When he was a kindergartener at a school outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, Luca Lutzel was asked to bring an item for show-and-tell that meant something to him.

He brought a tea bag.

“I could have brought my favorite toy or a football, but bringing the tea bag reminded me why I was still able to do those things and why I was still around,” recalled Lutzel, now 23.

The tea bag is a poignant reminder of what Lutzel overcame. When he was 16 months old, Lutzel pulled a pot of boiling water for his mother’s tea onto himself. The subsequent burns covering 60% of his body were so severe that a doctor told his parents that their son would likely not live until the next morning.

And if he did, the damage would probably leave their son blind, deaf or confined to a wheelchair with no use of the arm and leg on one side of his body. But Lutzel did survive with a scar from his shoulder to his ribs as the only visible evidence of that incident.

He is a starting cornerback for the No. 17 Johns Hopkins football team that went 9-1 this fall, captured its 17th Centennial Conference title and will meet No. 16 Grove City (9-1) in the second round of the NCAA Division III playoffs on Saturday at noon at Homewood Field in Baltimore.“We knew he was going to be a really good player, but he took it to the next level over his first couple of years,” Blue Jays coach Dan Wodicka said. “And by his sophomore year, we were like, ‘OK, he’s ready to go, and he’s going to make big plays for us,’ and he’s continued to do that.”

Lutzel is the middle of three sons raised by Maria and Rick Lutzel, both 58. Christopher was a long snapper at Baylor, and Matthew will be a junior attackman for the High Point lacrosse team.

Luca was so energetic as a baby and toddler that he was nicknamed “Luca-motive” by family members. “He was always going full speed,” Rick Lutzel said.

That active streak emerged again on Monday, Nov. 11, 2002. Unable to get much sleep the previous night while tending to Christopher as he participated in a peanut allergy study, Maria Lutzel boiled a pot of water for some tea and pushed the pot to the back of the stove. While she made a sandwich for Christopher, Luca grabbed a long-necked ladle and tipped the pot over onto himself.

“It literally took the skin off,” Maria Lutzel said. “It was horrendous. I just started screaming, not knowing what to do.”

Maria and Rick Lutzel — who was getting ready for work — packed both boys in their car and raced to a local hospital where the staff said the facility was unequipped to treat Luca. He was then airlifted to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Burn Center where the chief doctor of the burn unit delivered sobering news.

Luca had third- and fourth-degree burns with the latter exposing the bone in his left shoulder and leg and would probably not survive the night. If he did, he would require months of surgery just to get his body healthy enough to even begin grafting skin onto his body.

Nurses in the pediatric ward of the burn unit spent considerable time debriding Luca’s burnt skin. “We could hear him, and it was awful,” Rick Lutzel said. “He was in so much agony.”

Maria Lutzel, who turned to Christianity after the death of their daughter Sabrina eight months in utero on Jan. 17, 1996, and Rick spent the first night praying.

“We were devastated,” she said. “We just never thought we would be in that situation. We started praying, and we started calling all of our friends.”

For the first few days, Luca was sedated, injected with morphine for the pain, and wrapped frequently in clean bandages. On Thursday, Nov. 14, nurses began removing the bandages around his head and face.

“His face was 100% fine, his neck was totally fine,” Maria Lutzel said. “There were some burn marks, but we were shocked, and the doctor was shocked. The rest of him was still as expected. Nothing else was healed, but he lifted his arms for Rick to pick him up. He picked him up, and the doctor said, ‘Put him on the ground.’ ”

Added Rick: “In true Luca-motive fashion, he ran.”

Maria Lutzel said she and her husband were “dumbfounded.” The same could be said for the chief doctor.

“The doctor at that point was an atheist,” Rick said. “He said, ‘There’s only one answer. This is God.’ ”

Luca Lutzel has no memory of the ordeal except for almost weekly three-hour drives to Chapel Hill for examinations and checkups. But his skin took five years to heal and regenerate, and he had to take precautions such as wearing long-sleeve shirts when he was outside in the sun and refraining from physical contact in sports such as lacrosse and hockey.

“I’ve only seen pictures, and the first time I saw those pictures, it was very weird for me — like, that was me with those severe burns all over my body?” he said. “So not having the actual memory or being burned and that feeling is a good thing.”

Like his parents, Lutzel became a Christian and carried his faith with him to Johns Hopkins where he teamed with older teammates such as defensive back Ross Andersson and kickers John Krill and Kyle Battles in 2020 to launch a weekly Bible study for the football team. The membership has grown from six players to almost 50.

Graduate student tight end Will Leger said Lutzel’s testimony mesmerized his teammates.

“Just being in that room and hearing him talk about those experiences and how it brought him to God and other experiences in his life that have made him a man of faith has been incredibly cool,” Leger said. “Just hearing his story and how it affects him and brought him to God, it’s been really inspiring for me and for other guys.”

Rick and Maria Lutzel said they are overjoyed to witness their son’s growth as a person, player and believer.

“It’s very gratifying not only because his life was saved and because he was healed, but it’s gratifying in that we have the opportunity to do things like we’re doing right now,” Rick said. “For the two of us, it has really opened up an opportunity to share our faith, but I think it’s more so for Luca. His faith runs so deep.”

Lutzel has started all 23 games since the start of the 2023 season and has racked up 76 tackles, 20 pass breakups and five interceptions in his career. He is majoring in neuroscience and said his plans to attend medical school with the hope of becoming an emergency room doctor or an orthopedic surgeon were influenced by his interactions with doctors.

“The way they cared for me made my life so much better that it really showed me that it was something that I was very interested in as I got into high school and started figuring out what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. “So when the opportunity for Hopkins came up, it was kind of a no-brainer understanding that there are very few places in the world like Johns Hopkins for medicine. So getting to study neuroscience here has been a blessing, and hopefully, I can continue that route.”

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