Michael Lev: CDO 2-way standout Kayden Luke rises early so he can excel on Friday nights

Kayden Luke is not a typical football player. He is not a typical teenager.

Luke plays both ways for Canyon del Oro High School. That in itself isn’t unusual. The fact that the senior plays running back and middle linebacker — constantly seeking contact in both endeavors — cranks up the degree of difficulty several notches.

But Luke’s two-way play for the Dorados, who visit Marana on Friday night, is just part of the story. How he prepares for that role is mind-blowing.

Several times a week, Luke wakes up at 2:30 a.m. for pre-practice weightlifting with his godfather, Beto De La Riva. They meet and lift at Shark Sports Fitness and Training, where De La Riva knows the owner, Art Cordova.

“Then he’ll go to practice,” says Chris Luke, Kayden’s dad. “Then he’ll go to school.”

I have a teenaged son. He lifts with the Tucson High baseball team at 6:30 a.m. three times a week. He’s out the door before I wake up.

But getting up at 2:30? That’s 47 minutes earlier than Jon Gruden famously rose when he was coaching in the NFL. That’s next-level dedication. What just-turned-18-year-old does that?

“I think he has something to prove ... and he’s willing to put in the work,” says De La Riva, who grew up across the street from Chris Luke in Catalina and owns Platinum Air Heating and Cooling, a job that occupies most of his day. “That’s why he does what he does.”

Luke is a bowling ball of a football player. He is built like his father, one of four Luke brothers who excelled at wrestling. (Kayden is also a standout wrestler. We’ll get to that in a bit.)

Listed at 5-11, 220 pounds, Kayden has tree-trunk legs, a barrel chest and broad shoulders. He even sports a neck roll, a la Arizona linebacker Justin Flowe.

Luke looks like a linebacker masquerading as a running back. He even concedes: “I’m more of a fullback.” But the kid can run.

Entering Thursday, Luke ranked 12th in the state with 625 rushing yards in four games. He’d have been higher if last week’s game at Amphitheater had been more competitive. Luke carried the ball only eight times for 83 yards and one touchdown. He’s averaging 12.0 yards per attempt for the season. He also leads the undefeated Dorados with 18 tackles.

Luke finished every one of those eight runs with intent. He repeatedly lowered his shoulder into smaller Amphi defenders trying desperately to slow him down.

Luke seems like a good kid — focused, hardworking, selfless. On the field, he’s a bad man.

“He’s just bulldozing people,” De La Riva says. Luke has been playing those two positions that are at the heart of it all, running back and middle linebacker, since he started playing tackle football with the 8U Oro Valley Dolphins. His off-field work began before that.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“I can remember way back when he was 5 years old, we’d go into his room and he’d be doing push-ups and sit-ups,” says Maggie Luke, Kayden’s mom. “He’s just always trying to do better.”

Maggie says Kayden is “in a constant competition with himself.” That helps explain those insanely early wakeup calls. And his visits to US Cryotherapy, where he willingly subjects himself to three-minute, 30-second plunges into an “an ice box that gets to negative-180 degrees” to help his body heal and recover.

“You go in there and you’re like, ‘Oh, man, this is gonna suck,’ ” Luke says. “When you come out you feel like a whole new person. It’s crazy.”

Luke is partway through what he hopes will be a complete and satisfying final season at CDO — the type of season he expected to have last year before it all went sideways.

Six CDO players were suspended for most of last season after it was discovered that they attended a party where alcohol was being consumed. Luke was one of them.

“It was hard,” his mother says. “It was taking all of his dreams and just shattering them. It was disheartening to watch as a mother, but one of those lessons that’s also so valuable. And the way Kayden came back from that was amazing.”

I asked CDO coach Dustin Peace whether that situation was a motivational factor this year. He said the Dorados were “leaving that way in the past.” He did acknowledge that it has made everyone “hungrier” — including and especially Luke.

I asked Kayden the same question.

“One hundred percent,” he says. “I felt I had something to prove, not to myself (but) because I felt that I let my community — especially my little brother and my mom and my dad, my whole family — down. So I had to prove more to them than me, because I know what I can do. I know how I can perform. But I really had to explain to them what I can do on the mat and out here on the field.”

Luke devoted himself to being the best wrestler he could be. He went 52-0 and won the state title at 215 pounds.

Luke’s dominance on the mat, his physicality on the football field and his prowess in the weight room — Kayden holds the CDO record in the power clean at 325 pounds — prompted Peace to dub him “the toughest young man in this city.”

“To be a 52-0 wrestler, to do what he’s been doing on the field on Friday nights, I don’t think we’ve seen it in a long time,” Peace says. “And doing it all the right way — humbly.”

Luke isn’t sure where he’ll play college ball just yet. He attended several camps over the summer, including Southern Utah, South Dakota State, UNLV, NAU, ASU and the U of A. He’s willing to play linebacker, running back, fullback — or all of the above.

Beyond football, per his father, Kayden has two potential careers in mind: Becoming a firefighter or running his own construction company.

Don’t bet against CDO’s two-way star doing both.