Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM FEBRUARY 2024 17 and not be sidetracked by it,'" Scott Raridon Jr. said. "I think that was a pretty mature way to respond." Did Raridon ever consider giving up? Never, his dad said. Scott Raridon Jr. went as far as to say he liked the working out part of the rehab, and the reviews he got from Notre Dame football's head athletic trainer Rob Hunt and his staff said the same thing. "He's got an incredible work ethic in training," Scott Raridon Jr. said. "I think even amongst college athletes, it's a very high level of commitment. … I think his groundedness and his maturity [were key] — just being able to not get too down and to take this opportunity to learn life lessons and just get better overall." Raridon first got to work with Notre Dame's athletic trainers, led by Hunt. When he went back home, he kept at it with Giblin. Giblin noticed that Raridon was working so hard on the healthy leg as well as the injured leg that the latter was having a tough time catching up to the former. That couldn't continue, so he started doing as many as five sets of a given exercise on the injured leg to two on the healthy one. He put an em- phasis on isolation exercises and even tried blood flow restriction. "We were doing blood flow restric- tion bands on one leg just to make him work under lighter weight but on harder fatigue and loads so that the muscle would come back stronger and health- ier," Giblin said. When he worked with Giblin, he would go home and take a two-hour nap in the middle of the afternoon af- ter working himself to sleep in physical therapy. But the workout junkie that he is, Raridon didn't back down. "Every day, it was the same thing," Giblin said. "He was ready to go, come back harder, do the rehab, do the ad- ditional work, do the strength training." STARTING TO BELIEVE Scott Raridon Jr. doesn't remember exactly when his son was physically cleared to return to the field this past fall. It was probably a couple weeks, he recalled, before his season debut against Louisville Oct. 7. One problem: Eli Raridon didn't feel confident enough to play. "Second ACL is always harder men- tally, and also with my surgery it was a little more traumatic on my knee with the patellar tendon," Raridon said. "I was getting a lot more pain than the first time. There were a lot of mental barri- ers coming back later on in the season, especially at Louisville." Raridon's strength tests all passed. He had put in the work and his right leg was as strong as his left one. Medically, noth- ing was stopping him from trotting out onto the field in a blue and gold uniform. Scott Raridon Jr. told him as much. "I was like, 'Your knee is ready,'" the elder Raridon said. "You need to start believing in that." Scott Raridon Jr. also knew that the No. 1 red flag in returning from injury was the lack of confidence, so he agreed with Notre Dame's staff that Eli Raridon playing in a game before he passed that threshold was a bad idea. "He's not really ready until he's ready," the elder Raridon said. "They weren't, like, clearing him but he refuses to play. It was like, 'Hey, we just need him to tell us that he's 100 percent on the mental side." Raridon met with a sports psychol- ogist at Notre Dame, which he said helped. He continued to hear it from Dr. Ratigan, from Hunt and from his dad, who works in orthopedic sales: "You're gonna be OK. You're gonna be OK. You're gonna be OK." The first step was the idea that he could move and not re-tear his ACL in a non-contact fashion, but the biggest step was the contact part. Raridon had to believe that he could get hit and be OK. In the end, that came with the added practices and the team's patience. The Irish, to their credit, did not rush Rari- don back. "I think it was just the cumulative weeks of practices and playing in games, just getting [past] the mental barrier that I'm feeling OK," Raridon said. Even after Raridon made his debut — 10 snaps, including 9 as a run blocker, in a 33-20 loss to Louisville — he still wasn't all the way there. He was confi- dent enough to play, but he gained more through live game action to the point where he felt like himself again. That happened the next week. "I would say about the USC game [on Oct. 14] was when I gained my confi- dence and started feeling normal again," Raridon said. "It took me some game play and some practices to get through that mental barrier." PAYING OFF Eli Raridon had to wait until his fifth game to catch his first collegiate pass, and even better, his first collegiate touchdown. He doesn't really remem- ber the latter. "Too much adrenaline," Raridon said. "I kind of blacked out there." On a slow-developing play action from the 19-yard line, Raridon pre- tended to block to his right before dart- ing into a corner route to the back-left pylon. He tracked the ball with a Wake Forest defender on his hip and hauled it in, controlling it through the ground. R a r i d o n m i g h t not remember do- ing any of that, but Giblin and his dad were at Notre Dame Stadium that day. They very much remember it. "Oh, it was awesome," Giblin said. "I couldn't tell if he maintained posses- sion when he went to the ground, so I had to wait for him to stand up. As soon as I saw him in the end zone stand up, I knew that he had the ball." "It was the opposite of when he got hurt again," Scott Raridon Jr. said. "Just feeling so happy for him after all he's been through." That moment probably should have happened at some point during the 2022 season, but it was worth the wait for Raridon and his family. Despite the two freak injuries, Raridon was all the way back. And the perseverance and resolve that allowed him to get there are a big part of why Notre Dame be- lieves he can be a star at tight end for the Irish. "I think he is one of the most driven athletes that I've ever worked with," Giblin said. "You get a guy like Eli, who's willing to do the work, put in the extra grind, and then you see it pay off." ✦ "It took me some game play and some practices to get through that mental barrier." RARIDON ON HIS RECOVERY FROM HIS SECOND ACL INJURY