Andy Gray
They hobble down the hall toward me, wounded, dazed, drenched in sweat — men clearly beaten by some arduous crucible from which they have just escaped. “It’s a war crime, what they do to us, Andy,” the bearded one grumbles over the rhythmic popping of the taller one’s right knee, which cracks with every step.
You’re thinking: sweat, beards, battles … and one clearly has a peg leg … they’re pirates in training.
Good guess. They were saying “aaarrgh” a lot. But the two characters introduced here, juniors Tom Pappas and Mike Desjardins, are merely returning from a practice with the Siegfried interhall football team. The “war crime” lineman Pappas (the bearded one) refers to is a series of sprints, runs and drills involved in every practice session.
The intensity of Notre Dame’s interhall football league is no secret. Founded by Knute Rockne, it remains the only non-military academy, full-contact, full-pads intramural program in the nation. And with a championship contest in Notre Dame Stadium as the prize for surviving the regular season and playoffs, there should be no confusion as to why players are willing to work as hard as they do.
The Stanford Griffins experienced the joy of winning that championship game last year, and the returning players are certainly not blasé about playing in the House that Rockne Built. “That’s why you play interhall. That’s why you put on the pads,” senior Stanford Captain Karun Ahuja says.
Siegfried senior Charlie Drury echoes Ahuja’s sentiment, but from the perspective of one who has narrowly missed the chance to play in the Stadium more than once. “That’s goal number one, to be in the Stadium … That’s what every guy’s thinking about when he’s in the weight room or out running,” Drury says. At the conclusion of their practice, Drury’s Ramblers count one, two, three and yell “Stadium!” as a team to remind everyone just what their goal is. To be able to walk out on that field is clearly no small honor for these players.
This may be especially true because interhall football provides a unique opportunity for most of these students to be able to play full-contact ball beyond high school. “When you’re done with high school,” Drury says, “you think you’re done with football forever. Then you get here and you get another shot; that’s something you can’t get anywhere else.”
An atmosphere of intense dorm rivalry permeates many of the interhall contests. When asked to comment on such antagonisms, the four Stanford senior players — Ahuja, John Burke, David Costanzo and Brian Salvi — reply almost in unison, “Keenan sucks!” Stanford and Keenan are adjacent dorms joined by a shared chapel, and their game ach regular season is known as “The Battle for the Chapel.” It had been two decades since Stanford’s last win in the face-off, until last year when they bested Keenan in the regular season and again in Notre Dame Stadium for the championship.
“[The Keenan game] is definitely the game where we get the most fans. People in the dorm care that much more,” Salvi says.
Fans. At a regular season intramural football game. Find that on another campus.
With the incentive of playing on the Notre Dame Stadium turf and the intensity of heated rivalries and full-contact football, interhall players say they must work harder and endure more than the average intramural athlete might anticipate.
“We have guys that, when we finish our conditioning workouts, are ready to throw up — if they don’t throw up,” Siegfried Coach P.J. Zimmer, a 2008 Notre Dame MBA graduate, says. “They don’t enjoy doing it, but they know it’s necessary if we’re going to be ready on game day.”
With full-contact play also comes greater risk. “A kid got hurt our freshman year and spent the next six months in a wheelchair,” Salvi says. “This stuff is not a joke.” Notre Dame interhall football is not for the faint of stomach, body or heart.
That stoutness of heart comes to the fore when the workouts are at their toughest. A Siegfried practice, for instance, begins with a 1,400-yard run for all players, Pappas says. This is followed by sprints, as well as tackling and blocking drills, directed by a coach barking, “Ready…hit!” And they certainly do hit, with all the snarling intensity expected at a championship game. At the end of a 90-minute practice, the whole team does one more set of sprints.
“When you line up, and you’re doing those last five or 10 sprints,” Drury says, “your legs are numb, your chest hurts because you’re breathing so hard, you’re not running for you anymore … you’re running for 23 other guys out there.” He compares this strong camaraderie to the kind of close-knit atmosphere that surrounds a varsity program.
Hard work, however, isn’t all it takes to win. A good team needs talent, which players say sometimes even rivals skill found on the varsity level. “We had a couple of guys on the team last year who should have been playing Division-I football,” Stanford’s Burke says. “Zo [Costanzo] could be playing for Notre Dame right now if he wanted to.” In the past, varsity scouts have been seen roaming the sidelines of interhall games looking for a diamond in the rough.
Back in the fall of 1998, then-freshman John Crowther — affectionately nicknamed “Cheeks” — began to practice with the Morrissey Hall football team. Assistant Coach Father Bill Steech quickly took note of Crowther’s snapping prowess. A week later, Crowther was surprised by a call from one of the varsity football coaches inviting him to try out for the university team.
By his junior year, Crowther had worked his way up to starting snapper for extra points and field goals, and was later given the responsibility of snapping on punts as well. He returned to Notre Dame for a fifth year as an MBA student and a scholarship varsity athlete.
Though most interhall football players won’t ever get to take the field on a Saturday wearing a Notre Dame jersey, their passion for the game keeps them practicing and playing hard.
“I still get to come out every Sunday and hit people,” Burke says. “I think it’s something pretty special.”
