CRANBERRY TWP — You’d never know looking at Luke Ball now, as he dribbles a soccer ball around his opponents to score a goal, that he used have a hard time walking without getting tired. That was when his mother used to have to carry him many places.

You’d never know that this three-sport athlete used to have blue lips all the time because his heart wasn’t working well enough to pump oxygen through his body.

“It’s amazing,” said Stacie Ball, Luke’s mother, as she watched him on the field Friday on the last day of QuickSkills Soccer camp at North Park. “I still think every time watching him and get choked up.”

Luke, 13, of Cranberry, is one of the faces of a new marketing campaign to promote organ donation. He was the recipient of a heart transplant when he was 6 years old, Stacie Ball said.

He’s one of nine Pennsylvanians featured in a series of videos created by Donate Life Pennsylvania to increase public awareness for organ donation. Donate Life Pennsylvania is a collaborative initiative between the Center for Organ Recovery & Education and Gift of Life Donor Program.

Colleen Sullivan, communications director with Center for Organ Recovery & Education, said they wanted to put a face to organ donation through true stories to highlight the importance of registering to be an organ and tissue donor.

Nearly 8,000 people in the state are on the waiting list for an organ transplant, while only 46 percent of Pennsylvanians are registered as organ donors, Sullivan said.

“Luke’s here because of a gift,” Sullivan said.

Luke was born in May 2004 with a congenital heart defect that left one of his ventricles unformed, his mother said. Luke had his first open heart surgery at 4-weeks-old, another surgery at 11-months-old and one at 18 months.

When Luke was 2-years-old, doctors in Portland, Ore., where the family lived at the time, told his parents that their third son would eventually need to be put on an organ transplant list, Stacie Ball said. So John Ball, Luke’s father, started looking for new jobs in cities where they performed pediatric heart transplants.

In the summer of 2008, the family moved to Cranberry Township to be near Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. While his parents tried to give Luke a normal life, playing sports like his older brothers, he grew fatigued easily. Luke is the third of four sons in the Ball family.

“It was hard because I couldn’t keep up with my brothers and friends,” Luke said.

He began having seizures in 2009, Stacie Ball said, and in November 2010 he had a seizure so bad that Stacie had to resuscitate him. They went to Children’s Hospital where doctors told them it was time for Luke to be put on the transplant list.

The Ball family spent the holidays in the hospital that year. Finally at 4 a.m. on Dec. 29, Stacie Ball got the call they had been waiting for. Luke had been matched with a heart.

He went into surgery that afternoon and was out of the hospital by Jan. 10, Stacie Ball said.

Luke returned to kindergarten at St. Alphonsus School in Wexford on April 1 after his transplant. He signed up to play baseball that spring, Stacie Ball said. He also plays soccer and basketball, although basketball is probably his favorite sport, Luke said.

“He plays a sport every season,” his mother said. “We try not to keep him in a bubble. Luke does great”

Luke has had no rejection issues and other than taking a handful of pills each day, he lives the life of a normal 13-year-old now. He’ll go into seventh grade at St. Alphonsus School this coming school year.

Anyone, regardless of age or medical history can sign up to be an organ donor for free by going to donatelatepa.org/registration. Luke’s video can be viewed at.donatelifepa.org/humanside/.