INDIANAPOLIS
Most high school quarterbacks would swap their coziest pair of football shoes for a career in which they accounted for 76 touchdowns.
Roncalli senior Aidan Leffler is already there — with one season remaining.
About to begin his fourth year behind center, Leffler, a 6-foot-2½, 211-pounder who is already the Royals’ leader in career passing yardage (4,001 yards), looks forward to leading the defending Class 4A state champions.
Roncalli opens its season at home against longtime southside rival Southport next Friday.
“These have been some of the best years of my life,” said Leffler, whose varsity debut came during the third offensive series of a 21-13 home loss to Chatard as a 14-year-old ninth-grader (his birthday is Nov. 11) early in the 2018 season.
“The first year started a little rough, but we got better, and that’s carried on year after year.”
Former Roncalli head coach Scott Marsh believed Leffler was ready for the rigors of being pursued in the pocket by opposing linemen two and three years older than him.
And though that squad finished a un-Roncalli-like 3-7, he was correct.
Leffler’s trial by fire set the table for a regional appearance in 2019 and last season’s 13-1 march to the program’s 10th state title. Leffler ran for 44 yards and threw for five scores as the Royals crushed Hobart, 49-7, inside Lucas Oil Stadium.
Long gone is the 6-foot, 178-pound freshman who, prior to one of his first home games, was pulled aside by senior defensive tackle John Harris (now playing at Ball State) and given a message Leffler remembers to this day:
Have fun running onto the field to the cheers of the crowd, but once there, it’s all business.
Leffler didn’t have to be told twice. He completed 65 percent of his pass attempts last season, finishing with 26 touchdowns against five interceptions. In his career, he’s thrown for 44 scores and run for 32.
“It’s his work ethic,” second-year Royals coach John Rodenberg said. “Aidan definitely backs up what he’s all about. When we’re running sprints, he’s winning. He’s like Michael Jordan. He’s going to win those sprints. He’s not going to not make his time. And in the weight room, he’s pretty relentless.”
Leffler power cleans 285 pounds, is over 450 on the squat rack and tops out around 280 pounds on the bench press. He’s an outstanding student (4.2 grade-point average) as well, and he’s been offered to play football at Columbia University with Yale, Dartmouth and VMI among the others showing interest.
And though it might be cliché to say Leffler was born to be Roncalli’s quarterback, his gridiron linage is impressive, to say the least.
The paternal grandfather Aidan never knew, Indiana Football Hall of Famer Ken Leffler, graduated from Roncalli forerunner Sacred Heart in 1961, before playing at Butler and coaching at Scecina.
Ken Leffler lost his battle with cancer in June 1988, a little more than two years before his son Nate, a tough-nosed Scecina linebacker and Aidan’s father, helped ignite the Crusaders to the 1990 Class 2A state title.
Regardless of where Aidan Leffler attends college, he’s thinking of majoring in business and minoring in secondary education. The latter would leave the door ajar should he decide to become a football coach himself.
First, Leffler would like to help Roncalli become the first 4A repeat state champion since Cathedral, winners of three straight from 2010-12 — but he and his teammates aren’t getting ahead of themselves.
“Coach Rodenberg has been saying it’s not about repeating. It’s about seeing how good we can be,” Leffler said. “I think it’s important to take it one week at a time. You tend to look into the future, but we can’t do that. We have to work on getting better now.”
