Clover Goes to Notre Dame - a review by Lauren Dangel

Good morning and Happy Saturday! I hope you're ready for another barn burner tonight when the Notre Dame Fighting Irish head to Louisville, Kentucky, to play the Louisville Cardinals. I'm ready for it ... are you? 

As we countdown to kickoff, my peer and fellow OneFootDown contributor, Lauren Dangel, has graciously agreed to review my new children's book, Clover Goes to Notre Dame. 

Here's what she has to say! 

Clover Goes to Notre Dame - a review by Lauren Dangel

In Lisa Kelly’s Clover Goes to Notre Dame, a curious and playful French bulldog learns that the three leaves of her namesake remind us to keep faith, hope, and love in our hearts. However, she worries she may not be worthy of her name. As she starts to think about what it means to be a good clover, she accompanies her mom on a visit to the home of the Domers.

By the time she sees the Golden Dome and joins the football crowd, she’s so excited she doesn’t realize she’s broken St. Mary’s Lake’s “no swimming” rule until she’s made a big splash! Can you blame her, though? It’s Notre Dame!

Clover receives the full college tour, befriends a campus squirrel, and of course, snags some gear at the bookstore, a requirement for any college visit. As she begins to feel at home as a French bulldog among the Fighting Irish, she realizes honoring a legacy, and being a clover, doesn’t mean being perfect.

This Frenchie’s campus visit took me back to my own childhood. My Irish fandom began at the age of three, of course, with a story. I came to love the gold and blue when I saw the movie Rudy for the first time and heard that chant in the stands. Just as Daniel Ruettiger’s story inspired my love of Notre Dame, Clover’s story is sure to inspire that same love of the distinct Irish pageantry and tradition in young readers.

Every university has traditions, but few have stories like Notre Dame. Clover’s visit to her mom’s alma mater invites a new generation to fall in love with the stories and traditions of the Fighting Irish and inspires them to imagine their own places in them.

Every child wants to be part of something special. Clover’s journey across Notre Dame’s campus reminds young readers of the important roles they play even when they worry they may not fit in or live up to their names.

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Thank you, Lauren, for your book review of Clover Goes to Notre Dame.

Want to check it out for yourself? Head over to my website: www.EchoesFromNotreDameBooks.com. In addition to my new children's book, I have a Notre Dame football cookbook, and three non-fiction books about Notre Dame athletes, as well as children's book packages bundling the book with a Frenchie stuffed animal or a Kelly green children's hat. 

Cheers & GO IRISH! 

Echoes From Notre Dame: Betsy Bernard, Notre Dame’s First Female Varsity Diver

I think my years spent at Notre Dame were the most wonderful gift that my parents could have given me. 

Betsy (Shadley) Bernard grew up in the “city of seven hills,” Cincinnati, Ohio. While she never dreamt of being a woman who would break barriers in college, she most certainly did. Betsy was the first woman to dive competitively on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish (men’s) varsity swim team, and went on to become a two-time All American representing the University of Notre Dame. Before setting off to Notre Dame she worried if the high price tag of a Notre Dame education would be worth it, but it has definitely paid her back since graduation a hundredfold. How did Betsy Bernard end up attending the University of Notre Dame and diving with the men’s swim team? This is Betsy’s story.

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

“I did not set out with the goal of being a diver in college. Growing up I was an athlete. I liked sports, and I enjoyed the competition. As kids, my siblings and I all swam at the local swim club, and I started diving at the age of ten. I started on the trampoline in my parent’s back yard, learning how to do flips, which translated very easily into diving. When I got to high school, my all girls private catholic high school did not have a swim team, so I played volleyball and basketball. I also worked with a private diving coach because I had some potential. Eventually I told my parents this notion that I had some diving potential was silly. I never went to any meets, I was not getting any competitive experience, and I was not able to compare myself against others. I ended up shelving diving when I was a junior in high school.”

“I was not focused on playing a sport in college; I was focused on going to college and getting an education. I only applied to Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College. I started to apply to the University of Miami (of Ohio), which is near where I lived in Cincinnati, and very quickly changed my mind. My father had gone to Notre Dame, and my brother was a student there when I was applying, and so there was a significant pull, drawing me toward either attending Saint Mary’s or Notre Dame.”

“I had it in my mind that I would attend Saint Mary’s. While I was a decent student, I was not a great student (as you have to be today to get into Notre Dame). I had already paid my deposit and had picked out my dorm at Saint Mary’s when I received my acceptance letter to Notre Dame. I went to my dad, concerned about the difference in cost. ‘Notre Dame is a lot more expensive than Saint Mary’s. What if I get my Notre Dame degree and then decide I do not want to pursue a career; that I just want to be a mom?’ He replied, ‘I can think of nothing I’d rather invest in.’ I did end up pursuing a career before I got married and had kids, and I enjoyed it very much. At the time that I was heading off to college, there were so many more opportunities for women than there had ever been before. Previously, women had primarily studied to be teachers and nurses. Options are good, but they can confuse you as an 18-year-old girl.”

“When I arrived at Notre Dame, women had been there for about ten years. While women were not new to Notre Dame, women’s athletics definitely were, and there were very few female student-athletes. The first opportunity to play sports at Notre Dame that presented itself to me was volleyball, which happened to be the sport I liked the best. It was a club team and I went to the first practice with the intention of trying out. It was utter mayhem. The coach was clueless, and I could see it was going to be a big waste of my time. There was also a women’s basketball team, but it was much more organized than the volleyball team was, and I did not think I was good enough to make the team. The next opportunity to present itself to me was the swim team.”

“My brother Fritz was a senior and a diver on the team and he encouraged me to try out. They had two senior divers, but that was it, and they desperately needed more. Another freshman (guy) and I showed up for tryouts. I had not been actively diving in two years, but I went ahead and tried out and they took me because they really needed more divers. It was the men’s varsity swim team, and I was the only woman on the team, but they welcomed me with open arms. My parents thought it was cute that my brother and I were on the swim team together. It was great that they could come to Notre Dame and watch both of us compete at the same meet. While I technically was a Division I athlete, the NCAA did not even exist/apply to women’s sports. It was the AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women). Because there were not that many female students at Notre Dame, I was classified a ‘small college’ athlete. It was not a big deal at all to me, though, because it was something I liked doing.”

“The first year I was on the team the primary coach was a swim coach, and not a diving coach. Diving only takes up two events at a swim meet, one meter and three meter diving, and I guess it didn’t warrant its own coach. The swim coach, Dennis Stark, was a wonderful man, and a legend, but he did not know much about diving. He would say to me, ‘that was pretty good; maybe point your toes a bit more.’ I received more coaching from my fellow divers than I did from Coach Stark. In my first year on the team I did not perform all that well. I traveled to a meet or two, but I did not make the travel team. The next year my brother graduated and stayed at Notre Dame to go to law school, and they hired him on as the diving coach. That is when I really started to improve. It was a great opportunity for him. He was able to earn a little money doing something he loved while he was in law school. He was a great coach and my diving got significantly better under his instruction.”

“Being a student and an athlete at a school like Notre Dame was both time consuming and challenging. There is a significant change from being a student-athlete in high school, to doing it at the college level. In high school, your time is quite scripted, but once you get to college, you have way more free time on your hands. Being a student-athlete forced me to budget my time because I had more to balance than just my academics. We practiced in the evenings and I remember going to the library after practice and feeling so far behind because everyone else had already been there for two hours. As a student-athlete you just didn’t have the time to mess around, you had to be productive and not waste time.”

“As a woman at Notre Dame, the fact that there were more men on campus than women never seemed like a big deal to me. It just never dawned on me that it was not normal. The women who were already there made it very easy for us to come in. Yes, it was obvious that there were not as many women as there were men, but I always felt like I belonged. The only time I felt different was being the only woman on the swim team. When we traveled, many of the pools would only have two locker rooms. The home team would typically get the men’s locker room, and the away team would get the women’s locker room. Then there was me. Since I could not go in the locker room with the rest of my teammates, they would typically put me in an office where I could change clothes. My teammates, however, always made me feel like I was a part of the team. The other teams, however, probably did not like me too much, especially if I beat them. You knew their friends were going to give them all kinds of grief over getting beat by a girl. That was fun. I was lucky enough to have had a real college experience with a little good competition on the side. I worked hard, don’t get me wrong, but I also had a very normal college experience, which many college athletes don’t have today.”

Every college experience is filled with countless precious memories, but a few special ones usually stand out from the crowd as favorites. “Some of my favorite memories from competing on the swim team didn’t happen on the diving board, but rather on the bus. Traveling with the team on the bus and playing cards in the back with the guys, those are some of my favorite memories. We had a foursome that played spades, and we were always betting a keg. No one actually ever paid off those bets, but we sure had a lot of fun. We traveled with a priest so we always had a pre-meet Mass, or a quick Mass on the way home to get our Sunday obligation in (we timed it, we could get Mass done in 17 minutes!). The camaraderie and the friendships I made with my fellow teammates; that was truly the best part about being a student-athlete. You suffered together, you worked hard together, and you shared each other’s successes together. It was a wonderful thing.”

“At the end of my junior year they announced there would be a women’s varsity swim team the following year. As a senior, I wanted to stay with my teammates, and so I continued to compete with the men. I did not want to start on a new team my senior year, I wanted to finish where I started. I was still able to compete in the post season against other women, so it all worked out perfectly. Twice during my time competing at Notre Dame on the men’s swim team, I proceeded on to nationals and competed against women from other small colleges. My senior year, when I went on to nationals, I was able to compete with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish women’s team which was an anomaly, but it worked. I made All-American status twice: my junior and senior years. One year it was in Reno, Nevada, and the other year it was in Meadeville, Pennsylvania.”

When you head off to college, four years seems like such a long time, but without fail, it goes by in the blink of an eye. Before you know it, it is time to take what you have learned along your journey on the Notre Dame Value Stream, and set out to see where the wind blowing your sails will take you. “In order to be a successful student-athlete you must be disciplined in all aspects of your life, which translates very easily to life after college. It also requires you to have perseverance, goal setting, and just being tough. During my years at Notre Dame, I not only learned all of those skills, but I bolstered my faith as well. I think my years spent at Notre Dame were the most wonderful gift that my parents could have given me. Yes, the experience was tremendous, but in the years since, what I learned at Notre Dame has enhanced my life a hundredfold.”

“I graduated from Notre Dame in 1981 with a business degree, with a concentration in finance. In 1981, the country was in a recession/economic downturn, and it was difficult for me to get a job. I ended up landing a part-time job at IBM through a connection my parents had. I did well and the part-time opportunity turned into a full time job, and I worked there for 15 years. I enjoyed my time at IBM and I really grew up during my time there. I learned how to live in the world, and be successful in the workplace, and I gained a lot of confidence in those years. When my first child was born, I was lucky enough to be able to stay home and raise our children.”

“We are a Notre Dame family for sure. I have three children, all boys, who all went to Notre Dame. My husband was also on the swim team at Notre Dame (it is how we met … I married one of my teammates!) He was an accounting major at Notre Dame. He went on to get his law degree and is currently an attorney in Detroit, Michigan. We dated for nine years before we got married. I wanted to find my own way in the world first, and be independent before I got married. All of our sons played sports growing up, but none of them pursued anything at the varsity level in college. They all played intramural sports at Notre Dame, and were coaches for the women’s intramural teams. My youngest son, Mikey, won Bookstore Basketball twice.”

Depending on the sport, the relationship between coach and athlete can vary. In some sports, the coach is very involved in the day-to-day details and instructions, and in other sports, not so much. Betsy spoke with me about her relationship with her coach. “The coach of the Notre Dame swim team was very open minded to allow a woman to compete on the men’s team. Back in those days that just did not happen. At the same time, he did not always know what to do with me. Before the first swim meet he asked me, ‘do you need a bathing suit? Do you think if I gave you two of the guy’s suits it would work?’ Um, no! (laughs) He was kidding with me (sort of) … but not really. I traveled with the team a few times as a freshman, and they would put me in a room with my brother. As time went on we got a few more women on the team, but they did not travel too much, so most of the time I had my own hotel room. I am very thankful that he was so open-minded with me, and gave me the opportunity to compete with the men. It sure did make his life more complicated, but I’m very grateful that he was willing to work with me.”

Notre Dame does such a great job of teaching Her students to give back, and so I always ask my interviewees if they have any volunteer efforts they would like to share. “I do a lot of volunteer work. I cuddle babies in the NICU weekly. I deliver communion to the homebound. When our kids were growing up, we were involved in a program that hosted sick children from other parts of the world who needed medical care and did not have access to it. Over the years, we hosted four different children through a program called, ‘Healing the Children.’ (https://www.healingthechildren.org/) The children would stay at our house and receive treatment at the local hospital. Local doctors would in turn donate their time/care. It was an incredible experience, not only for my husband and me, but for our children as well. It was such a great thing to be able to show our children that everyone can make a difference. That we all can work for social justice and make an impact. You always get more than you give.”

I greatly appreciate Betsy for spending some time with me and talking about her experiences at Notre Dame. I also found two other stories about her that I would like to share as well. One from the Scholastic and one from the Observer.

From the April 15, 1993 edition of the Scholastic:

A New Tradition

In the fall of 1972, 325 women arrived on campus. At the time, there were no organized athletic activities for women. But, according to Notre Dame Sports Information director John Heisler, the university was open to implementing opportunities for women to compete in sports. . “The office is prepared to do all it can ‘to arrange athletic events for the girls. Thus the girls are encouraged to make their desires for various athletic programs known,” said interhall girls supervisor to the Scholastic in 1975.

Since it took several years before varsity teams were established, there were a few instances where women were allowed to compete with the varsity men’s team. When the men’s swimming team went to meets before there was a women’s varsity swimming team, females were allowed to compete at the meets against the opposing women’s squad. In 1977, Betsy Shadley, a Notre Dame diver, earned a monogram on the team.

According to The Dome, the first woman to earn four monograms was Maggie Lally. She was a member of the basketball team from 1977-1981. Jeanine Blatt and Betsy Shadley, both members of the swim team, were the first female Notre Dame All-Americans in 1979 and 1980. Molly Sullivan, a fencer, was the first and only four time Notre Dame female All-American in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988

And this snippet from the March 17, 1980 edition of Observer:

Four Achieve All –American Status

by Michael Ortman Sports Writer

MEADVILLE, Penn. — Notre Dame swimmers Jeanine Blatt, Lee Ann Brislawn and Kathy Latino and diver Betsy Shadley were honored as AIAW Division III All- Americans following their performances in the three-day-long National Swimming and Diving Championships held here this weekend. Since Notre Dame has no separate varsity team for women, the four had to compete with the men during the regular season. Times recorded against male competition qualified them for the 102-team national championships. Both Blatt and Shadley earned All-America honors last year in a similar small college championship in Reno, Nevada.

Shadley put on an impressive diving display, earning her laurels from the 1-meter board. Her 342.81 points placed her third in a field of 55 divers. In the 3-meter competition, Shadley failed to qualify for the finals by just six-tenths of a point and finished in 13th place. “I was a little calmer than last year,” admitted the Cincinnati native, “but I was still really nervous. I perform a little better under pressure, and I think that was a little plus.”

“I was incredibly pleased with the girls’ performance,” said Irish swimming coach Dennis Stark. “I really think they represented women’s swimming at Notre Dame in grand fashion.”

Cheers & GO IRISH!

Echoes From Notre Dame: Notre Dame Olympic Runner, Selim Nurudeen

Sports taught us all that you are not the top dog, and most of the time you won’t be the top dog...

For this week’s Throwback Thursday post, I have an interview with former Notre Dame Fighting Irish track and field runner, Selim Nurudeen (Class of 2005). 

LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 07: Selim Nurudeen of Nigeria, Gregory Sedoc of Netherlands and Andrew Turner of Great Britain compete in the Men’s 110m Hurdles Round 1 Heats on Day 11 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on August 7, 2012 in London, England.

 Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Notre Dame Olympic Runner Selim Nurudeen

Most of our lives are filled with challenges, adventures, and adversity. Selim Nurudeen’s life has been no different. The son of an anesthesiologist, his family moved around a lot as his father journeyed through his medical training, residency, and eventually a permanent job. Growing up in a house that moves you around teaches you many great skills including being able to adapt to new surroundings, and to make new friends. Skills that are useful throughout our lives as we continue to travel along our own personal journeys. Selim headed off to Notre Dame thinking he would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, but life has a way of taking us in directions that we never would have seen. Where did Selim’s path take him, you ask. This is Selim Nurudeen’s story.

“I moved around a lot growing up as a result of my dad’s career in medicine. We started out in Atlanta (for 10 years), then moved to North Carolina for his residency (for 4 years), and then we moved to Texas which is where I went to high school. I did not start running track until I was 13-years-old. I started running by racing with my older sister (which we did a lot) and she used to beat me all the time. My main love, however, was basketball. I played basketball more than anything else and track was my backup sport. It was something I did when it was not basketball season. I played basketball and ran track in high school. When it came time to start looking at colleges I was looking at Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Arkansas and Duke. My top two picks were Georgia Tech and Notre Dame because I wanted a school that had a good balance between sports and academics. Arkansas actually had one of the best track programs in the country, and but in hindsight I lucked out as Arkansas had a complete coaching change the next year, which can definitely be precarious for athletes that are already there. Arkansas recruited me the hardest, with Notre Dame and Georgia Tech next in line.”

“The visit to Notre Dame absolutely won me over. I connected with both the students and the environment. I had the most fun during my visit to Georgia Tech, but something about Notre Dame connected with me on multiple levels. During my visit, I stayed with a triple jumper, Quill Redwine. He ended up being a mentor to me and we are great friends to this day. He was an outstanding host. He did not sugar coat what Notre Dame was or what kind of experience I was going to have there, and that showed true to my time at ND. I was not big on the Greek life thing. I knew what I was going to college for and that was to get an education, and it was a good environment for me to do that. Of course, I enjoyed going to a party, but I had goals that I wanted to attain at Notre Dame. My parents saw the 97% graduation rate at Notre Dame and they were sold.”

The Notre Dame Years

Of course, when you get to college, there is a transition from doing academics and sports on a high school level, to now performing and competing on a college level. Selim talked about what this transition was like for him. “I think the biggest transition for me was being able to find my balance. It was a challenge for me to find the balance between keeping up with my schoolwork and running track at the college level. Classes were more challenging, there was more travel to the different meets, the people you were running against were so much more talented, and there was a lot more anticipation. Coming into college I came really loaded with the notion that I came here to do this, this and that. There was not much time for me to adjust. ‘I’m here to run and study and get all of this done.’ All of the responsibilities in the classroom were a bigger challenge for me than the competition on the track. I was at Notre Dame to work, and my fate was completely in my hands. Everything I did, or did not do was all up to me; if I wanted to be great, it was up to me to do it. There was so much in your own hands that was completely up to you. I think that athletes make the transition from high school to college so much quicker because they have to. Another big transition for me was the pressure. There was much more pressure on you in college than there ever was running in high school. In college, you have to hit a certain time to even get invited to a meet. I put a lot of pressure on myself, maybe too much pressure. That was a huge adjustment for me, to compete on that big of a stage right out of the gate.”

Many of us set off to college knowing exactly what we want to do when we grow up. Some of us completely and without pause follow through with those goals. And the rest of us (myself included), find out that what we thought we wanted to do is not exactly as we had expected, and set out to chart a new path. Here is what happened to Selim.

“My dad was an anesthesiologist, and that was kind of the family trade, everyone went into medicine. I was pre-med at Notre Dame for 2 1/2 years and I was miserable. My grades were fine, I was getting As and Bs, but it was awful. My classes were like warfare, and track was the easy part of my life because school was so difficult. I was at a point where I was depressed. I did not want to go to medical school. I just wanted to run. What if I wanted to go to the Olympics? How could I possibly balance training for that and medical school? And then I heard my dad talk about the passion he had for medicine and that shined a light on the passion I did not have for medicine.”

“I did, however, have a passion of my own. I had been drawing all my life. A triple jumper on the Notre Dame Track team, Scott Kelly, was drawing as we were traveling on the team bus one day, and I asked him what he was working on. He explained to me that he was an Industrial Design major and was designing shoes for a project in one of his classes. In his classes, they were designing products from ideation through to the point where they executed with engineers to get the products designed. Right there I thought, ‘where do I sign up?!’ I set up a meeting with one of the professors who was in charge of the degree program and showed him some of my work, and he told me I had a natural talent for design.”

“I talked to my parents about the possibility of my switching majors to Industrial Design and they were very skeptical. The professor I spoke with reached out to my parents and reassured them, explaining that I was in very good hands in this program. At that point in my education I had already completed all of my pre-med requirements, and so in my junior year I switched majors, overloaded my schedule with design classes, and never looked back. There was a national housewares design competition, and the Industrial Design program at ND was not that big compared to some of the programs at other schools, but at this competition, I ended up finishing in second place. It completely blew my mind, and at the same time, it gave me the justification to prove that I was where I was supposed to be. At that moment my parents knew I was on the right path.”

Every athlete has a unique relationship with their coach: some are thick as thieves, and some are like oil and water. Selim talked to me about his relationship with his track coach at Notre Dame and how he helped him develop both on and off the track.

“I drove him crazy, all the time. My track coach was Coach John Millar, and he was the men and women’s sprint coach. And yes, I drove him crazy. I did not let him coach me very much. I got so upset with myself, and put so much pressure on myself, that he as my coach would have to run interference between me and myself. ‘You’re fine!’ he would say. We had a very strong relationship. It was cool because he was able to keep it simple for me, as he knew that I was going to overthink everything. He gave me the knowledge that I needed. I remember he would tell me, ‘when you’re hurdling, all you have to do is raise your arm higher when you’re going over the hurdle.’ He was able to simplify his instructions to me by giving it to me in certain cues. I was also able to apply that to my homework. I was always making everything more complicated that they needed to be. I started to look at it like this: Figure out the one thing that you need to do first, and once you figure that out, often times it takes care of everything else. A lot of this is muscle memory, so all you have to do is find the one thing that you need to do that sets precedence over everything else. Once I figured that process out, it helped me in both track and field and in my academics. I used to treat track as if it were life and death. No one was making it that way for me; I was doing it to myself.”

“After I had taken my first general chemistry test, I called my mom crying and told her I was sure I had failed it. Then, with the curve (which at the time I had no idea what a curve even was), I ended up with a B! It is funny, I loved taking organic chemistry, and I totally got it, but I hated taking general chemistry. And I still don’t understand general chemistry to this day!” (laughs) When I was in school, I was so focused on getting good grades and getting certain times on the track. Now, when I look back on it, college is more about what you learned when you came away from those things, and not what grades you earned. It is funny, I do not remember many of the times I ran, but the lessons I learned from the different situations I was in, that is what I remember. And that’s what lead me to where I am today.”

Here it is the question that my subjects either love or hate. What was your favorite sports memory from your time at Notre Dame?

“My favorite track and field moment at Notre Dame was at an indoor conference during my senior year. I had won the year before, and my time broke the meet record in the 60-meter hurdles. After that performance, everyone expected me to win again my senior year. I had a rival who ran for Rutgers. He was not a great hurdler, but he lived to run against me. He would always run his fastest when he ran against me, and then he would never run that fast ever again. I just knew my senior year that he was going to bring it. I ran decently in the prelims. We were at this terrible track in Syracuse that was falling apart. When we ran the finals, my block slipped, and as a result, my rival ended up beating me. However, they ended up calling the race back, and had us run it again. People were so mad. They were staring dagger looks at me. They had us run the 60-meter hurdles again after the 60-meter dash, which was also an event I ran.”

“It actually worked out for me because they could not use the excuse that everyone else had to run a race while I had to rest, because I had to run the 60-meter dash before we re-ran the 60-meter hurdles. I ran the in the finals of the 60-meter dash and finished in fourth place, and then they re-ran the finals of the 60-meter hurdles. I must have been mad as a result of the dagger looks people were giving me over my slipped block because I not only broke my own meet record, it was also the second fastest 60-meter hurdle time in the whole country! I was so hyped after that race. That is hands down my best track and field memory from my time at Notre Dame. The best part was that no one could say anything to me because I re-ran the finals of the 60-meter hurdles after running the finals of the 60-meter dash and I still came out on top.”

Professional Career

“Upon graduation it was time for me to figure out what I was going to do in life. I wanted to continue running. I also wanted to continue my education and get my master’s degree. So I headed to Arizona State University to work on my Master’s in Instructional Design, and I trained with a running coach out there. I did not know what was going to happen with my running. The coach I met out in Arizona had coached for West Virginia University, and she was Nigerian just like me. She was trying to recruit another girl on my team, who was also Nigerian, to run for the Nigerian national team. Once I found this out I told my teammate to tell the coach that I was interested, too. ‘I have a Muslim name, so you probably didn’t know I was Nigerian.’ And yes, she was surprised. So the next year I was at ASU, working on my thesis, and training. In January, I had only run one indoor meet when I got a call saying that they were going to fly me to Nigeria in two weeks for the trials with the goal being to compete in the Commonwealth Games, which were going to be in Melbourne, Australia in April. Get ready for it! All I could think was, ‘Oh shoot!’ Yes, that is how my professional running career began. There was no planning; it was an operation of faith.”

“I finished my master’s degree in 2008, and was training the whole time I was in school. I was gearing up for the Olympics in Beijing, (running the 110-meter high hurdles), where I was a semifinalist. I was hurt that whole year leading up to Beijing. I had a stress fracture, and was getting my butt whooped from taking time off to deal with the fracture. It was not until the last couple of meets in Europe when something clicked with me and I was able to apply it to my running. Thankfully, I ran really well in the prelims. So well that I set a personal record.”

“Once I had completed my masters, I had a friend who was training in Florida and was making great strides in terms of her improvements, and so she connected me with her coach. I then moved to Orlando to continue my training there with him. It was interesting, and I learned a lot from his coaching. It was under his instruction that I ran in the London Olympics. Now, I am still here in Florida … as it is where I met my future wife. She was in a training group that worked on the other side of the track!”

LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 08: Andrew Turner of Great Britain and Selim Nurudeen of Nigeria compete in the Men’s 110m Hurdles Semifinal on Day 12 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on August 8, 2012 in London, England.

 Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

“Running in the Olympics was a really fun experience, but I went into the Olympics like a man on a mission. I ran a personal record in the prelims of both of the Olympics in which I competed. I did not have time to be dazzled. I had work to do. Running at Nationals in college and running in the Olympics seemed the same to me. Yes, one stadium was bigger, but the pressure was the same for me. The one thing that was different at the Olympics was the Olympic Village; that was amazing. It is its own living space. Everything thing you could possibly need is there. It was the perfect environment for you to compete at your athletic peak. Being at the opening ceremonies was a fantastic experience as well. Beijing was so incredible; I just cannot put it into words. Getting to meet athletes from different countries, and NBA players. Getting to go the Great Wall when I was finished competing. The whole experience was priceless. I was really able to enjoy myself once my race was done. It was truly a once in a lifetime experience.”

Life After Sports

“While I was getting my master’s degree, I also got into graphic design, because I had those skills from my undergraduate degree. This allowed me to do some freelance work and make some money while I trained for the Olympics. I made my roommate a flyer (he was a trainer at a gym), and then all of his coworkers starting coming to me because they needed flyers. Then I started branching out and made some logos, and brochures, and then people asked me if I made websites. What did I do? I taught myself how to code and then I started making websites, and it just ballooned from there. The work-life balance I learned at Notre Dame helped me to balance my training and my freelance work. It was great because I did not have to look for a job. I could just come home after training and work. I set my own hours, I had a steady flow of work, and I got to work from home. I didn’t do a lot of marketing to promote my work, either; it all came through word of mouth.”

“Today I have my own company which does graphic and web design … that very same company that I started while I was training. I am publishing a graphic novel that I have been working on for a while. I was able to turn my artistic background into a career I love. From the design competition I was in at Notre Dame I was able to patent the product I created. Someday I need to figure out how to move that forward. Having the opportunity to create something that can potentially affect the world was an incredible experience. What did I create you ask? A broom/vacuum device which is as effective as a broom but changes the dustpan step to make it more efficient in the dirt/dust remove process. During the development process, I got to work with an engineer to execute the technical part of it. If only I could tell the me back then what I know now! I also know why so many great products never see the light of day. It is more than just designing and developing a product, there is a whole another level: marketing, getting it built, putting it in front of the right people. It is a whole process. I definitely did not get it then, but the process was invaluable to me.”

I asked Selim if he could share some words of advice for young student-athletes, and here is the wisdom he shared.

“My advice would be to enjoy it, as it goes very fast, but to also learn the lessons along the way. The lessons you learn in sports will influence you for the rest of your life, and will continue to appear as you live your life. In addition, it is not just the lessons you will learn in sports, but how you handle yourself during those life experiences, that you will be able to fall back and use later on as you journey through your life. Learn the lessons from the sport you are in, and grow from those experiences. You will be able to use them in all aspects of your life. Do not always take life so seriously. All of those seemingly difficult things, they are just a footnote in your life. I was at Notre Dame for four years. When I look back at the last four years of my life and how quickly they went by, that is exactly the same amount of time that I spent at Notre Dame. Enjoy every moment of your sports career, because they go by so fast. Something bad might happen and you might think it is literally the end of the world, but in reality, it is just a small blip in the story of your life. Enjoy it, don’t take it so seriously, and make the best of each moment.”

I just cannot end an interview without asking for a funny story …

“Well, we played in Notre Dame’s Bookstore Basketball tournament one year even though we were not supposed to have a team at all. We had a ‘secret team.’ Most of us had played basketball in high school, and so we were not too bad. We made it to the Sweet 16 two years in a row (my sophomore and junior years), but we were not able to play because we had relays at the same time. My junior year, when we got to the Sweet 16 (our team name that year was ‘The Bad Guys From Space Jam’), someone called our coach and said, ‘I do not think it is fair that there is a bookstore basketball team with track guys on it.’ (Oops.) We went to practice that day and our coach says, ‘will The Bad Guys from Space Jam please stand up.’ He then proceeded to tell us that if we wanted to run at relays we needed to drop out of the tournament. There were so many creative teams playing in the bookstore basketball tournament. It was so fun to watch, even if we could not participate. There was a team called Condiments, and each guy was covered in his respective condiment (mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise). No one wanted to play them because they were so gross!” (laughs)

Selim and his wife currently live in Orlando, Florida, and have a little girl. All of the siblings in his family were athletes. His two sisters went to Texas A&M and both ran track, and his brother went to Baylor where he played football. “Sports taught us all that you are not the top dog, and most of the time you won’t be the top dog, so you better have a humble spirit and the determination to keep working toward the next level. These lessons are easy to translate into your professional career and the rest of your life!”

Cheers & GO IRISH!

Echoes From Notre Dame: Preparation in Practice Leads to Success on Game Day

When I interview former football players, of course the stories of the big game, or the big win, are of great interest. But the daily activities, such as practice, can also contain interesting stories as well. Today I’ll share with you two Notre Dame Fighting Irish football practice stories. One from former Notre Dame outside linebacker Rich Thomann (who played under Ara Parseghian), and one from former Notre Dame defensive walk-on Stephen Pope (who played under Lou Holtz).

Rich shared this story with me ...

“On one hot summer day in pre-season 1970, the defense practiced against the scouts on one field, and the offense practiced against the scouts on another field that backed up to the first one, with Ara’s coaching tower in between so that he had an end zone look at both fields. He mostly watched the offense, but on one play we (the defense) were going live tackling, and I failed to come up and make the tackle on a screen pass. I knew I should have made the play and I quickly got myself back to our defensive huddle hoping Ara was looking the other way. But when I looked up ... he had smoke coming out of his ears as he climbed down off the tower. There I was, just hoping he’d walk the other way, but he didn’t.”

“We all froze in the huddle. He walked over and stood directly behind me and I could feel his heated breath exhaling down my neck. I was shaking! He whispered in my ear that the same play would go again and this time I was going to make the tackle or his size nine shoe would fit nicely between the cheeks of my rear end, and as I looked down his leg was cocked up ready to deliver! Captain Tim Kelly broke the huddle, and I’m positive that every guy in that huddle was glad it wasn’t them, and we ran that play again. This time I defeated several blocks and made the tackle like I should have done the first time and returned to the huddle where Coach was waiting. All he said was, ‘That’s more like it.’”

“The cool thing was no-one overheard what he said to me, which meant he didn’t embarrass me in front of the entire team, and then he promptly climbed back up the tower. I remembered that lesson, and it was seared in my memory. In that season’s last game vs. USC (in the LA Coliseum) their All-American Offensive Lineman, Ron Yary (I believe), had pulled out and detached from the rest of the offensive line in the flat area on my side, with the Southern Cal running back receiving the screen pass. It was do or die, on National TV, and I’m outweighed by 60 pounds, and yet somehow I have to make the tackle. It was as if Ara’s shoe was ready to deliver if I didn’t! So I charged at the huge 6’5” 260 pound lineman full speed, (I weighed about 200 soaking wet), and cut his legs right out from under him. Somehow, because it was raining and the footing was poor, the running back fell over him. Years later listening to a replay of the game someone sent me, the color guy was Bud Wilkinson, (the famed Oklahoma Coach), and he said that my play was the finest he’d seen a linebacker make all year. If he only knew all I was a trying to do was avoid getting my butt kicked by Ara!”

Former Notre Dame football player, Stephen Pope, talks about what it was like to be a walk-on playing for Coach Holtz. (Excerpt taken from Chapter 3 of “Triumphs From Notre Dame.”)

“During spring ball my sophomore year, we were already looking ahead to fall ball and preparing for the first game of the season. As a defensive player on the scout team, we were tasked with running a particular team’s offense, and on this particular day we were running Northwestern’s defense, as they were the first game of the season. This particular practice was a half speed practice. Basically, you were walking through the plays on the field. After walking through a couple of plays, we moved to running plays at full speed with the caveat that nobody hits the ground. Well f-ck, man. I know exactly what they’re going to run. And to be honest, the guys on offense were getting kind of lazy, so I come in and hit the running back. I don’t knock him down, just hit him squarely, but apparently that was too much. Then I hear the coaches yell, ‘Pope, what are you doing?! That’s not your assignment. Run the defense g-d d-mnit.’ And I reply, ‘But coach, he did such and such, and so that’s why I did this.’ It was the first time I had ever talked back to a coach. Coach Holtz looks directly at me and says, ‘Run the g-d d-mn defense or get out of here.’ Yep, that was the gist of it. Then Skip Holtz comes over and starts berating the running back, and after that goes back over to speak with Coach Holtz. At least someone recognized that I wasn’t being a jerk, I was merely trying to help the offense get better.”

A team is made up of players with not only diverse talent levels, but diverse personalities as well. This can be good, as it helps each player to grow based on their teammates pushing them on; it can be challenging as well. The Notre Dame Value Stream knows exactly what to do to take this diversity and turn it into something incredible.

“Ricky Watters, Tony Brooks, Andre Jones and Todd Lyght were the rock stars of Notre Dame when I came in as a freshman. They were seniors that year, and had just won the national championship the year before. I was lined up across from Ricky my freshman year, and I was pretty uneducated when it came to Notre Dame Football. Yes, they had won the national title the year before, but I didn’t follow Notre Dame Football. They weren’t my squad, I followed west coast teams. As a result of my not knowing who the ‘star players’ were, Ricky thought I had disrespected him. And so as a result of him thinking I had disrespected him, in my mind it was his goal every practice to knock me out. I thought he had this personal vendetta against me.”

“This one day at practice, we’re having this scout team moment where coach is getting on us. He is screaming at the defense to run the play because he’s trying to get his rock stars to actually practice. Meanwhile, Ricky Watters and Todd Lyght and Andre Jones are telling us, ‘we’re seniors. We won a national championship. We’re not getting hurt, we’re going pro. We are not going to practice hard.’ And they let it be known. And Coach Holtz says to them, ‘yeah, you won in ’88, but guess what? This isn’t ’88, and if you actually practice, you have the chance to win it again.’ So I am lined up across from Ricky. It’s a full speed; nobody goes to the ground practice. I’m playing free safety. When we run the play I wrap Ricky up, and he f-cking throws an elbow to my chin and knocks me down, and runs all the way down the field. I’m thinking to myself, ‘what the f-ck was that? I’m being the dude, and coming in, and helping you out.’ We’re doing repetition drills, and so we line back up to run it again, and what do I do? I don’t just wrap him up or knock him down, but I f-cking rock him, and drive him back six yards, and now he’s hot. He immediately comes after me, ‘who the f-ck are you? How dare you?’ and I just say, ‘dude, whatever,’ and walk away. I knew I was a good athlete, and a smart guy; I also knew I could play at Notre Dame if given the chance. As a walk-on, you had to prove yourself every day.”

I love hearing the every day stories of how coaches like Parseghian and Holtz ran their practices, and prepared their players for what they would see on game day. Rarely would there be a situation on game day that they hadn’t seen in practice, and I believe this level of preparation made the teams that played under these two men so successful.

Cheers & GO IRISH!

Echoes From Notre Dame: Former Notre Dame Running Back, Lee Becton

 If I can get the ball to be part of the body, it won’t let go. I pride myself on not fumbling.

Even when I’m not actively doing research for a project, I do enjoy poking around in Notre Dame Archives. There are so many great memories recorded there from my four years at Notre Dame, and of course the many years before and since. I can thank my dad for my love of history, both Notre Dame history, and the history of this country. One of my favorite classes at Notre Dame was a class on the Civil War, in which we read the book Killer Angels (which, if you haven’t read it, you should. It’s a great read!) ... but I digress. In my poking around in ND Archives this week, I stumbled across a piece on former Notre Dame Fighting Irish running back, Lee Becton, (from the Scholastic Magazine 1994 Football Review) that I thought I would share excerpts from this week for my Throwback Thursday. Lee is not only a classmate of mine, but a good friend to this day, so it was fun to read this story about Lee Becton.

But before I share that story, I also found this gem in SI’s vault. “It was easy to spot Lee Becton on the Notre Dame campus during his freshman and sophomore years. He was the guy who always carried a football with him, even when he went to class, because he was so concerned about fumbling. “I hold it and play with it and get comfortable with it,” Becton explained. “If I can get the ball to be part of the body, it won’t let go. I pride myself on not fumbling.” (by William F. Reed)

Here’s more on Lee Becton, from the story in Scholastic Magazine, Carried Away: Overcoming injuries, the fabulous number 4 rampaged through his senior season. (By Mark Mitchell)

“I was just lying there on the field. I couldn’t move.” Lee Becton stares into the distance as he remembers the day he suffered what could have been a season ending injury. “It scared me a Iot as I lay there with the trainers all around me because I had no idea of the severity of the injury. I just thought that could be the last day I ever played football.” . Fortunately for the Irish captain, his groin injury did heal, though slowly. He was able to come back to the team late in the season and performed up to his own extraordinary standards at the USC game. ‘’That wasn’t the greatest result as far as games go, but that was the greatest game for me because I really felt that I was finally able to be involved with the offense and to produce on the field.”

Producing big results for the offense has been the tailback’s trademark for the last three years. Becton had outstanding seasons in 1992 and 1993, and was just getting his game going when he got injured. Even before his injury sidelined him for several games, Becton felt that this season started on weak footing: “I fumbled twice in the Michigan game, and that’s very uncharacteristic of me.” So uncharacteristic, in fact, that he had not fumbled in two years. But Becton continued: “After every game we’d second-guess ourselves and my biggest regrets came from how I played. But you can’t let what could have happened get you down.” In his four years with the Fighting Irish, Lee Becton witnessed his team achieve a whole spectrum of results, from its number one ranking last year to the disheartening losses of this year. ‘’The most incredible for me was the comeback against BC last year. We lost the game, but to be down 21 points with eight minutes left and then to take the lead - anything is possible, anything can happen.”

Though his senior season was not the brightest, the events on the football field this year have not dimmed Becton’s memories of his four years at Notre Dame. “I’ve really enjoyed meeting people around campus, doing simple things, having fun, playing SEGA. The greatest thing about all of it is that some of these people that I have met will become famous politicians and presidents of Fortune 500 companies, and someday I can say, ‘Wow, I knew that person.’

“Like many students, Becton’s college career has had its rough spots, especially in his first year. “Coming from North Carolina I had felt cold weather before, but not like this. That first winter -the first time I felt an eighty-below wind chill- I was ready to pack my bags and head home.” It was Becton’s friends who helped him through the chill of his freshman year. “Germaine Holden is my all-time greatest friend, and as a freshman in the same dorm we spent a lot of time talking and crying together. He’s the reason I’m still here.” Again, during the injury scare of his senior year, Becton’s friends showed him their support. ‘’The guys on the team helped me to stay involved, leading the team and showing the guys who filled in for me how to get the job done.”

And this right here is my favorite part of the article ... Whether he goes on to professional football or into business back in North Carolina, Lee Becton can look back on his time at Notre Dame and know that he has achieved something. “Graduation will be my greatest accomplishment That’s what I came to college for, and that’s what I’m going to be proudest of.”

Of course every college football player dreams of playing in the NFL, but getting that degree should be something that every athlete walks away with from college. Sports careers do not last forever, and having that toolbox to carry you through the next forty years is absolutely invaluable. Not only that, the adversity Lee Becton faced during his time at Notre Dame prepared him for adversities he would face later in life, because very few lives come without some challenges. I’m so glad I went to Notre Dame, because the adversity I faced at Notre Dame prepared me for the tough times I would face in my life. I already knew how to shake myself off, get up, and try again; and I thank Notre Dame for that. Okay ... enough of my rambling. I hope you enjoyed this week’s walk down memory lane. Until next week ...

Cheers & GO IRISH!

Throwback Thursday: Former Notre Dame Running Back, Vagas Ferguson

Never say quit.

For this week’s Throwback Thursday post I'm going to flash back to the first season I actually remember going to Notre Dame for a football game; 1979. I was 8-years-old, and it was the year before my family moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles (at which point it was too far to go back to Notre Dame for games, and we just settled for ND vs. USC games in Los Angeles). I don’t remember much about the game, and I’m not even sure which game we went to that season, but I do vividly remember being at the pep rally in Stepan Center. I remember the rowdy crowd, and the students tossing rolls of toilet paper through the air. For some reason, that left a big impression on 8-year-old me.

Seeing as I can’t remember exactly which game I went to that year, I’m going to talk a little bit today about a player that made some big strides that season, Vagas Ferguson. In 1979, his senior season at Notre Dame, Ferguson was voted to the All-America Team of the American Football Coaches Association. He was the fifth ranked player in the nation in yards per rush and finished fifth in voting for the Heisman Trophy.

Vagas Ferguson (32) Jumping During Play

Notre Dame was nowhere on Vagas’ radar when he began looking for a college. Yet this dashing, slashing, darting, powerful running back finished his career with the Fighting Irish as the nation’s fifth-leading rusher, fifth in Heisman Trophy voting and with All-America honors. (He ranks third all-time for total yards (3,472) among Notre Dame running backs, averaging 5.2 yards per carry. He was a first-round pick in the 1980 NFL Draft and played for five seasons with the New England Patriots, Cleveland Browns, and Houston Oilers; and is a member of the Indiana Football Hall of Fame.) Notre Dame discovered him, in this small town near the Ohio border, and won him over with some Fighting Irish magic. You would assume, if you were a great player and you grew up in Indiana, you were familiar with Notre Dame, but this is not always the case. “To be truthful, I didn’t hear about Notre Dame until my sophomore year of high school. The schools that most of us talked about were Purdue, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio State. Those schools got a lot of local coverage.”

”I had the chance to visit Notre Dame during my sophomore year in high school because my cousin Lamar Lundy, Jr., a tight end, was being recruited by Notre Dame through a Notre Dame alum who lived in Richmond. He was a senior when I was a sophomore and I got to tag along on his visit to Notre Dame. My cousin ended up going to California – Berkeley, but that trip to Notre Dame left quite an impression on me. I took official visits to Big Ten schools primarily. I went to Indiana, Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan and Iowa; Notre Dame was the last school I visited.” The concept that student-athletes at Notre Dame are students first, and athletes second, was very appealing to Vagas and his family. This was a huge selling point used by ND recruiter Brian Bulac, who was the driving force behind Vagas’ decision to attend Notre Dame. “He came to my home to speak to my grandparents (Vagas’ mother died when he was eight, and his father lived nearby). Education was top on my grandparents’ list. They wanted to make sure we got a good education, and that was the first thing he talked about when he walked in the door. ‘You will be a football player at Notre Dame, but you are a student first.’ That impressed my grandparents, and impressed me as well. Most schools only talked about what I could do for them on the field.”

The cultural make-up of Notre Dame in the late 70s was very complicated. While the University, much like the rest of the country, was doing its best to move forward it still had growing pains during the process. “When I was at Notre Dame in the late 1970s, we were in a time of awareness. Racial issues were very much being addressed and it wasn’t any different at Notre Dame than it had been at my high school back home. You tended to hang out with people who looked like you. You congregated as a group, black females and males. Women had not been at Notre Dame very long at that time either, so they had an especially tight bond as well. The black students that I met the first few weeks I was at Notre Dame, guys and girls, we became really close. We were new and didn’t know any of the upperclassmen so we just kind of took each other in. We still stay in touch today. You gravitate to people who are more like you. It’s not a negative thing. You renew yourself through people who have similar experiences as you do. Today, that is changing. I can see it in my kids and grandkids today. I have bi-racial grandkids. They don’t even see that kind of stuff at all.”

The Notre Dame Value Stream became ingrained in Her students’ lives without us even noticing. We all had highlights during our collegiate careers, students and student-athletes alike; whether it was a big play on the football field or a successful presentation in class. But the moments that we hold most dear of our time at Our Lady’s University are really much more basic than any of those big moments. “The most important thing that I took from Notre Dame was the development of relationships, and crossing the barriers of race. Football did that for us. We had to play as a team and support one another and that broke down a lot of racial barriers that we were facing during that time as players.”

Not only did Vagas learn the value of hard work as a Fighting Irish football player, he also learned that quit was not a word in his vocabulary. His favorite on the field moment is a shining example of the never say quit attitude that he and his teammates shared. “My favorite memory on the field had to have been the 1979 Cotton Bowl against Houston. It was below zero; so cold, in fact, that they had to put salt down on the field to thaw it out. In the fourth quarter, we were behind 34-12 with seven minutes left. Late in the game the defense made a big play (a Tony Belden blocked punt) and got points on the board which really changed the momentum for us. (Quarterback Joe) Montana, who had been sick with the flu and missed most of the third quarter fighting below-normal body temperature, returned to execute an unforgettable fourth quarter comeback.”

“Down 34-28 with six seconds remaining, we had just enough time to run two plays. The first play was a pass pattern where myself and receiver Kris Haines went to the flat and we had to get across the goal line from the 20-yard line. With the limited amount of time remaining in the game, if we caught the ball, we had to score. The first play we ran was not successful. At this point there was only two seconds on the clock. On the next play, Montana looks over to the sidelines and the coaches, including Coach Devine, put up their hands as if to say, ‘Do whatever you want to do. Joe, you call it.’ He got down on one knee and drew the play (the same play we had just run), just like you would in the school yard, and told me and Kris Haines how to run it. Haines said he could beat the guy that he was covering. Joe told him, ‘I’ll hit ya in the corner of the end zone.’ We ran the play, scored and won on the last play of the game. Incredible.”

Vagas reminisced about what made Coach Devine such a great Notre Dame football coach. “What made Dan Devine good as a head coach is that he surrounded himself with good position coaches. These guys had great instincts and tremendous knowledge of the game. You dealt with your position coach way more often than you actually dealt with Coach Devine. He was not very outgoing, didn’t talk to people a lot and was kind of withdrawn. He would talk to us, but he didn’t talk to the public very much. He and his family had previously had some bad experiences with the media and I think that was part of why he was so withdrawn. We didn’t know that, we just accepted him the way he was. You have to be able to delegate to people and trust them. Coach (Gerry) Faust, unlike Coach Devine, was not able to do that.”

“I had two backfield coaches when I was at Notre Dame, but my primary coach was Jim Gruden. Indiana had recruited me starting in my sophomore year of high school all the way through, and Coach Gruden was there before he got the job at Notre Dame. During the recruiting process he told me, ‘I’m gonna coach you someday’. During my junior year of college he left Indiana and came to Notre Dame. He taught me more about the running back position than any other coach and took me to another level of play. I absolutely contribute the success I had my junior and senior years at Notre Dame to Coach Gruden. I try to stay in touch with him to this day.”

What was the first Notre Dame game you attended? Were you a child? An adult? Tell me all about it!

Cheers & GO IRISH!

(Vagas Ferguson quotes taken from Vol I of Echoes From the End Zone: The Men We Became.)

Former Notre Dame Football Player Flash Gordon

Change does not occur in a FLASH

SOUTH BEND, IN - CIRCA 1988: Head Coach Lou Holtz of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish watches the action from the sideline during a NCAA football game circa 1988 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. Holtz coached the Notre Dame Fighting Irish from 1986-1996.

 Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images

With a nickname like “Flash Gordon” you might make the obvious assumption that Darrell “Flash” Gordon was a superhero busy saving the planet earth. While today Darrell Gordon is very much a superhero in the eyes of the many young men whose lives he touches on a daily basis, his beginnings were not as “flashy” as the town he hails from. Raised in Hillside, New Jersey, a community incorporated shortly after the appearance of Hailey’s Comet in 1910, Darrell’s path towards Notre Dame did not begin with a comet-like flash. Although he was a diligent student and high performing athlete in high school, his college bound path was somewhat diverted due to some typical teenage distractions. After a slight but firm nudge from the Notre Dame recruiters, Gordon promptly corrected his path, was a high school All-American in football, graduated in the top of his class and landed a scholarship to play football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. After a tremendously successful career at Notre Dame which culminated with the fairy tale ending of a national championship in 1988, the successes that Flash has had post football far outshine the spectacular plays that he delighted fans with during his tenure at Notre Dame. This is Flash Gordon’s story.

But when Notre Dame came, they didn’t even meet with me.

“I was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and when I was five years old we moved to Hillside, New Jersey. During the recruiting process hundreds of colleges were coming to visit my high school and they all had a great pitch as to why I should attend their institution. But when Notre Dame came, they didn’t even meet with me; they just went straight to the guidance office and looked at my academic records. Coach Paterno, the head coach from Penn State University came and talked to me at school, but not Notre Dame. They weren’t just recruiting athletes, but ‘student-athletes,’ and that interested me highly. At the end of my sophomore year / beginning of my junior year, Notre Dame started to lose interest in me. I guess I wasn’t performing up to their standards. I wasn’t taking high school seriously enough and they indicated that if I didn’t start focusing on academics they would no longer pursue me. At that point I really dug in and I ended up graduating near the top of my class. I was also a high school All-American in football.”

And just like that, the Notre Dame Value Stream had already found a place in Flash Gordon’s life.

“I made official visits to Boston College, Pitt, Notre Dame and Penn State; and then I narrowed it down to Penn State and Notre Dame. I really liked what Notre Dame was offering. The thing they said that really caught my eye was this, ‘we will guarantee your scholarship for four years. Whether you break your leg or it just doesn’t work out, we will still guarantee your scholarship for all four years.’ That was amazing. I wanted to make sure that wherever I went to school there was going to be some sort of security, and in addition to the scholarship guarantee Notre Dame had a really high graduation rate, which was very appealing to me. Some of the schools that I had either looked at or that had expressed interest in me had graduation rates as low as 40%. Notre Dame’s graduation rate was right around 99% at the time and that was a big deciding factor for me.”

“When I visited Notre Dame my host was Allen Pinkett. I made my trip to Notre Dame in the middle of January and it was extremely cold. Allen took me to visit different dorms and in the basement of the dorms they had these parties. When you’re visiting schools you need to see which institutions you can bond with both academically and athletically; but being able to have a good time without even leaving the dorm was pretty appealing to me as an 18-year-old kid. The funniest thing is that in between my visit to Notre Dame and actually arriving on campus in the fall they changed the University policy and no longer allowed basement parties in the dorms. Apparently someone had left a party and gotten into an accident and the campus had since become a dry campus. So much for having fun without leaving the dorm! (laughs) Allen Pinkett did a great job of being my host that weekend and convincing me that Notre Dame was where I wanted to be.”

Notre Dame’s objective was to create relationships.

“Coach Faust was really special to me and I still keep in touch with him to this day. When the various coaches came to visit you in high school, they would come to your school and you would get called over the loud speaker to go visit with them in the school library. ‘Darrell Gordon, please come to the library to see Coach Paterno.’ Coach Faust was the only head coach who didn’t visit me at school. I came home from school one day to find Coach Faust sitting in my living room with my mother having a spaghetti dinner. He also visited my dad at his job, too. Notre Dame’s objective was to create relationships. After that visit, all I heard from my parents was how great Notre Dame was and that I needed to go there. They became immediate fans of the University based on that personal touch they were given. Notre Dame felt that if you didn’t have a strong family it would cause problems later when the child was off at college and unsupervised. They want to recruit a child who comes from a solid family unit with a strong foundation and good morals.”

Flash Gordon and each one of his teammates who were recruited by head coach Gerry Faust to play football at Notre Dame followed him with complete trust and were inspired by his love and passion for the University. And then one day this little man named Lou Holtz came marching in as the new head coach of Notre Dame’s football team. Transitions such as this are never easy, but the Notre Dame Value Stream spoke through Coach Holtz 100% and helped make the transition period as painless as it possibly could have been.

“Coach Holtz made the transition extremely easy. He was an extremely focused coach. He knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish, how to play the game and what kind of athlete he needed to accomplish his style of play. During his time at Notre Dame he consistently recruited top classes. Then he would master mind the X’s and O’s on both offense and defense. He perfected that skill set. His greatest asset, though, was as a motivator. His ability to motivate players and to have them at the highest level of their game was off the charts. If you can’t motivate your players to play you’re missing out on a huge aspect of coaching. He made sure we had what we needed to succeed, both on and off the field. Excellent coaches, tutors for the classroom, and nutritional meal plans.”

“When Coach Holtz got to Notre Dame, he realized that many of the starters didn’t practice during the week until a day or two before the game. This was not how he ran things. On Monday we practiced in t-shirts and shorts. On Tuesday and Wednesday we came out in our entire uniforms. On Thursday we practiced in shoulder pads and shorts, and on Friday we did our walk through drills. Tuesdays and Wednesdays were the days you really executed your game plan for the next game. If you didn’t practice until Thursday or Friday you missed out on the execution and strategy for that week’s game. Prior to Holtz, if a first stringer was injured he would sit out until Thursday to rest. This meant that the second and third string were ready for game day but not the first string.”

“Holtz made himself very clear from the start. If you missed practice on Monday, you didn’t get to start on Saturday, even if you were a starter. If you missed two practices you didn’t get to dress on Saturday. Once everyone heard those expectations, immediate changes were made. Everyone was at practice, every day. Even if you were on crutches, you were dressed, on the field and ready to practice with the intent that if you could practice you would. Those were some of the psychological changes that Coach Holtz made. He knew exactly what he needed to do to transform the team. He knew how to take a team that was struggling and bring them to perfection. Very few coaches have that gift but it all starts with discipline and commitment.”

The Notre Dame Value Stream made sure you had the focus and direction needed to be prepared and successful in the classroom. Coach Holtz was also perfectly aligned with the Notre Dame Value Stream and made sure those same values were applied on the football field; even if his delivery was at times a little unconventional.

Gentlemen, I want to tell you one thing. Next time, save Jimmy Johnson for me!

“My favorite Notre Dame football memory is the pre-game warm up before the Miami game in 1988. We were warming up and preparing to play the number one team in the country, and we were ranked number two at the time. Miami came to South Bend and they already had an idea of what the Catholics vs. Convicts rivalry meant and they wanted to live up to that image. They were warming up on the far end of the field and we were warming up on the end of the field closest to the tunnel. Each team had a line of players on the 30-yard line so that the other team couldn’t see what formations they were practicing. When they were done warming up, instead of going around our line to go back to their locker room they decided to go right through our line. It was very disrespectful and we were high character kids but we could only take so much. Guys started pushing back and forth and a big brawl took place in the tunnel. Finally they separated us and sent us to our respective locker rooms. Guys were bleeding, hyperventilating; it was a mess. We felt like we disappointed the University and our teammates because we didn’t conduct ourselves appropriately.”

“We were sitting there waiting for Coach Holtz to come in and ring us a good one on how we tarnished Notre Dame and how this incident was a nationally televised game. Coach Holtz walks in and says, ‘Gentlemen, I want to tell you one thing. Next time, save Jimmy Johnson for me!’ That was exactly what we needed from Coach Holtz, the endorsement that no one can come in and disrespect our team or our University. After Coach Holtz’s speech there was such electricity in the locker room that ignited the team. Here we thought we were going to get scolded and then we were told ‘save daddy for me!’ That really gave us the confidence that we needed to beat the number one team in the country. His words didn’t tell us that fighting was okay but rather the importance of fighting for what you believe in. Even though a lot of us were not Catholic, he was showing us how to fight for our respective religions and the issues we believed in. He was teaching us to be better leaders not only on the team but also in our communities and in our country. That was a very profound moment for me, in what it did for me and how it changed my life.”

Even though a lot of us were not Catholic, he was showing us how to fight for our respective religions and the issues we believed in.

“That same fight that we had on the field against Miami was the same fighting spirit that I had when I wanted to become the CEO of my company and there were seven other people who also wanted to be CEO. You fight for what you believe in, for what you want, and you don’t give it away. There isn’t a class that teaches more practical knowledge on how to succeed in life than what we learned from Coach Holtz on the football field. What we learned that day was to fight for what we believed in. I share this with my own kids every day as they compete in the classroom, on the basketball court, or on the football field. You have to fight for what you want or someone else will take it.”

Flash Gordon and Lisa Kelly signed their new books in Louisville, Kentucky, at 4th Street Live.

Want to read more of Flash’s story, and see what he’s up to today? (Need something to pass the time on this bye weekend?) You can find his complete story in my second book, The Men We Became: MORE Echoes From the End Zone. Also be sure to check out Flash’s new book, Change Does Not Occur in a FLASH.

Cheers & GO IRISH!

Former Notre Dame Wide Receiver Raki Nelson

And some lessons from Coach Holtz ... “Can I trust you? Are you committed? Do you care?”

For today’s Throwback Thursday post, I’m going to give you a sneak peek at the 15th chapter of my new book, “Triumphs From Notre Dame: Echoes of Her Loyal Sons and Daughters.” In Chapter 15 I tell the story of former Notre Dame Fighting Irish football player Raki Nelson, (class of 2002), and how he decided to follow the spark he felt for football and pursue a collegiate career at the University of Notre Dame.

5 Sep 1998: Wide receiver Raki Nelson #9 of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in action during a game against the Michigan Wolverines at the Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. The Fighting Irish defeated the Wolverines 36-20.

“I played little league baseball as a kid, but baseball felt way too slow for me; I needed something with more action, more excitement. As I hit the teenage years, basketball and football definitely ignited my passion.” Raki played both basketball and football at Bishop McDevitt High School, home of another Notre Dame Football player you may remember, Ricky Watters. Raki shared with me one win that his basketball team had in a high school tournament, over another player you may have heard of - Kobe Bryant; a win that now seems like a much bigger deal than it did back then.

“I remember playing in this tournament against Lower Merion High School, and they had this guy on their team, Kobe Bryant. We really didn’t know who Kobe was, but after watching him play, Kobe seemed like he was really going to be something. We beat them that day and I probably scored about 27 points, but in comparison, Kobe had about 40 points. He also cried foul a lot in that game , but we ended up coming out on top. I remember when I heard Kobe was going into the NBA draft thinking, ‘Hey, we beat that guy!’”

As the time grew closer for Raki to figure out where his post high school path was going to take him, he was confident that football was his ticket to the next level. As he did his homework on the various colleges he was interested in, toured campuses, and talked to coaches, he may not have noticed what was happening, but the Notre Dame Value Stream was already making its way towards him.

“I was very interested in the University of Florida, North Carolina and Pitt; Syracuse was interested in me as well, though I wasn’t very interested in them. However, when I made my visit to Syracuse, my host was Donovan McNabb, which was pretty cool. Pitt was pursuing me very hard, and then Notre Dame came into the picture a bit late in the recruiting process. When you play football at a Catholic high school, ND was always in the back of your mind, but when Coach Holtz and Coach Mosley started to pursue me, Notre Dame rose to the top of the pile. Eric Chappell (quarterback from Carver High School in Montgomery, AL) and I had both been at UF and Notre Dame at the same time for our official visits, and we had exchanged numbers at Notre Dame. We were talking on the phone, comparing Florida and Notre Dame, and the more we talked, the more we both liked what we saw at ND. I really liked the atmosphere at Notre Dame. Everything I saw during my visit was very appealing, and that’s where I decided my football career would continue.”

Can I trust you? Are you committed? Do you care?” - Coach Lou Holtz

Pretty much every player who has played for Coach Holtz has had that moment at which they realize exactly what is expected of them. Raki had his moment early-on in his Notre Dame Football career.

“It was ’96, my freshman year, we were just wrapping up practice and Coach Holtz was making his final remarks about practice. I was goofing off a little bit, telling my friends something, and while Coach was still talking I said something funny and burst out laughing. Everyone froze. ‘Who was that??’ And then the red sea parted, and there I was, exposed to Coach Holtz. Coach screamed, ‘Raki, get your butt up here!’ And he proceeded to chew me out, right there in front of everyone. He told me, as a result of my disturbance during his practice, I was not going to dress for the Boston College game. My stomach sank. My mom, dad, and my third grade teacher were all coming in for the game. What was I going to do? But coach took care of everything, they all got their tickets. But me? I didn’t dress, and I watched the game from my dorm room. That was some lesson for me. When coach was talking, no one talked. It’s all about respect.”

All college football players have their favorite in-game moments, but for the Notre Dame guys who had the privilege of playing football under head coach Lou Holtz, they also have a few classic Holtz moments to share. On more than one occasion, Coach Holtz’s players may have thought he was truly out of his mind. But as they learned the lessons Coach Holtz was trying to impart upon them, through his unique coaching style, they discovered that not only was he not crazy, but that he 100% cared about them, and was only trying to mold them into the best versions of themselves. This was Coach Holtz at his finest.

“I missed a block against Washington in my freshman year (1996), and at our next practice we ran drills involving the same situation. Once again, I didn’t block the guy correctly, and then it happened. Coach Holtz comes over, takes off his hat, slams it on the ground, and puts his face right onto my cage. The next thing I know, I see that his face got cut on my cage and is bleeding. He’s not just bleeding, he’s bleeding everywhere, and he’s screaming at me, ‘HIT ME!! HIT ME!! HIT ME!!’ I look back at him and say, ‘Coach, I’m not going to hit you.’ And he’s still screaming at me, ‘HIT ME! HIT ME!’ And so I had to block him a little bit. He just wanted to prove to me how much he cared, and to make absolutely sure I did not miss that block again. And what happened after that? I became a pretty darn good blocker from there on out. He truly cared about each and every one of us, and he wanted us all to be the best we could be. He showed me that day he’d go to war for me, and he did during the Air Force game. I made a catch, which the refs said was not a catch. Holtz asked me if I caught it, and when I said yes, he fought the ref for me. Whenever he says he’s going to do something, he does it. He’s a great person.”

You can read more of Raki’s story in my third book, Triumphs From Notre Dame, which you can pick up here!

Cheers & GO IRISH!

Notre Dame versus Penn State: The 'Snow Bowl'

As we get closer and closer to the spring game, I tend to start to daydream about some of my favorite Notre Dame football memories. I know, it’s darn near impossible to pick one favorite, but if I had to create a top ten list, this one would definitely be on it. Notre Dame vs. Penn State: The Snow Bowl.

In a dramatic conclusion to the series between Notre Dame and Penn State, the Fighting Irish emerged with a 17-16 Snow Bowl victory. [Photo: Notre Dame Media Relations]

On Saturday, November 14th, 1992, the Nittany Lions of Penn State played the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. It was the last home game of my senior year, and the senior captains Rick Mirer, Demetrius DuBose, Irv Smith and Devon McDonald were hoping to finish strong on Senior Day; something that hadn’t happened for the previous two senior classes. It was also the last game of the Notre Dame - Penn State series, and so both teams were hoping to snatch one last win.

The Irish got the ball first and moved methodically down the field, but only walked away with three points, on a successful field goal by Craig Hentrich. (ND 3 - PSU 0) On the subsequent Penn State possession, Tom Carter and John Covington combined for an interception, but the Irish were unable to convert any points out of the turnover. The Nittany Lions came up with a touchdown on their next possession, but freshman Bobby Taylor made sure they only got six points as he blocked the PAT. (PSU 6 - ND 3) And that’s when the snow really started to kick in. It was challenging for either team to secure their footing or hold on to the ball. The second quarter was a sloppy mess, and included a forced fumble by Jim Flannigan which was recovered by Brian Ratigan, and Penn State came dangerously close to picking off a pass to Derrick Mayes. At the end of the first half, though, the Irish managed to set Craig Hentrich up once more for a field goal, and his successful 37-yard kick tied the game at 6-6.

The biggest gain of the game by either team came in the third quarter on a Rick Mirer pass to Lake Dawson for 30 yards. That set up Craig Hentrich to convert his third field goal of the game, putting the Irish up 9-6. But Penn State came roaring back and tied the game with 8:35 remaining in the game. It was becoming apparent that this game was going to be won by the team who had possession of the ball last. And then with 4:19 left on the clock, Penn State scored its second touchdown of this contest, regaining the lead and going up 16-9. The Notre Dame drive which followed this Penn State touchdown is one that no one watching the game that day will ever forget.

On second and ten, Rick Mirer found Jerome Bettis for 21 yards down the near sideline. Then on second and sixteen, Mirer managed to scramble for 15 yards, coming up one yard short of the first down. Two plays later he found Ray Griggs at the Penn State 17 yard line, with less than two minutes remaining in the game. From first and goal at the nine, Reggie Brooks ran for five yards, getting them just four yards from the goal line. But on the next two plays, the Irish were stopped. The Irish had to take their final timeout to discuss what play they would run on fourth on goal, with the game on the line. The play that was chosen was a play that Coach Holtz typically reserved for two-point conversion plays, but the gamble paid off as Mirer connected with Jerome Bettis in the end zone for the touchdown.

With no timeouts left and 20 seconds remaining on the clock, Mirer and Holtz quickly conversed on what play to use next, and the result was nothing short of spectacular. With no one open, Mirer rolls right and drops a pass right in the corner of the endzone, perfectly into the hands of an outstretched Reggie Brooks.

As I wrote my first book, I had the chance to hear Reggie’s thoughts on this incredible game. “We always practiced the two-point conversion in practice. It was nothing new to us. Holtz had us on the sideline, told us what the formation was, and we never had any doubt in our mind that we could successfully run the play. The funny thing about that play was I was not even the intended receiver. Irv Smith was supposed to run a pivot route and I was supposed to distract the safety so that he could make the catch. We had never practiced this particular formation before, we just knew that we needed to go out and execute it. We had so much confidence in ourselves. Aaron Taylor likes to say that he was the reason I caught the pass because he missed the block that caused Rick Mirer to have to roll right and throw to me.”

Rick Mirer also shared with me his memories of the Snow Bowl. “ My all-time best football memory, however, has to be the 1992 Penn State game. There was so much drama at the end of that game … going for two points to win the game, playing our last game in Notre Dame Stadium. We ended our time at Notre Dame on a huge highlight. The one we got to sleep on was the Penn State game, and we could not have asked for a better ending . After the Michigan game ending in a tie, and being left with such a weird feeling after that game, I just felt that we had to go for it. We’re either going to win this thing, or not.”

As I look back on all of the Notre Dame games I’ve witnessed over the years, I think this one means so much to me seeing as it was the last home game of my senior year at Notre Dame. I’ve seen some other pretty incredible games, including the 1993 ND vs. FSU game, and the 2012 ND vs. Stanford game, but the Snow Bowl may very well my favorite.

So ... what Notre Dame football game is your favorite? Can you pick just one?

Cheers & GO IRISH!