Rudy (16 page)

I walked down the hallway, threw that door open, and stepped out into the early morning sun with a smile on my face so broad it could have cracked my cheeks. “I bet you will,” Coach Parseghian said to me. If he had told me to get lost, to forget about it—anything that would have dissuaded me—I might have shriveled up and given up on that dream right then and there. But he didn't. He did just the opposite. He didn't even question whether I had what it took to get into Notre Dame. He didn't say, Come see me “if” you get in. He said “when.” He gave me hope.

I bet you will
.

As I stood outside of the ACC, I suddenly felt embarrassed.
Was that a mistake? Did I just make a fool out of myself in front of Coach Parseghian?
It's normal to have doubts after making a bold move, I think. Luckily for me, a few familiar faces suddenly popped up on the path outside. Joe Yonto's son, Tony, and a group of hockey campers came walking along. “Rudy! Hey, what're you doing here?”

I didn't know what to say. So I faked it. “I'm up here looking for a job,” I said.

Lo and behold, I just happened to say the right thing. “Really? One of our camp counselors just left. Would you like to be a camp counselor?” Tony asked me.

Ummm
, “Yes!”

He took me upstairs in the ACC to meet Joe Sassano, the guy who headed up the ACC and who ran the hockey program. Sassano liked me and gave me the job as a hockey camp counselor for the summer.

When I took my dad's car back later that morning, my mom came right out the front door yelling at me at how upset my dad was. “You could've killed yourself!” she said, telling me all about the car's steering being broken, and how mad she was that she had to let my dad take her car to work. I apologized left and right but told her it had to be done. I explained that I'd been up all night praying, and that I got a new job: I'd be living and working on the Notre Dame campus for the rest of the summer.

“I'm just glad you're alive,” she said.

Me too!
I thought. It still frightens me to think that the steering on that old Plymouth could have gone out on me anytime during that 180-mile roundtrip excursion. A mechanical failure could've derailed my whole mission—or worse. Luckily it didn't. Or maybe it's more than luck. I wonder about that sometimes. I wonder about those moments, when we're carried through.

By the time my dad came home, he was more concerned with my new job situation than the fact that I had taken his car without asking. “How much are they paying you?” he asked. I sheepishly told him it was about half as much pay as I had been making at my summer construction job. But it didn't matter. It was important for me to be on campus. I felt it, in my gut. Sometimes that gut feeling is all you've got. And you've gotta trust it.

7
In the Ring

Between my frantic midnight visit and my work
at the hockey camp that summer, the administrators and a whole bunch of other people at Notre Dame got to know my name. I could say hello to some of those leaders when we passed on a pathway by the lake, and they would recognize me. Ara Parseghian had a son who worked at the hockey camp. I was already friends with Joe Yonto's kids. I didn't seek them out, and I never thought once about using those friendships as some sort of a connection to give me a leg up to their dads, but it's funny how people come into your life when you're open to it, when you're pursuing your dreams without question. As embarrassing as my audacity of knocking on the administrators' doors at midnight might have seemed from the outside, it was exactly my audacity that got me noticed.

When the fall semester began, I moved up to the fourth floor in St. Joe's. My room was in the back this time, with a perfect, unobstructed view over the treetops to the Golden Dome across the lake. I took inspiration from that every time I sat at my little desk. And yet, despite that view, and despite a series of late-night Grotto prayer sessions, I still had plenty of bottled-up anxiety and frustration heading into my second year. All the same old stuff: the worry, the doubt, the fear, the impatience, combined with the lingering high school and grade-school memories—all of it sat just below the surface ready to bust out at any moment.

I also learned that the odds were stacked against me even further that year: Notre Dame merged with St. Mary's and began admitting women for the first time in its history. It seems amazing today to think that such a prestigious school
wouldn't
have allowed women all the way up until 1972. But that's the way it was. Don't get me wrong: it was great having all those young women on campus! What guy wouldn't love that? It just meant that I would have to compete against an even wider field of candidates for the few transfer slots that would open up the following year.

All of it made me work harder. I had no choice. I had no backup plan. It also made me spend even more time on campus, developing relationships with everyone I could, so when it came time to make an admissions decision, they would be sure to think of me, to remember me, and to think about how badly I wanted to be there. When they saw my name, they would think of me always being on campus, always working hard. That goes a long way, believe me. Never underestimate the power of a personal relationship. Those relationships mean everything, especially when you don't have the money, talent, or other connections to get you where you want to go in life. Sometimes a relationship is all you've got! So I worked it. What was I going to do if I didn't go to Notre Dame? Go back to Joliet? Back to the power plant? No way! Wouldn't happen. I had to go to Notre Dame because it was the only future I could see. The only future I
wanted
to see. And increasingly—despite the improbability—that future for me included envisioning myself on the Notre Dame football team.

I poured myself back into interhall football that fall. Running that ball and taking those hits was still one of the best ways I knew to blow off some steam. Our equipment was all hand-me-down stuff from the varsity team: a bunch of beat-up gold helmets and tattered uniforms. I decided to pour some pride into those uniforms and wound up designing a whole new get-up, with white shirts (similar to Notre Dame's away uniforms) that I ordered at a discount through D-Bob. We also painted the helmets navy blue, and one guy in the dorm painted a fancy
SJ
in orange on the side of each one—
SJ
for St. Joe's. I loved the idea of making the team look good. There's pride in that. There's a feeling that you want to live up to the uniform, to your teammates, to the spirit of what you're doing.

The whole experience kept me bonded to my housemates at St. Joe's, including the guys who weren't on the team. There was something about the energy and camaraderie of the game that increased the camaraderie of the whole sophomore-year experience. It's like all of us were part of the same team off the field. In fact, there were about fifteen of us Holy Cross guys who were gaming to get into Notre Dame, and we wound up labeling ourselves the Rat Pack. One of our buddies even had a logo designed, and we all wore shirts with this drawing of an ugly rat lifting barbells on it.

We were all dreamers. We were all reaching for something more, all following our hearts. I couldn't wait to see where we'd all wind up. Interhall football helped me focus on all of that: Coming off the field with that glow that came from the pumped-up feeling you got when you'd just given your all and played your best, I would sometimes look around and think,
We're all doing it! We're all playing hard! We're all gonna make our dreams come true!

Keeping that momentum, holding on to that pumped-up feeling— even when faced with the frustration and heartbreak of waiting to get into Notre Dame—meant everything to me.

At it's best, that's what sports can do.

I kept my grades up—all As and a couple of Bs—and reapplied to Notre Dame again after my third semester. A thin envelope arrived in my mailbox at St. Joe's a few weeks later. Brother John scolded me, once again, for ignoring his guidance and applying too soon. I knew it was wrong. I just couldn't stop myself. I simply had to try. I let it bounce right off of me as I set my sights on my final semester. I kept up the maintenance job. I went for runs around the interior of that beautiful old football stadium, beneath the concrete supports and archways, staying in shape all winter long. I kept working out at the ACC, staying in shape for the day my shot came to join the team.

I happened to be in the ACC one day when I stumbled onto a whole new outlet for all of my frustration: boxing.

The Bengal Bouts are a big, big deal at Notre Dame. The outside world might not know much about it, but on campus, among the students, the annual Bengal Bouts—a series of student-elimination boxing matches that raise funds for the Holy Cross Missions in Bangladesh—drive almost the same sort of passionate devotion and jam-packed stands as the football games. (Coincidentally or not, the Bouts were founded by legendary football coach Knute Rockne.)

I came across a bunch of guys training for the bouts in the ACC that January and asked what they were doing. If you haven't noticed, I don't have a problem talking to people. I talk to everybody! It never fails to make something happen, and at the very least leads to some interesting conversations. I was intrigued by the whole thing and asked if I could train along with 'em. They said sure. No questions. No student ID necessary. I jumped right in, and I loved it. I was a fighter at heart, always had been. Yet no one had ever tried to channel that fighting energy in such a positive way for me before. Working the bag until my heart felt like it would beat right out of my chest, lifting weights with a new purpose, learning to take hits, learning to hit harder—it all felt great, and it was one more thing to keep me out of trouble and away from the party scene or any other distractions that could have derailed my academics.

There were about six weeks of official training for the Bengal Bouts, which happen each spring semester, and I got all the way through the program. I was pumped! Suddenly I was climbing into a ring set up in the center of the basketball court in the ACC. The arena was filled to the rafters with screaming Notre Dame students, and the noise was incredible.
Ding!
Just like that, my first match was underway. I went toe-to-toe with a guy who was quite a bit taller than me. Just about everyone was taller than me, so that wasn't a surprise, but the audience seemed to like the David and Goliath–type matchup. I focused hard, using my height to my advantage and getting in lots of punches to his body. Enough punches to win the decision. First round over. Victorious. Piece of cake. I would move on to the next round.

One problem: the guy in charge of the whole thing came to me in the locker room just before the next match was set to begin and asked pointedly, “Rudy, are you a student at Notre Dame?” I could tell from the tone of his voice that he already knew the answer. I'm not sure if one of the administrators had a conversation with him, or if someone else recognized me from Holy Cross, or what, but I knew the jig was up. I told him the truth. He said he was sorry, but I wouldn't be allowed to fight any more rounds. I had to leave.

I watched the rest of the Bengal Bouts from the stands that year. The most remarkable thing about the whole experience for me was watching how those Notre Dame students always rallied behind the underdog based entirely on his performance in the ring. Everyone would chant the names of their favorite fighters—many of which they hadn't heard of until they discovered them in that room—watching for the great ones to emerge among their fellow students as they stepped foot into that ring, one by one, to do battle for the title and to earn the right to wear a Bengal Bout jacket, which was only awarded to the two finalists in each division. The idea of winning the title didn't interest me: I really wanted one of those jackets! I could picture myself walking around campus wearing that thing. I was excited by the thought of how my fellow students would react once I had that coat on my back.

The immense power of the energy in that room rocked me. Round after round, I pictured myself standing in that ring, seeing just what I would have done to defeat each of those opponents. I sat there with my fists up, bobbing and weaving my head, mimicking the motions from my seat, fighting right along with each match. But the fact that I was outside, not inside, stung like a bee in my gut.

Next year
, I told myself.
Next year
.

The Bengal Bouts were one more goal, one more challenge to keep me on course. I
had
to get into Notre Dame. I just had to!

I kept leaning on Freddy for help with my studies, and he came through for me, without fail, every time. Finally, I stopped asking as often because the work seemed to get easier and easier for me with every class I took. I kept leaning on D-Bob, too, for laughs and a sense of family in South Bend, and he came through as well. Neither one of those guys ever showed a shred of doubt that I'd get into Notre Dame. Ever.