After multiple organ transplants, Matt LaBauve still competes

• By JOHN BOYD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 4, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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If Matt and Randy LaBauve’s high school buddies had picked which of the two brothers’ wall would one day be covered with international track and field medals, few would have picked against Randy, who was already lighting up the track at Brusly High.

More than 20 years after high school, however, it’s the weightlifter, Matt LaBauve, who is the proud owner of 42 medals … albeit with a little help from little brother.

Matt is a regular competitor in the Transplant Games, a sort of Olympics for athletes who have received organ donations. Matt LaBauve has received two pancreas transplants to go along with two kidney transplants, the most recent of which came from Randy LaBauve.

Whatever the reason, Matt LaBauve seems to have caught Randy LaBauve’s running bug.

In July, Matt LaBauve won bronze medals in the 200- and 400-meter runs at the U.S. Transplant Games in Pittsburgh. Later this week he competes in the Canadian games.

“Doing this for so long, you kind of develop a relationship with the other teams,” Matt LaBauve said. “You get to know them, know what kind of transplants they have. It kind of becomes a big family.”

Matt LaBauve’s first transplant was a kidney at age 23, a result of his lifelong battle with diabetes. Shortly after, he began competing in the transplant games.

“In ’99 we went to Budapest and it was interesting because they had the war going on,” Matt LaBauve said. “They sat us down and told us ‘Don’t wear your USA jackets outside the games.’ At the time, Hungary was allied with the opposite side of what the U.S. was supporting.”

Coming back from the Sidney, Australia, games in 1997, Matt LaBauve was struck with a severe case of flu which ravaged his transplanted kidney.

“He was in pretty dire need,” Randy LaBauve, 41, said. “He was on dialysis a bunch, he had no energy, and he was getting kind of desperate. I think he probably thought he probably might not make it if he got on a waiting list.”

Randy LaBauve stepped in to donate a kidney to his older brother.