‘They're not just a baseball player, they’re my brother’: An Inside Look into Living with a Host Family08/17/2025 11:30 AM
 By Emma Cho
In their 32 years of marriage, Judy and David Sweas have lived together with no more than one additional person — it has always just been the couple, their dog Layla, and their son Jack, who moved out three years ago. Now, their townhouse is home to an additional four men.
The men in question are four baseball players of the Windy City ThunderBolts: Zach Beadle, David Maberry, Trevin Reynolds, and, as of August 14, Nolan LaMere. For the past two years, the Sweases have been a host family for ThunderBolts players.
For Judy and David, one typical trip to Ozinga Field would change their lives forever. At one of the last home games of the 2023 season, an announcement over the PA speaker echoed across the stadium looking for families interested in housing baseball players. On the way home, David Sweas explored the idea with his wife. They were empty nesters with an extra guest bedroom and a spacious basement. Pretty soon, the Sweases had four more “sons.”
“They’re like the parents away from parents,” Reynolds described. The 2025 season is Reynolds’ second year living with the Sweases. “They make sure we have everything we need and we’re taken care of in any way.”
To the Sweases, this means doing the little things such as stocking each players’ fridge with protein shakes, Gatorade, juice and water, keeping them safe with a fire escape and tornado plan and supporting the Bolts at home games. The only requirements that the organization asks for are a private bedroom and an understanding of the players’ hectic schedule. But the Sweases have fully opened their home to give ThunderBolts players a welcoming and personal living space of their own. David affectionately calls his wife Judy a “caretaker extraordinaire” who gravitates towards helping people and making sure they are comfortable.
This hospitality is just as evident in the home of Jen Kotel. Kotel, who lives with her husband Jim and 11-year-old son Max, has welcomed ThunderBolts into her home since 2019. The Kotels, especially Max, see the players as more than just athletes — they are big brothers, role models, and lasting relationships. Every May, Max looks forward to meeting the new older brother who will join his family. This year, Carsen Plumadore was placed with the Kotels in his first year of professional baseball.
“Truly, [Plumadore is] family, not just a player,” Kotel said. “And we have a lot of players that we’ve had that are like that, where Max is like, ‘They're not just a baseball player, they’re my brother.”
Plumadore is no stranger to being the big brother — he has younger siblings of his own, and has previously stayed with host families that have three or four kids. A true member of the Kotel family, Plumadore has walked Max to a few soccer practices and watched him run the bases after every ThunderBolts home game. When Plumadore’s wife, a grade-school teacher, came into town, she spent time with the family and clicked with Max right away.
Through living with host families, players can find brotherhood in their own teammates, too. In addition to the 96 games in a season, some players are together before the first pitch is thrown and long after the lights shut off at Ozinga Field.
“I can’t get away from this guy,” Reynolds said, looking at Beadle. “This guy’s awful.”
“Yeah, it’d be nice to have five minutes to myself every once in a while,” Beadle joked back.
On top of being battery mates, the two of them do everything together.
“Typically when you live with a guy, [you] usually are getting on the same gym schedule, coming to the park [at] the same [time], which is fun,” Reynolds said. “It's like a brother. I've never had a brother, so it's kind of cool.”
Both the Kotels and Sweases recognize that baseball is these players’ full-time job. The Frontier League runs from late April through late September, including preseason and playoffs. The regular season schedule demands 48 games at home and 48 on the road — meaning that players are not at the house a majority of the time. When the Bolts are not traveling for away games, they are spending time in their rooms, hanging out together, going golfing, or heading to the field three hours before game time. Mondays are off days — or as David Sweas likes to call it, the official laundry day of the Frontier League.
Beadle, Plumadore and Reynolds insist that they have never run into any issues when living with a host family, but they all initially worried about overstepping and being disruptive.
“The only challenge would be really getting comfortable, treating it as your own house [just] like they ask you to and they tell you you can,” Beadle said. “Being a guest in someone’s home, you always try and be…” “Courteous,” Reynolds interjected. “Yeah, courteous and trying [to] stay out of the way and all that,” Beadle continued. “But they want you to do just the opposite. They want you to treat it as if you’ve been living there your entire life.”
With long road trips and bus rides, the players’ schedule can get them back to the house at late hours.
“I think the biggest challenge is — and I think Beadle and Maberry will agree with me — is trying to get into the house without letting Layla know,” Reynolds said, smiling. “Layla is a guard dog, and Dave will tell you — she’s the welcoming party. Whenever we get done late at night, or if it’s in the middle of the afternoon, she’s always there at the front door waiting for us.”
Ready to defend the house, or excited to see them?
“Oh, very excited,” Beadle explained. “Very excited. Wanting to play with us, [when] we get back from a road trip at three or four in the morning, she's like, ‘Oh, my gosh, the guys are home, let's play.’ We’re like, ‘No Layla, it’s time to go to sleep.’”
Night games in Crestwood tend to end around 9:30–10:30 pm, and if players grab a bite after the game, that may mean they get to the house by 11:00 pm or midnight. The families say this has never been a problem — David said the boys are always quiet when they come in at the end of the day. Besides the occasional laughter coming from the basement or when they come up to cook meals, one would not even notice that anyone is living there.
For the host families, making their home a comfortable space meant understanding how and when to talk about baseball with the players. Sweas loves to talk about the sport and has learned a lot of new things after conversations with the players — but, after a loss, he and his wife try to read the players’ body language and avoid talking about the game.
In Kotel’s experience, she has learned through various conversations over the years that mental health and mental toughness play a huge part in this level of baseball. For players who want to open up, she tries to create a safe space for them to talk.
“You’re in your head, you know that your job is not safe and at any given point, the next person that comes in could be the person that knocks you out of your position. And I think the players really put a lot of pressure on themselves about that,” Kotel said. “From talking to some of the kids — like it’s a man's sport, right? These kids are young and they don’t have an outlet because they’re trying to be tough and not show weakness.”
At the end of the day, Kotel sees that being a host family year after year means helping someone achieve their dream.
“A lot of these kids wouldn't be able to play or afford to be able to continue playing if they didn't stay with the host family. I kind of fell in love with the idea of helping someone kind of go after their dream,” Kotel said. “I have a son, and I would hope that if he plays the sport or something like that, that the same kind of thing or opportunity would be offered.”
Since becoming a host family two years ago, the Sweases have never looked back. And, they do not plan to.
“We would do this like forever, it’s really not an imposition,” Sweas said. “We will do this as long as we can still walk and think.” |
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