Baseball more than a game for the Schweigert family

As both a dad and a coach to children Brad, Kenzie and Andrew, Keith Schweigert’s top priority has always been to be present. Whether it’s been coaching travel and rec league teams, being the house that the kids and their friends could hang out at or, for the past five years, being a security guard at Bradley-Bourbonnais, where all of his kids graduated from, the 65-year-old Bourbonnais resident hasn’t just been present in the lives of his own kids, but their friends, as well.

“One of the things when I look back is he was just present at everything,” Brad, now the head baseball coach at Bradley-Bourbonnais, said. “Whether he was coaching Dynamo soccer, park district basketball, Little League or travel ball, he was always present and always there. It was just, ‘my dad’s here,’ and it gave me confidence.”

A coaching career that began when Brad’s T-ball team needed a dad to step up and volunteer, Keith coached both Brad and Andrew to Little League State titles, with Brad’s 2002 Bradley-Bourbonnais American team falling just two wins shy of the Little League World Series. He founded two travel organizations, the Bradley-Bourbonnais Bulldogs with Terry Granger and Bradley-Bourbonnais Braves with Jarrod Darling and Mike Barzantny, as well as the TNT Twisters travel softball program with Tom Outsen.

Keith’s Little League coaching career also included coaching with the Arthur brothers, Kevin and Lonnie, the former of whom was the Boilermakers’ baseball coach before Brad took over. In his second Little League stint, he shared a dugout with longtime local prep basketball coach Alex Renchen. A 1978 graduate of Eastridge, he played center field for Mike Vanhorn there and then for Steve Marks at Kankakee Community College.

All of the coaches he played for and coached with gave him something to help make him a better coach or dad, whether it was Granger’s defensive wizardry, Lonnie’s calm demeanor with kids or Kevin’s baseball IQ.

After being diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in late March, Keith has learned that perhaps the most important life tidbit he picked up from another coach came from Darling after the two spent the past eight years coaching the Boiler baseball Class of 2024 that included Andrew and Jarrod’s son, Cal.

“Through Jarrod and [I] coaching these teams for eight years, the best thing I learned from Jarrod was about how to create a family out of kids,” Keith said. “He really got this team to be a family … just trying to round them into great kids. I think we pretty much did it."

While the 2002 11- and 12-year-old team he led to a state title with Brad will always be remembered as one of the league’s best teams, it was the 2006 10-year-old co-state title Bradley-Bourbonnais and Hinsdale shared that was the most impactful to Keith, the Schweigert family and the B-B baseball community.

After watching her son, Gianni, and B-B earn a thrilling win in Moline to advance to the state championship game, Jamie Leech died in a single-car accident on Interstate 80 on her way home to work. With the odds against them – they already had a loss, while Hinsdale was unbeaten in the double-elimination tournament – there was no way B-B was going to be able to play through the grief, so they alerted league officials that they would forfeit.

But they weren’t allowed to. Instead, they learned that Hinsdale opted to split the championship with them.

“When we came to the field we weren’t gonna play that game,” Keith said, battling back tears. “We were too upset. It still gets me today. We told them we weren’t gonna play, we were just gonna forfeit. They came with their uniforms on, ready to go, and their coach came over and said, ‘You’re gonna be surprised by this, but we’re gonna share this.’”

While this came in the Little League setting, the team was essentially the same group of kids that started the Braves around the same time. The group was formed around loving, caring families, with on-field talent not even ranking on the priority list. And after that tragedy, Darling said they decided that would be the group that they’d keep through their sons’ childhoods.

“Once that happened, there weren’t gonna be any tryouts or anything, this was our team,” Darling said. “We bonded real quick, bonded with Hinsdale. That tragedy in our second year sort of set the tone for – I know people say it’s more than a game, but we learned that really quickly.”

That group played summer ball together through last year, and eight of them, including Andrew, helped the Boilers to a regional title and Sweet 16 appearance last year, with Keith passing the coaching torch for that group to Brad for their high school days.

“I really wanted that moment to happen and was hoping he’d stick around and still coach,” Keith said of Brad coaching Andrew. “I think Andrew felt at home, but also the team felt at home because I had coached them, and now he was coaching them.”

The families of that team have been a large foundation of the support the Schweigerts have seen in the past few months, but far from the only support. The Bradley-Bourbonnais baseball and softball teams both held Strike Out Cancer nights for him, as did the baseball teams at KCC and Heartland Community College, where Andrew just finished his freshmen year.

Dow Chemical, where he worked before retiring and joining the security team at Bradley-Bourbonnais, bought 100 shirts being sold by Darling and BSN Sports in support. The Bishop McNamara baseball team showed its support by wearing them in their pregame warmups against the Boilermakers this season, with the family of Fightin’ Irish pitcher Callaghan O’Connor, who Keith coached in Little League, supporting by purchasing scores of shirts, just some examples of the overwhelming community support.

“I just appreciate these kids and the community,” Keith said. “Some of them didn’t know me from Adam, but there were a lot of kids on the Mac team that grew up with me coaching them in Little League.”

As the Schweigerts celebrate Father’s Day this weekend, they’ll do so while Keith embarks on his fourth round of chemo. While the cancer battle they face is a new twist, so is not having a ballgame of some sort to be at. But what will remain the same this Father’s Day is the love that Keith and his wife, Laurie, and their kids have for one another.

“My biggest thing is I love my kids,” Keith said. “I’d do anything for them. Just having them around, they’ve always been there for Father’s Day.”