headache and had gone to a walk-in clinic for antibiotics and nasal spray,” she said late Sunday afternoon by phone from Tennessee.
She recalled that once she had gotten situated in the stadium, she remembers watching her tall, lean son — No. 20 – run out onto the field with the team.
“That’s all I remember,” she said.
“About five minutes into the first quarter, I looked over and it seemed like she was having a conversation with three girls behind her,” said, Paul, her husband, Andrew’s stepfather.
“But one of the girls looked at me to say, ‘Sir, she is not well.‘ I came around and looked and she was having her first seizure.”
Up in the press box, Flyers head coach Rick Chamberlin was providing color commentary on radio alongside WHIO’s Larry Hansgen.
“I saw some commotion in the stands and then one of our other mothers – Matt Brandeis’ mom – stood up and yelled, ‘Call 9-1-1!’” Chamberlin said.
Sitting nearby, Shari Yinger – another mother, who had just lost her husband in a fatal fall 12 days earlier – hustled over and held Julie’s head, as a few doctors and nurses sitting in the stands rushed over as well.
Paul said the Flyers team doctors came up, too, as did Mike Kelly, UD’s assistant athletics director and former head coach. Soon Julie was carried to an ambulance and rushed to nearby Miami Valley Hospital.
At halftime, Chamberlin pulled an unsuspecting Andrew aside and told him his mother had been involved in “an episode” in the stands and he needed to go to the hospital.
Kelly drove him.
“I was kind of in shock, but Coach Kelly knew what to do,” Andrew said. “He made conversation – things that were off the subject – and he settled me down. He did a great job.”
Once inside the hospital though, reality hit.
“I walked into critical care and my mom was out cold and on a ventilator,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t used to seeing her like that – she’s always so strong – and I broke down. I was just there 10 seconds or so and turned around.
“I told my stepdad, ‘I don’t want to see her like this. I don’t want this to be the image I think of about her.”
Finding the right ‘balance’ at UD
Andrew said he didn’t know much about UD when he got a recruiting letter from the Flyers his senior season.
“I was trying to decide whether I was going to play football or not in college, but when I came on my official visit I realized everybody was kind of like me,” he said. “They had the same morals, the same mindset.
“Academics were first before sports. You could focus on our career, not just your football life. I liked the whole balance – socially, academically and athletics. It was the total package. To me it just felt right.”
Andrew’s dad, David Lutgens, was at Sunday’s gathering and said his boy had looked seriously at Auburn and some other schools down south, but decided if he was going to play football he wanted “to be at a school where he could make a difference.”
And that’s just what he seemed to be doing on the first half of last April’s spring game. But what began as a coming out party soon turned into a nightmare.
“Some 45 minutes after we got to the ER, they pulled me aside from our little guys and said, ‘You need to call the family. She is … very sick,’” Paul Edwards recalled, his voice breaking at the memory.
“I called her mom, called everybody. Then an hour later the chaplain came out and he said ‘We need to talk to you.’ That’s when my stomach dropped.”
Scans showed Julie had a brain tumor behind her left eye.
Once the spring game ended, the Flyers coaches began showing up at the hospital. Paul said some of them, like Chamberlin, stayed at least five hours and then returned again the next couple of days, too. By then doctors had decided the tumor was benign, but it was still in a precarious position along the optic nerve and causing pressure on the brain.
He said Coach Mark Ewald took the two little boys fishing that Sunday night and defensive coordinator Landon Fox took them with him on Monday.
“You always hear about the way coaches will be there for you and support you,” Paul said.
“But to actually see it happen was pretty unbelievable.
‘All the love and support’
Julie was eventually life-flighted back to Nashville and admitted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The surgery by Dr. Reid Thompson, Vice Chairman of Neurosurgery and Director of the Vanderbilt Brain Tumor Center, took 5 ½ hours.
“Afterward I called Coach Chamberlin to thank him and his coaches for the amazing support they had given us,” Julie said. “He said, ‘That’s what we do. You’re part of our family and we take care of family.’”
Even so, Andrew admitted he was initially taken aback by the full embrace he and his family got.
“Look, I was just a freshman, not some big-time guy on the team,” he said “But to them it didn’t matter. I was one of the Flyers and they wanted to make sure I got all the love and support.
“This has really been eye opening for me. I’ve realized how lucky I am to be a part of this team and this university and I saw just how caring the coaches really are.
“And as bad as it was for our family, it made us stronger, made us closer.”
That’s why he’s especially looking forward to the second home game of the season, a Sept. 16 matchup with Duquesne. His mom will be here for that game and, if you listened to Chamberlin on Sunday, Andrew is going to be seeing a lot of action this season both as a hybrid linebacker/safety called a “Flyer” and on special teams.
“I’m looking forward to making a play and having my mom actually remember it,” Andrew said. “And afterward I’m looking forward to us going out to dinner and talking about what she got to see and how it feels to be a Flyer.”
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