Luke Novosel has had a life-long love for baseball and his passion for the game was the bond between him and his father Ron, to the point that he promised his paternal grandfather Frank that he would one day work for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
For Novosel, that dream started as a pitcher. A 6-foot-3 right-hander, he starred at Penn-Trafford, where he was team captain, then was a reliever at Pitt. Only when his playing days ended did his quest to make it to the major leagues truly begin.
Novosel, 34, is now the head athletic trainer for the Pirates who is described by senior director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk as a “rock star” — as much for his unique personal relationship skills as the rarity of his background as both an athletic trainer and physical therapist.
“I always told myself, ‘I’m going to get to the big leagues somehow, as a player or a staff member,’” Novosel said. “Whenever the door shut as a player, I was like, ‘All right, I need to invest everything I can into figuring out a way to create a pathway into professional baseball to live out my dream and see where it goes. I thought there was a chance it could be with the Pirates one day — that was always the dream — but I didn’t think it would happen as fast as it did. It’s something I’m beyond grateful for.”
For Novosel, it was a calculated course of action. He always had a backup plan. A labral tear and shoulder impingements from pitching required physical therapy and his mother Janis’ first cousin, Jamie DiAndreth, owns a practice in Greensburg. Luke learned from shadowing her the value of that environment.
“When you’re injured,” Novosel said, “there are people out there who can help you to feel better, support you, guide you and help to create a plan for you to help get you back onto the field.”
So, Novosel never left the field. He just kept diving deeper into recovery, taking a road less traveled. After earning a bachelor’s degree in exercise science at Pitt, he continued his education to become a doctor in physical therapy. But after a residency at Houston Methodist — where he worked with everyone from high school and Rice University athletes to Houston’s pro sports teams to ballerinas and rodeo cowboys — he realized his path to professional sports required more.
So, Novosel determined that he needed an additional advantage. He wanted to make himself more marketable (and invaluable) to pro sports teams, so he decided to complete a master of science degree in athletic training at Boston University.
That opened the door to an opportunity with the New York Mets, where he started in Port St. Lucie, Fla., as a minor league physical therapist and was promoted to minor league rehabilitation and reconditioning coordinator. He joined the Pirates as a major league physical therapist and assistant athletic trainer, but was elevated after one year when Rafael Freitas left for the Houston Astros and Tony Leo retired.
“We identified him as the future — but we didn’t know the future would be after one year,” Tomczyk said. “He’s passionate for baseball — he loves baseball — and he’s pretty physically fit himself. He loves training and he loves helping people. His humility, his curiosity, high IQ, how he has the ability to process things quickly, translate them into relatable messages and build relationships with staff, players and the front office — it’s a unique skill set, and he’s eager to learn.”
Long gone are the days where athletic trainers spend their days taping ankles. The negative stereotypes associated with players spending too much time in the training room have been replaced by the positive reinforcement of injury prevention.
Novosel arrives at least six hours before first pitch to prepare Pirates players for games with detailed plans to target deficits. He helps players work through aches and pains with heat treatments, creating blood flow to the tissue with stretching and functional movement patterns to create flexibility and get them from the training table to the field in what he calls a “continuum of how we work backwards to prepare these guys.”
“That’s my purpose for being here, because I love being a part of that process from the start, that initial level of disappointment,” Novosel said. “That’s something that every player feels when you have an injury. There’s a length of time down before you get back to the sport, and the psychological, mental and physical toll that takes on you to take a step back from doing what you want to do, the potential roster implications or your role on the team being potentially affected.
“Being able to create the support system during those initial phases and let player know, ‘We got you.’ We’ve got a team here’s that’s going to put a plan in place for you that’s going to constantly adapt the program and individualize it to you that’s going to get you back as quickly and safely as possible is what I take an immense amount of pride in.”
Novosel can claim a victory in third baseman Jared Triolo’s return to the Pirates this week from a partial tear in the patellar tendon in his right knee came four weeks and two days after he was injured rounding third base in the home opener, instead of the initial projection of six weeks. That timeline gives Novosel chills, he said, and serves as inspiration.
“Unfortunately, I do know him pretty well this year, but he did good,” Triolo said. “He was great to work with. He put me on the right track and kept me sane during my injury. He’s a good guy. He keeps it light in there. He knows what he’s talking about. That’s what you’re looking for in a head guy.”
Not only does Novosel set himself apart as an athletic trainer/physical therapist but by his background as a former college baseball player. His life has come full circle that way, as the majority of players he works with on a daily basis are pitchers. Not only does Novosel speak their language to talk shop — whether it’s pitch grips and the search to increase spin and velocity or studying the metrics of Trackman — but he has the ability to relate to them and understand the stresses they put on their bodies while recognizing that he never pitched at their level.
What Novosel offers is an area of expertise to take the content and context of those conversations and translate them to the training room, which Tomczyk said helps the Pirates “a tremendous amount.”
“His empathy, his curiosity, his understanding of what baseball players go through, from a training, prep and recovery perspective, he does a really nice job of balancing of what he went through, understanding what they need to go through and he blends all those characteristics and traits into being a really good active and passive listener,” Tomcyzk said. “His relationship skills are a separator, not to mention all the skills he has as a physical therapist and athletic trainer.”
Novosel was playing at Pitt when Pirates reliever Isaac Mattson made his recruiting visit there, and they talk regularly about their playing days for the Panthers and the crossover between common teammates.
“I probably bring it up more than he does,” Mattson said. “It’s cool to have that kind of connection, sharing stories about our time at Pitt. On the training side, he does a great job. He brings a lot of really good experience but also the experience of having been a player, he knows what some of us are going through. It’s cool to have that as an asset. He brings a lot of really positive things to us as a group and that experience of knowing how some guys feel and also having the schooling and the education to back it up is really cool. He’s a smart guy.”
A smart guy who could be found standing next to Pirates manager Don Kelly when Paul Skenes was on the mound pitching eight scoreless innings Wednesday night against the Arizona Diamondbacks, realizing the first part of a lifelong dream to work for his hometown team.
The second part is even more calculated. The athletic trainer/physical therapist in Novosel wants to do everything in his power to keep the Pirates healthy enough to maximize their talent and win in the margins. The baseball fan in him simply wants the Pirates to win.
“I challenge myself to bring my best version of myself to the field, to give 100% so I can be the best I can to the players,” Novosel said. “Ultimately, I want to be part of a winning team, a winning culture. I’ve only seen a few seasons of that since I’ve been here on this planet. I would love to see more, and it would be cool to actually be part of it. It’s all what drives my day to day and what I bring to the field.”