Stewart: He was abandoned as a baby and later had his legs amputated. Now he's playing football for a Kenosha high school.

Mark Stewart
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Lucas Jundt, a sophomore at Indian Trail High School in Kenosha, is double amputee who plays football with the aid of prosthetic legs.

KENOSHA – This story begins with a baby, just a few days old, who is abandoned on a busy street in China.

The boy survives the chaos around him thanks to a police officer who notices the infant and takes him to an orphanage.

Lucas Jundt is big on second chances. This was his first.

He was rescued by someone who was in the right place at the right time to help. That good luck started a chain of events that eventually took the boy from the city of Chifeng in Inner Mongolia to Atlanta to Kenosha and, this fall, to the football field at Indian Trail High School.

The change in fortune has been like a dream come true.

“I did think it when I was 6: ‘Will I ever be able to be adopted? Will I ever have a family that loves me,’” said Jundt, who moved with his family from Atlanta to Kenosha last November. “There were a lot of will-I's, and it happened.

“Adoption is like a second chance for those children. I love the word adoption because God says he adopted us into his family. Once you become a Christian, he adopts you into his family.”

For Jundt, a second chance not only meant having a family to call his own but also a pain-free existence.

Born without a fibula in either leg, a condition called fibular hemimelia, Jundt lived with deformed legs and feet and endured pain until he was 7, when his legs were amputated below the knee.

An athlete for all seasons

Lucas Jundt, orphaned as a baby in China, was adopted and came to the United States at age 7 and ended up in Kenosha last November.

That is the back story on No. 27 in your program (although he wears No. 37 in practice). A first-year football player, Jundt is a 5-foot-8, 128-pound sophomore who completes with the aid of prosthetic legs. He gets his snaps in junior varsity games at receiver or on special teams.

In the spring he was on the track and field team, running the 200 and 400 meters and competing in the long jump. This winter, he plans to try wrestling.

“Just being on a team and calling them brothers and family, that’s a really awesome experience,” Jundt said. “Hopefully next year I come back and feel the same thing, run for the Indian Trail track team and play for their football team and do a lot of sports for them. I want to try everything that I can.”

Jundt attacks things with passion. He took up taekwondo when he was 8 and within six years had a black belt. He ventured into the world of parathletics last spring and is already thinking about the 2024 Paralympics.

He trains with the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association, which is based out of Lake Forest, Illinois, and last summer competed in the sprints, long jump and javelin.

The experience was inspirational.

“I got to meet the fastest 100-meter blind runner. His time is 11.30 seconds for the 100-meter dash. Blind. It is amazing,” he said. “You get to see the athlete who is blind, who has no hands, no arms, no nothing and you just see them going through (and competing).  It’s an honor to run with athletes and get to be with them.”

Figuring out football

The football players at Indian Trail wear T-shirts that have “SISU” printed on the back. It looks like the abbreviation for some university, but really it’s a Finnish word that essentially means to continue to compete no matter how difficult the circumstances.

Figure it out. That is how Jundt takes the word. If you’re having a tough day, figure out how to get through it. Don’t understand something? Figure out a way to learn it.

That sums up his football season so far. He entered the week without any catches and is still learning the plays. He’s figuring things out.

He has been a fan of the game since he was 8, but his interest was really piqued after Shaquem Griffin made the NFL. A second-year linebacker with the Seattle Seahawks, his left hand was amputated when he was 4.

“I watched it and I wanted to (play) because I saw people tackling one another,” Jundt said. “This is a great sport to play. I want to get into the NFL someday.”

Beating the odds

Lucas Jundt was part of the track team at Indian Trail in the spring and wants to try every sport.

Before you count out his chances, understand that Jundt comes from a family that has beaten the odds.

After adopting him, Lucas' parents, Peter and Heidi, adopted two more children, Josh and Emma, from the same orphanage. They also need extra care and are adaptive athletes. 

Jundt, meanwhile, continues to figure out things like school. When you consider the language barrier, he was academically behind other 7-year-olds when he came to this country.

Today he has mastered the language so well that some of his classmates don't realize he is from another country. He is an A-B student whose list of dreams also includes becoming a police officer.

What better way to thank the person who changed his life.

"He could have walked right past me," Jundt said, "but instead he picked me up and took me to shelter.”