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James Leiter, a recent Warsaw Community High School graduate and Warsaw Tiger football and track athlete, spoke with the Times-Union earlier this week about not just one comeback, but two comebacks during his senior season: each leading to IHSAA State Finals hardware.
Leiter spent time talking about the journey beginning with injury and adversity in August 2023 during his junior football season to where he landed in the 2024-2025 scholastic athletic year.
Leiter was a starting offensive lineman on the 2024 IHSAA Class 5A State runner-up gridiron squad, then punctuated a season (one others would have thought was already complete with the football laurels) with third- and fourth-place finishes throwing the shot put and discus, respectively in the 2025 IHSAA track and field finals.
Leiter made his first state track and field finals in the 2023 season by throwing the shot put. It was his third and final throw that moved him into the final qualifying spot in the 2023 regional meet (hosted by Warsaw) as a sophomore.
He was also a sophomore athlete who had a meaningful amount of varsity football minutes that same school year, and the young man had sights on bigger and better things in his junior scholastic sport season.
The stage was set in Michigan City’s Ames Field where the Warsaw Tigers started what would be a conference title winning season with a very tight win over the Wolves.
The sweetness of that season-opening win in one of Northern Indiana’s toughest venues to win, however, was soured by an injury to Warsaw’s strongest lineman that season, Harrison Stofer, on the first offensive series.
The evening’s victory became even more bittersweet when Leiter was injured, still in the first half.
The junior, who had stepped in for Stofer in Warsaw’s offensive line unit within a total team unit – the Wild Hogs - recalled how the depth of the team’s o-line and his mindset gave him a strange feeling in the air that Friday, August 25, 2023.
“I worked hard over summer and it was like, O.K., I think I'll be able to start that game and the time came and I did not get the opportunity to do so,” Leiter noted. “I was already kind of in a bit of a drag. I don't know… it's weird to think about how I almost felt like something was off before that game, like getting off the bus… everything just felt weird.”
Most people moving toward any season-opening game or event get butterflies in their stomach. Leiter, who usually gets his butterflies flying in formation during pregame “think-through” and warm-up, talked further about how those butterflies were still all over the place that evening.
“I'll get really bad nerves before a game, and usually I enjoy it because it helps me understand that I'm ready,” Leiter recalled. “I wasn't getting those. I was getting more worried, and wasn’t thinking, ‘I'm ready to go out’ [but instead] it's more of, ‘Oh no, I need to go out’ (to replace Stofer), like a kind of panic.”
In-game action didn’t start well for Leiter, and he’s an honesty broker with self-awareness to boot. He was amazingly comfortable reflecting rationally on the evening’s unwelcome outcome.
“You know, the series leading up to my injury, it's probably some of the worst football I've played because I was freaking out,” Leiter reflected as he shook his head at the meal/interview. “I didn't feel ready enough, and then I remember it was rocket toss left (an option-offense play using the backside running back from the wing spot). I was pulling and (Michigan City D1-commit linebacker) Johari Branch slammed me like a like a truck, but my cleats stayed in the ground, and my entire body went up went the other way.”
Leiter broke his patella and tore every ligament except for his posterior cruciate ligament.
Suddenly, his chance to be one of many Warsaw Tiger football’s next men up quicky transitioned to a comeback season, but the comeback wasn’t going to be 2023.
“I figured you know it's alright I think I'll be out for like a few weeks,” recalling his initial speculation. “Then I [learned] - before I even got my MRI - I was out for four months. The coaching staff and I thought I had weeks, but it was months.”
Leiter’s energy is at a level where he likes to be kinetic, and even with the 47 minutes spent with the Times-Union, he was appreciative and grateful to tell his story, but this is a gentleman who’s a doer, not one to sit for a long time, nor watch from the sidelines.
He was headed straight to work following the interview in fact.
Leiter shifted his kinetic energy to intense film study, well-focused observation of every practice and game in the 2023 campaign.
The junior Wild Hog was interning in leadership one year sooner than he expected. He was pleasantly surprised with the upside during his time recovering from the injury and complete reconstruction of his knee.
“I learned was just to be there,” Leiter said. “It was hard enough to be there and just have to sit there and watch sometimes but you know there would be… our pregame practice days where I would go in and help the JV lineman know their plays and decision processes.
“I would help out with younger kids as much as I could. Obviously, it wasn't [as] enjoyable [as playing and practicing] but I tried to enjoy it as much as I could.”
Leiter continued discussing how he could have easily spent the rest of season on an after-school bus or car ride home, but he had a lot of skin in the game, and devotion to his coaches and teammates.
“The coaches told me they were happy that I was still coming to practice because I know there are some people that would have just stopped. I couldn't do that. I had so many friends from that [senior class] and this year for my class, so I didn't wanna leave [them] hanging.”
The experience can be credited to Leiter’s character, and the culture of finishing and being brothers in arms that accompanies being a Warsaw Tiger and especially, a Wild Hog.
Leiter talked about the Wild Hog Wing Night, an annual event at offensive coordinator, Coach Mike Curtis’s property, that not only gets the current group of Wild Hogs another opportunity for off-field fellowship, but the notable numbers of Wild Hog alumni who show up for more than just an abundance of food.
“[Wild Hog Wing Night has] always been super fun for me to go to because it's just cool to bond with the guys who came into the program quite a while before us,” Leiter said. “It’s a chance to hear their experiences, and it’s also fun just like be there with our like guys from like a year or two years ago and hear about stuff that we remember this freshman and sophomores. It’s also a super fun night for all of us to spend with the coaches too.”
There is more to how that unit within a unit was made of the stuff for another sort of comeback, and the stuff about the Wild Hogs could fill an entire Times-Union Sports section, but at this point in the discussion we shifted focus toward Leitier’s junior year in track and field.
Leiter entered the spring 2024 track and field campaign with some nervousness about how a new knee would affect some of the mechanics contributing to his sophomore season’s success (state meet appearance).
Again, a comeback in that junior scholastic sports year would not materialize. Leiter reached regionals, but did not land a berth to the state meet in 2024.
“[The 2024 track and field season] was rough for me,” Leiter remarked. “It was a lot of getting over the kind of mental ropes, and every meet felt like I was just getting worse and worse. I'm a very naturally competitive person, so seeing that happen and then seeing so many of my other teammates continue to succeed in their processes and get so much better… it's hard to sit there and not imagine all the things I could have been doing so to get better.”
Leiter did, however, experience some concavity in his junior year instead of a continuous downward curve. He actually wound up, instead, continually spiking upward into his senior season’s aforementioned success. He was able to glean some nuggets of wisdom and growth from his junior seasons in football and track.
“You know, looking back, it was really the best thing that could have happened for me because it taught me a lot about myself and what I needed to do,” Leiter said. “If anything fails, I think it taught me just a lot of how to trust the process and how to trust myself again.”
Leiter even reflected on how the summer between being a sophomore track athlete and a junior offensive linemen should have been the genesis of continuous improvement.
“I felt like my sophomore-to-junior summer, I could have worked harder,” he said. “I feel like I may have gotten a bit complacent that summer and the whole year was kind of a reflection of that. It taught me that I can't let that happen. I need to continue to work hard no matter how much success I earn.”
Any sport with 48 minutes of regulation play is open to some flies in the ointment. Leiter, along with what is probably Warsaw’s best offensive line unit in execution and mass in recent and distant memory, still struggled midseason with a 3-3 win-loss record, and two consecutive regular season losses to boot.
The latter was a distinction no other Bart Curtis Tiger squad experienced.
Who knew, after late September’s overtime loss to Plymouth, these Tigers would complete the 2024 campaign as one of the last two IHSAA Class 5A teams standing in the finals, the Saturday following Thanksgiving.
Leiter talked about his comeback from more of a group effort, again a trademark Wild Hog mindset, a seven-game winning streak, and a personal and team comeback story.
“There were kind of like a few things that kept going through my head,” Leiter said about the personal side of his senior season comeback. “One of the main things was after last year I kind of got into religion a bit more, and it really kind of helped me recover. One of my favorite verses that one of my coaches shared with me was Joshua 1:9 and it's, ‘Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’ I always use that as kind of a ‘trust the process’ mindset.”
Personal pride as well as pride among teammates and loved ones drove his comeback, too.
“I wanted to make the people I love proud,” he said. “That's a number one goal for me is to make them and myself proud.”
The key to a successful comeback from a group standpoint was Leiter and his teammates’ focus on continuing to focus on their own execution and preparation since a deep football playoff run is available for any Indiana high school football team who can put together s deep postseason run all the way to Lucas Oil Stadium over Thanksgiving weekend.
“(The bond) was really really tight,” Leiter recalled when reflecting on the attitude and approach he and his Tiger teammates took on their milestone run to the state finals. “We, every night before a game, would go eat dinner usually as seniors and even do that with other classes, but we made sure we did that every week. During warmups we were there hyping each other up because it wasn't only being just a team. We were close friends. We were pretty much brothers going out and playing a game and keeping each other protected. We got to do what we loved to do for 48 minutes of football, especially in some of those harder games like (sectional final win over) Concord, and (semistate win over) Merrillville. We stay[ed] calm playing together like some of us had over four years.”
Leiter made progression in leadership from the ultimate team sport (football) to an individual sport (thrower in track and field) look rather natural.
He and fellow classmates Kam Kauffman and Ben Booren put on throwers clinics in live competitions shattering invitational records before the trio contributed to Warsaw’s best IHSAA State Finals track and field meet in the program’s history.
Leiter and friends were a collective type of young men who will encourage you and wish you luck to make your best throw but also strive to throw at least one inch farther than you.
Locally, Leiter and Kauffman attended a softball tournament where Bailey Sleeth was playing. The Lady Tiger catcher was also a thrower on the girls’ track squad.
She sought counsel on mental and physical preparation for success in the shot put and discus throws, and some initial success she had followed time spent with Leiter. The tandem decided to dedicate each ensuing Sunday toward continuous improvement focusing on technique.
Sleeth’s dedication and hard work with Leiter (due to opportunities lost in the stacking of each sport’s practice time) made her the first Lady Tiger athlete to earn all-conference honors in two sports within a single season.
She’s a freshman playing a position (catcher) requiring upper-classmen level leadership.
Leiter said, “Bailey and I had some shared challenges. We’re extremely hard on ourselves, and we have to fight hard to avoid getting trapped into being down on ourselves. We both worry about the same things when we compete. This last track season was good for us because we could keep an eye on that for each other.”
Leiter is excited for the remaining three years of her athletic career, and this carries weight considering his frame of reference, and tribal knowledge of his athletic craft: the journey from his first state track and field berth in his sophomore season to a comeback senior year (2024-2025) in two sports. This is something most high school senior athletes never experience when it’s time to cross the stage receiving their diplomas in May or June.
Leiter will be a thrower for Grand Valley State University in Michigan. This past spring he wasted no time during the winter and has taken the true physical form of a college-level thrower.
