Dr. Nick Accardo, who coached wrestlers in the Franklin area for years, nominated the former Hanson standout for the Hall of Fame about five years ago.
While Accardo fully believes Luke is deserving of the honor, he hadn’t heard from the selection committee about the nomination since then, so he was pleasantly surprised when Luke called him earlier this month to say he’d been chosen for the next class to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in January. Former Loreauville coach Kirk Crochet and six others also are in the class.
  
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But as surprised as Accardo was, Luke himself was stunned to find out he’d been chosen for the honor. His former coach, it seems, had never told him he’d been nominated.
“I had no clue,” said Luke, a 1997 Hanson graduate who is an engineer for a small company in Baton Rouge. “I called and told (Accardo), and he told me he had nominated me. I was flattered. At the same time, it was kind of hard to accept. There are so many sports, and so many great athletes from Louisiana.
“Even in the sport of wrestling there’s some great competitors who have come out of Louisiana. I can think of one off the top of my head, Daniel Cormier.”
Cormier, a two-time Olympian from Northside High who has won the U.S. World Team Trials in his weight class (211 pounds) every year since 2003, traveled with Luke and Shelvin during the summer months as Accardo took them to meets around the country.
Accardo said that his wrestling club would buy a flag for every state they traveled to during their summer meets, and eventually that number got up to 33.
“I polled the (state’s wrestling) coaches a few years back, on who was the best wrestler at each wrestling school, and who was the best they’d ever seen,” said Accardo. “A lot of them had been around through the years. There were a lot of good wrestlers from Jesuit. Ninety-five percent of them said it was Patrick.
Shelvin also was outstanding, going undefeated and pinning every opponent he faced his junior season. Shelvin’s 43 consecutive wins is still among the top five high school marks in the country, said Accardo.
“Now, a lot of people recognize what Daniel Cormier has done in the Olympics and after high school, but in high school there’s no doubt Patrick had a better technique. I think he had 83 falls (in 127 career wins).”
After graduating high school, Luke attended college in Chattanooga, Tenn., for two years before finishing his degree work at LSU. That’s where he met his boss, Kevin Kelly, who was his faculty advisor in the LSU college of engineering.
Kelly, who’d played football at Duke, found out Luke had been a wrestler in high school, and challenged him.
“When big guys find out you wrestle, they want to wrestle you,” said Luke. “So we ended up wrestling, and I beat him. I joke that I wrestled for my job.”
The son of Joel and Jane Luke of Centerville, he began wrestling in sixth grade after finding out Hanson had a wrestling team.
“I was really excited (upon hearing there was a team),” he said.
“I thought, ‘I wrestle with my brother all the time.’”
He played other sports as well, but by the time he got to high school, he figured that wrestling was the sport for him because of his size. As an eighth grader, he wrestled with the varsity team, finishing sixth at the state meet and compiling a 10-6 record. He went 12-7 as a freshman, finishing as the state runner up.
Luke then won three consecutive state championships, at 103 pounds as a sophomore (going 26-2), 112 pounds as a junior (34-2) and 119 pounds as a senior (45-1), compiling a career record of 127-18 in five years. His 872 career team points he won is still a career record in Louisiana.
“In his last three years, of 32 tournaments he entered, he won 28,” said Accardo. “If you get to 20 that’s really a dominating performance through the years. The amazing thing is, of the others, one was a fourth-place finish as a sophomore, and the others were second-place finishes.”
Two wrestling coaches, Brother Melchior Polowy of Holy Cross, who started the sport in the Louisiana High School ranks, and Surachai “Sam” Harnsongkram, who coached Jesuit to 18 state championships, are in the state and national halls of fame, but Accardo believes Luke is the first to be elected to the state hall for his accomplishments as a wrestler.
And Accardo, who wrestled for Harnsongkram at Jesuit, couldn’t be prouder.
“He’s like a son to me,” said Accardo.
Luke said that Accardo was not the rah-rah type of coach, but he did set high standards.
“I took it seriously,” said Luke of his preferred sport. “We had so much mat time. We wrestled year-round. In a way, we had an advantage. We had someone like Doc who took us all over.”
Induction ceremonies will be Jan. 28 in Baton Rouge.
“I’m honored and super flattered,” said Luke.
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