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During a recent football game, it was announced by Tom Hart that Kansas State’s wide receiver, Landry Weber, would be joining the priesthood as soon as his college career has finished.
The news was shared in a tweet by Darren Rovell who pointed out that he’d “never heard that line watching a football game before.”
However, the news is not overly surprising when you learn a little more about Landry’s sporting and family background…
The 23-year-old comes from a family of athletes. His father, Stan, played football at Kansas State, and his big brother, Stanton, played for the Wildcats. His sister McKenzi got a volleyball scholarship to Kansas State at the same time Landry received his.
As a result the family have been highly invested in each other’s sports progress, and have encouraged each other over the years. What is especially beautiful to see is the way the siblings, in particular, have nothing but praise for each other — on and off the field.
A man to admire
“He’s incredibly insightful, smart, hardworking and he’s always doing the right thing and caring for people, and he’s just an incredible person,” Stanton shared with Kansas State’s The Collegian when talking about Landry.
This was echoed by the team’s head coach, Chris Klieman, who pointed out:
He does everything right off the field, in the community, in the classroom, and that rubs off on young players. Young players can see the hard work you put in and can be really rewarding on the field as well as off the field.”
But perhaps it is this cute anecdote by Landry’s sister, McKenzi, that gives us a little more insight into the future seminarian’s character:
So me and Landry both got on scholarship on the same day. I called him because I’m freaking out, I’m excited and I call him and he says, ‘McKenzi, that’s so cool! We have to go get ice cream,’ and he celebrated me for like fifteen minutes. It was awesome.”
However, McKenzi was totally oblivious to the fact that her brother had also received his scholarship, and when she asked him why he hadn’t told her, he simply said: “I didn’t want to take away your glory.”
Well now Landry will be preparing himself to give glory to God as he follows a new path, one that isn’t very common among young men these days. It’s a decision that will no doubt continue to be encouraged and supported by his family once more, since, as Stanton shared a few months ago, perhaps unaware of his brother’s future plans at that time:
“We always say God’s got a plan that’s always better than ours, so I’m very interested to see how the rest of it plays out for him.”
And today we celebrate...