Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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"violent" linebacker during his four years at Mater Dei. He made 98 tackles during his senior season, but the 6-0, 225-pounder didn't have the size Notre Dame wanted in its middle linebackers. Schmidt was torn between taking a full ride elsewhere and going to Notre Dame, where he would have a chance to make the team as a walk-on. "I told him that we get only so many opportunities to do something that we always wanted to," Rollinson said. "I think you're opportunity is looking right at you." Schmidt played on the scout team as a 2011 freshman and started contributing to special teams last year. The sophomore made six tackles while playing in 10 games. This spring, defensive coordinator Bob Diaco said Schmidt made another jump in his game. "He makes up for [his lack of size] in his intangible traits," Diaco said. "He's getting to the ball fast. He's very bright. He's an instinctual player with good initial quickness. He really understands his assets and liabilities." Diaco, Kelly and the rest of the coaching staff had seen enough after this spring to offer Schmidt his scholarship. With his own funding taken care of, Schmidt turned the rest of his attention to drumming up money for others. In July, he hosted his first fundraising event as president of the Notre Dame Uplifting Athletes chapter. Uplifting Athletes is a nationwide organization of college football teams that help raise awareness and money for rare disease research. The group started at Penn State in 2003 and now has a chapter at 21 schools, with at least one in every major BCS conference. Each team picks a specific disease and comes up with its ideas for events each year. Notre Dame chose osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer that mostly affects children, shortly after "adopting" 14-yearold Sam Grewe as part of a separate community outreach effort. Grewe was diagnosed with osteosarcoma a year earlier and eventually lost his right leg to the disease. "We didn't have a disease, but when we met Sam it was a no-brainer," said Schmidt, who eats dinner with Grewe on a regular basis. "It gave us that motivation to say this deserves to be successful. It has to be successful." Schmidt — along with teammates Danny Spond, Joe Romano and Matthias Farley — spent almost a year jumping through hoops to establish Uplifting Athletes as a club on campus and planning their first event. "Anybody who's met Joe has to love Joe," Uplifting Athletes executive director Scott Shirley said. "We have a summer leadership retreat where we bring all the leaders from all the schools together for a week of workshops. He emerged as a leader amongst leaders that weekend. He seemed to be the guy that they all wanted to follow." Schmidt and his teammates raised more than $2,000 for osteosarcoma research by bowling with Irish fans at the first event in mid-July. He said they are planning to add more events in the coming year, like a team-wide weightlifting competition that fans can pay to watch. He hopes to have the Notre Dame chapter operating in a self-sufficient way by the time he graduates in 2015, another goal worthy of a torn-up index card buried in an old wallet. ✦