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Great article on Luke Bauer in the Post
Posted on: December 28, 2024 at 10:28:48 CT
optigr50 MU
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this morning. Such a great kid and Tru Son. I didn't realize he was going through all of this w/ his family. Worth the read.
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Luke Bauer’s family measures time in Missouri football games.
This is not a new development for a family that for years has loaded up a sprinter van headed from St. Louis County to Columbia each gameday for an esteemed tailgate outside Memorial Stadium. But MU games have taken on new meanings over the last couple of years.
Games are milestones to celebrate Luke, Mizzou’s punter. Such as when he finally earned playing time at the start of the 2023 season, holding for field-goal and extra-point attempts. Or when he punted for the first time in a college game, at the Dome in St. Louis for a game against Memphis last season.
Games are chronological markers in a fog of grief for Luke and his family, too. Luke’s cousin and role model, Spencer Stapf, died unexpectedly last year. The date was Nov. 5, 2023, but it’s remembered with the frame of football: one day after the Georgia game.
Games are special, maybe even sacred memories that Luke holds onto. The South Carolina game was when Spencer lived out a dream with pregame field access before his cousin played a game. The Kentucky game was when Luke’s fake punt touchdown sent his dad, Jeff Bauer, shouting “That’s my boy!” in the corner of the Wildcats’ stadium despite his grueling battle with kidney cancer.
Games are distractions. In the days after Spencer’s death, Luke’s family relished a few hours spent watching the Tigers demolish Tennessee. Later that season, they made the trip to the Cotton Bowl to watch Missouri’s victory over Ohio State. That was the last time Jeff watched one of his son’s games. He died in July, just a few weeks before the start of the 2024 season’s fall camp.
Games are different now, and that’s why.
“There’s two people missing,” said Jill Stapf, Luke’s aunt and Spencer’s mom.
Monday’s Music City Bowl will be the final game of Luke’s time in a Mizzou uniform, a career in which he has played through the losses of two close family members. He hasn’t talked about it publicly much.
Most people probably don’t know what the punter is going through off the field. Luke, through all of it, has been quietly resilient. He has leaned into football at times.
“With everything I’ve been going through, football, with how busy we are, it keeps my mind off things back home and outside of here,” Luke said. “I think that helps me, mentally, whenever I come to practice and go to workouts.”
Amid their shared losses, Luke is providing his family with football games — something to rally around. He’s learning to understand why his dad, during a three-year battle with cancer, preached about believing in good in the world. And he’s doing this without two of his most ardent supporters — the rare kind of fans who go to a game hoping for a nice punt or two — in the stands.
Luke has kept punting, kept playing.
“I know it’s meant a lot to my family,” he said. “Any time after a game when I see a big smile on them, it makes my day just to know that my family is happy.”
‘The one thing that was really hard to think about’
Luke’s spot on the Missouri roster is a byproduct of his genes.
First, there’s his height. Punters tend to be lanky, and Luke checks that box: At 6 feet 5, he’s one of the Tigers’ tallest players at any position. It runs in his family. Spencer was the same height. Jeff stood 6-3, the same height as Jake, Luke’s younger brother. There’s an athleticism that comes with these frames, too.
That’s the second gene: football. One of his cousins on Jeff’s side of the family, Andy Bauer, was a high school All-American at De Smet Jesuit High before playing for Mizzou. Jeff’s brother played briefly for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. Bauer boys gravitated toward the gridiron.
Luke didn’t — at first. He grew up playing soccer, basketball and baseball and is a solid golfer.
“I told myself, ‘I’m going to start playing football’ at some point,” he said.
Initially, that was as a tight end on a freshman-level team at De Smet. That didn’t really stick. But the Spartans needed a kicker, and Luke had the leg for it. On the soccer pitch, he’d been the player to take corner kicks, aiming and arcing the ball from the sideline to the middle of the box.
Jeff pushed Luke to give football kicking a try. He was on the quieter end of sports dads but wasn’t afraid to push his kids to try things.
Kicking and punting for the Spartans wound up going well for Luke. De Smet won a state title during his senior season and he signed with Mizzou in 2020 as a preferred walk-on right after Eli Drinkwitz was hired as the Tigers’ head coach.
There was really only one school that Luke would go to, and that’s the third gene: Missouri fandom.
Kathy Bauer, Luke’s mom and Jill’s sister, had played soccer at MU. Their brother worked as a sportswriter, and they were an avid sports family.
Jeff had been a season ticket holder since graduating from the university. Jeff and Kathy worked together before dating, and it was his prudent decision to offer an extra Braggin’ Rights ticket to the 1999 Missouri-Illinois men’s basketball game to Jill that sold him to her family.
“I was like, ‘You should really date this guy,’” Jill told her sister.
“I think he knew what he was doing,” Kathy said.
She and Jeff were married soon after. Kathy, perhaps only half-joking, suggested their wedding vows include a promise that Jeff would take her to sporting events around the country.
After graduating from MU in 1987, Jeff watched a lot of disappointing Missouri seasons. He saw the Fifth Down and the Flea Kicker. But he still went to games, tailgated and brought family with. There’s a cherished family photo of elementary-aged Spencer and a baby Luke wearing Mizzou gear during a 2002 tailgate outside of the Hearnes Center.
Around the time the Tigers joined the Southeastern Conference, Jeff went in on a sprinter van, complete with a TV, that now marks the family tailgates. They acquired a spot in Lot L on the northwest side of the stadium. It’s right by the pedestrian tunnel connecting Greek Town and the university campus to the stadium gates, perfectly placed for foot traffic.
Luke’s family was, of course, thrilled when he walked on with Missouri. He didn’t play at all in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons, but that never dulled their excitement.
Going into the 2023 season, things changed. Luke lost the punting competition during camp but began the year as the Tigers’ holder.
So when kicker Harrison Mevis drilled a 61-yard field goal to beat Kansas State, Luke was on the field. He could tell the kick was good by the sound of Mevis’ cleat smashing into the pigskin.
Jeff, in the stands, was in tears.
“He made a comment once: ‘I’m more emotional than what people think,’” Kathy said. “And that 61-yard field goal: I think he’s just so passionate about Mizzou. I mean, you kind of have to be to be a Mizzou fan for as long as Jeff has been.
“He had been a fan for so long, and he got to see those plays stand out last year, where, he knew, he stuck with it because one day, it was gonna make him proud. To have a son part of it, it was all the better.”
Luke took over the punting job ahead of MU’s next game, which was the matchup with Memphis held in the Dome.
By that time, Jeff was two years into his fight with kidney cancer. He’d had surgery and was taking chemotherapy pills. There were good days and there were bad days. As Luke’s family tailgated before kickoff against Memphis, Jeff sat in the car to muster the strength to get inside the Dome and watch.
“He didn’t feel 100% for the last three years, with the treatment that he was going through,” Kathy said. “He struggled to go to those games. He wanted to be there. He wanted to be at every game, which he was, the last five years with Luke being there. He was at every single game no matter how he felt.”
Such as against Kentucky, when Luke flipped the game’s trajectory by throwing for a touchdown on a fake punt.
The Tigers trailed 14-0 early when they brought Luke on the field to boot the ball away to the Wildcats — or so it seemed. Instead, he pulled back the ball and tossed it down the left sideline to wide receiver Marquis Johnson, who caught it and ran it into the end zone.
Missouri punter drops dime on fake punt TD vs Kentucky
That trick play was one of the defining moments of Mizzou’s breakout 2023 season. Jeff saw it live, but he never saw it coming.
“The moment that I saw my dad after the Kentucky game, that was one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on his face,” Luke said. “He asked me why I didn’t tell him that we were practicing it. … I don’t know, somehow, Kentucky probably would have found out.”
Spencer was part of these memories, too. He received pregame field access for Mizzou’s 2023 game against South Carolina, taking a picture with Luke — and basketball coach Dennis Gates — on the field.
“Today was unreal,” Spencer wrote in a text message to his family.
“I just remember how happy he was,” Luke said.
Spencer Stapf and Luke Bauer
Missouri punter Luke Bauer (center, smiling) shakes hands with his cousin Spencer Stapf (left) before the Tigers’ 2023 game against South Carolina.
Courtesy Jill Stapf
Spencer died of asymptomatic cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that didn’t show any symptoms, just two weeks later. He was 26.
Spencer had grown up an Illinois fan after watching the Illini’s run to the 2005 Final Four at an impressionable age. But with Jeff’s coaxing, he’d enrolled at MU and became a Mizzou football fan — especially once his younger cousin was on the team.
Luke lost a role model. After Mizzou beat Tennessee, he headed back home to Glendale for Spencer’s services.
“Obviously, when anyone loses a family member, it’s tough,” Luke said. “But being so close with my cousin …”
Sitting in a Mizzou team meeting room with the Post-Dispatch for his first interview about the losses of the last year, Luke trailed off.
As last season was peaking on the field, with another signature play against Florida, the 10th win of the year against Arkansas and a Cotton Bowl berth secured, Luke was grappling with grief and worry off the field. Spencer was gone, and Jeff still was battling cancer.
“The fact that I knew that at some point, he may not be able to be watching me play would hit my mind,” Luke said. “That’s the one thing that was really hard to think about.”
‘Just believe’
Jeff, who died July 11 at 59, is survived by Kathy and their three children: Luke, Jake and Audrey. He wanted to teach them work ethic, perseverance and belief in the positive.
Even during his cancer treatment, Jeff would be relentless in his belief that something good could come of it.
“Whenever I would be back home, he’d start talking about the word ‘believe’ because he preached about how you can always believe in something better,” Luke said. “Having negative thoughts is never going to help.”
“He always said that,” Kathy said. “Believe.”
Tennessee Volunteers vs Missouri Tigers
Mizzou holder Luke Bauer celebrates with kicker Harrison Mevis after a field goal to end the first half against Tennessee on Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, on Faurot Field at Memorial Stadium in Columbia, Mo.
David Carson, Post-Dispatch
Jeff got Luke to believe that three years of being a backup punter would lead to something. Jeff believed that the Tigers’ luck would turn around and they could win like they did in 2023.
Since his passing, the 2024 season has been different. Mizzou has had a good campaign, but it has lacked the magic of last year. And Jeff isn’t around like he was before.
There’s still a Bauer family tailgate in Lot L, complete with the sprinter van. Now, the setup includes a photo of Jeff.
Playing this season has been difficult for Luke. He can’t help but notice who’s missing at times.
“The first couple games was really tough because every game (during) Tiger Walk, I would go give my dad a hug,” Luke said. “The first time going out there was really tough, mentally, to go out there and know that he’s watching from above. I know that, but him physically not being there, it was tough.”
Luke’s family is religious, and that’s what they believe: that Jeff and Spencer have spiritual season tickets, having greeted St. Peter with an M-I-Z and a tailgate invitation — just like he did for so many people.
“We definitely believe that he is in a good place now,” Kathy said. “He’s watching us. My heart breaks for my kids that they have to go on without their dad around. But I want them to know that he’s up there believing in them, because that’s what he wanted to instill in them: just believe.”
Luke has kept playing in part because he believes. He believes that his dad and Spencer are watching, and he believes in what Jeff taught him.
“One thing my dad told me was to never stop,” Luke said. “Don’t quit.”
Edited by optigr50 at 10:29:34 on 12/28/24
==================================================
Luke Bauer’s family measures time in Missouri football games.
This is not a new development for a family that for years has loaded up a sprinter van headed from St. Louis County to Columbia each gameday for an esteemed tailgate outside Memorial Stadium. But MU games have taken on new meanings over the last couple of years.
Games are milestones to celebrate Luke, Mizzou’s punter. Such as when he finally earned playing time at the start of the 2023 season, holding for field-goal and extra-point attempts. Or when he punted for the first time in a college game, at the Dome in St. Louis for a game against Memphis last season.
Games are chronological markers in a fog of grief for Luke and his family, too. Luke’s cousin and role model, Spencer Stapf, died unexpectedly last year. The date was Nov. 5, 2023, but it’s remembered with the frame of football: one day after the Georgia game.
Games are special, maybe even sacred memories that Luke holds onto. The South Carolina game was when Spencer lived out a dream with pregame field access before his cousin played a game. The Kentucky game was when Luke’s fake punt touchdown sent his dad, Jeff Bauer, shouting “That’s my boy!” in the corner of the Wildcats’ stadium despite his grueling battle with kidney cancer.
Games are distractions. In the days after Spencer’s death, Luke’s family relished a few hours spent watching the Tigers demolish Tennessee. Later that season, they made the trip to the Cotton Bowl to watch Missouri’s victory over Ohio State. That was the last time Jeff watched one of his son’s games. He died in July, just a few weeks before the start of the 2024 season’s fall camp.
Games are different now, and that’s why.
“There’s two people missing,” said Jill Stapf, Luke’s aunt and Spencer’s mom.
Monday’s Music City Bowl will be the final game of Luke’s time in a Mizzou uniform, a career in which he has played through the losses of two close family members. He hasn’t talked about it publicly much.
Most people probably don’t know what the punter is going through off the field. Luke, through all of it, has been quietly resilient. He has leaned into football at times.
“With everything I’ve been going through, football, with how busy we are, it keeps my mind off things back home and outside of here,” Luke said. “I think that helps me, mentally, whenever I come to practice and go to workouts.”
Amid their shared losses, Luke is providing his family with football games — something to rally around. He’s learning to understand why his dad, during a three-year battle with cancer, preached about believing in good in the world. And he’s doing this without two of his most ardent supporters — the rare kind of fans who go to a game hoping for a nice punt or two — in the stands.
Luke has kept punting, kept playing.
“I know it’s meant a lot to my family,” he said. “Any time after a game when I see a big smile on them, it makes my day just to know that my family is happy.”
‘The one thing that was really hard to think about’
Luke’s spot on the Missouri roster is a byproduct of his genes.
First, there’s his height. Punters tend to be lanky, and Luke checks that box: At 6 feet 5, he’s one of the Tigers’ tallest players at any position. It runs in his family. Spencer was the same height. Jeff stood 6-3, the same height as Jake, Luke’s younger brother. There’s an athleticism that comes with these frames, too.
That’s the second gene: football. One of his cousins on Jeff’s side of the family, Andy Bauer, was a high school All-American at De Smet Jesuit High before playing for Mizzou. Jeff’s brother played briefly for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. Bauer boys gravitated toward the gridiron.
Luke didn’t — at first. He grew up playing soccer, basketball and baseball and is a solid golfer.
“I told myself, ‘I’m going to start playing football’ at some point,” he said.
Initially, that was as a tight end on a freshman-level team at De Smet. That didn’t really stick. But the Spartans needed a kicker, and Luke had the leg for it. On the soccer pitch, he’d been the player to take corner kicks, aiming and arcing the ball from the sideline to the middle of the box.
Jeff pushed Luke to give football kicking a try. He was on the quieter end of sports dads but wasn’t afraid to push his kids to try things.
Kicking and punting for the Spartans wound up going well for Luke. De Smet won a state title during his senior season and he signed with Mizzou in 2020 as a preferred walk-on right after Eli Drinkwitz was hired as the Tigers’ head coach.
There was really only one school that Luke would go to, and that’s the third gene: Missouri fandom.
Kathy Bauer, Luke’s mom and Jill’s sister, had played soccer at MU. Their brother worked as a sportswriter, and they were an avid sports family.
Jeff had been a season ticket holder since graduating from the university. Jeff and Kathy worked together before dating, and it was his prudent decision to offer an extra Braggin’ Rights ticket to the 1999 Missouri-Illinois men’s basketball game to Jill that sold him to her family.
“I was like, ‘You should really date this guy,’” Jill told her sister.
“I think he knew what he was doing,” Kathy said.
She and Jeff were married soon after. Kathy, perhaps only half-joking, suggested their wedding vows include a promise that Jeff would take her to sporting events around the country.
After graduating from MU in 1987, Jeff watched a lot of disappointing Missouri seasons. He saw the Fifth Down and the Flea Kicker. But he still went to games, tailgated and brought family with. There’s a cherished family photo of elementary-aged Spencer and a baby Luke wearing Mizzou gear during a 2002 tailgate outside of the Hearnes Center.
Around the time the Tigers joined the Southeastern Conference, Jeff went in on a sprinter van, complete with a TV, that now marks the family tailgates. They acquired a spot in Lot L on the northwest side of the stadium. It’s right by the pedestrian tunnel connecting Greek Town and the university campus to the stadium gates, perfectly placed for foot traffic.
Luke’s family was, of course, thrilled when he walked on with Missouri. He didn’t play at all in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons, but that never dulled their excitement.
Going into the 2023 season, things changed. Luke lost the punting competition during camp but began the year as the Tigers’ holder.
So when kicker Harrison Mevis drilled a 61-yard field goal to beat Kansas State, Luke was on the field. He could tell the kick was good by the sound of Mevis’ cleat smashing into the pigskin.
Jeff, in the stands, was in tears.
“He made a comment once: ‘I’m more emotional than what people think,’” Kathy said. “And that 61-yard field goal: I think he’s just so passionate about Mizzou. I mean, you kind of have to be to be a Mizzou fan for as long as Jeff has been.
“He had been a fan for so long, and he got to see those plays stand out last year, where, he knew, he stuck with it because one day, it was gonna make him proud. To have a son part of it, it was all the better.”
Luke took over the punting job ahead of MU’s next game, which was the matchup with Memphis held in the Dome.
By that time, Jeff was two years into his fight with kidney cancer. He’d had surgery and was taking chemotherapy pills. There were good days and there were bad days. As Luke’s family tailgated before kickoff against Memphis, Jeff sat in the car to muster the strength to get inside the Dome and watch.
“He didn’t feel 100% for the last three years, with the treatment that he was going through,” Kathy said. “He struggled to go to those games. He wanted to be there. He wanted to be at every game, which he was, the last five years with Luke being there. He was at every single game no matter how he felt.”
Such as against Kentucky, when Luke flipped the game’s trajectory by throwing for a touchdown on a fake punt.
The Tigers trailed 14-0 early when they brought Luke on the field to boot the ball away to the Wildcats — or so it seemed. Instead, he pulled back the ball and tossed it down the left sideline to wide receiver Marquis Johnson, who caught it and ran it into the end zone.
Missouri punter drops dime on fake punt TD vs Kentucky
That trick play was one of the defining moments of Mizzou’s breakout 2023 season. Jeff saw it live, but he never saw it coming.
“The moment that I saw my dad after the Kentucky game, that was one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on his face,” Luke said. “He asked me why I didn’t tell him that we were practicing it. … I don’t know, somehow, Kentucky probably would have found out.”
Spencer was part of these memories, too. He received pregame field access for Mizzou’s 2023 game against South Carolina, taking a picture with Luke — and basketball coach Dennis Gates — on the field.
“Today was unreal,” Spencer wrote in a text message to his family.
“I just remember how happy he was,” Luke said.
Spencer Stapf and Luke Bauer
Missouri punter Luke Bauer (center, smiling) shakes hands with his cousin Spencer Stapf (left) before the Tigers’ 2023 game against South Carolina.
Courtesy Jill Stapf
Spencer died of asymptomatic cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that didn’t show any symptoms, just two weeks later. He was 26.
Spencer had grown up an Illinois fan after watching the Illini’s run to the 2005 Final Four at an impressionable age. But with Jeff’s coaxing, he’d enrolled at MU and became a Mizzou football fan — especially once his younger cousin was on the team.
Luke lost a role model. After Mizzou beat Tennessee, he headed back home to Glendale for Spencer’s services.
“Obviously, when anyone loses a family member, it’s tough,” Luke said. “But being so close with my cousin …”
Sitting in a Mizzou team meeting room with the Post-Dispatch for his first interview about the losses of the last year, Luke trailed off.
As last season was peaking on the field, with another signature play against Florida, the 10th win of the year against Arkansas and a Cotton Bowl berth secured, Luke was grappling with grief and worry off the field. Spencer was gone, and Jeff still was battling cancer.
“The fact that I knew that at some point, he may not be able to be watching me play would hit my mind,” Luke said. “That’s the one thing that was really hard to think about.”
‘Just believe’
Jeff, who died July 11 at 59, is survived by Kathy and their three children: Luke, Jake and Audrey. He wanted to teach them work ethic, perseverance and belief in the positive.
Even during his cancer treatment, Jeff would be relentless in his belief that something good could come of it.
“Whenever I would be back home, he’d start talking about the word ‘believe’ because he preached about how you can always believe in something better,” Luke said. “Having negative thoughts is never going to help.”
“He always said that,” Kathy said. “Believe.”
Tennessee Volunteers vs Missouri Tigers
Mizzou holder Luke Bauer celebrates with kicker Harrison Mevis after a field goal to end the first half against Tennessee on Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, on Faurot Field at Memorial Stadium in Columbia, Mo.
David Carson, Post-Dispatch
Jeff got Luke to believe that three years of being a backup punter would lead to something. Jeff believed that the Tigers’ luck would turn around and they could win like they did in 2023.
Since his passing, the 2024 season has been different. Mizzou has had a good campaign, but it has lacked the magic of last year. And Jeff isn’t around like he was before.
There’s still a Bauer family tailgate in Lot L, complete with the sprinter van. Now, the setup includes a photo of Jeff.
Playing this season has been difficult for Luke. He can’t help but notice who’s missing at times.
“The first couple games was really tough because every game (during) Tiger Walk, I would go give my dad a hug,” Luke said. “The first time going out there was really tough, mentally, to go out there and know that he’s watching from above. I know that, but him physically not being there, it was tough.”
Luke’s family is religious, and that’s what they believe: that Jeff and Spencer have spiritual season tickets, having greeted St. Peter with an M-I-Z and a tailgate invitation — just like he did for so many people.
“We definitely believe that he is in a good place now,” Kathy said. “He’s watching us. My heart breaks for my kids that they have to go on without their dad around. But I want them to know that he’s up there believing in them, because that’s what he wanted to instill in them: just believe.”
Luke has kept playing in part because he believes. He believes that his dad and Spencer are watching, and he believes in what Jeff taught him.
“One thing my dad told me was to never stop,” Luke said. “Don’t quit.”
Edited by optigr50 at 10:29:34 on 12/28/24
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Great article on Luke Bauer in the Post - optigr50 MU - 12/28 10:28:48