Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 4, 2025 19 Lambert was a "hallway kid," Ma- honey remembers, and probably the best he's ever seen. He came to Catho- lic Memorial to play soccer, which he planned to do until the football coach- ing staff saw him in the hallway and thought, "Absolutely not." They saw rare traits, such as his size and his feet, that they believed would turn him into one of the best left tackles in the country. And they were right — Lambert is a rare football player, on and off the field. "He's obviously a talented player," Notre Dame head coach Marcus Free- man said. "We knew that from the mo- ment he walked in here." FAMILY BUSINESS Guerline Lambert immigrated from Haiti to the United States in 1996, alongside her mother and her sister. Her father was their sponsor; he had been living in Massachusetts since 1980. Kesner Lambert, her eventual hus- band, would join them four years later. They began dating shortly after, and they were married in 2002. "We knew each other back in Haiti, because I was his sister's best friend since I was 9," Guerline Lambert told BGI, laughing. When they started their family, edu- cation was the Lamberts' No. 1 priority. Guerby's older brother, Ralph, has his master's degree and works in engineer- ing management. His older sister, Ke- shanne, is almost done with her nurs- ing program. And of course, Guerby is studying economics at Notre Dame (he initially chose civil engineering as his major, but he switched). "My dream was to study gynecology," Guerline Lambert said. "As of right now, I'm 48. I'm still dreaming of it. I don't want my kids to be 48, dreaming of what they wanted to be. So that's why I said, 'Whatever you want to be, I'll support you until my last breath.'" From the time Guerby Lambert was 3 years old, his mom recalls, he was pushed by his parents to be great in the classroom. He said that if his mom saw a 97 or a 98 on his report card, she would ask him why it wasn't a 100. "She was on top of me about that," Lambert said. "That definitely comes from them. They've also just pushed me to try my best and be the best in everything that I do. … Because they know that academics can open a billion doors for you." That's why Lambert, the No. 42 re- cruit in the Rivals Industry Ranking, had Harvard on his final list of schools alongside Notre Dame, Boston College and Ohio State. He wanted a school that would challenge him academically, and he kept that a high priority until the end. "It came down to us and Harvard," Freeman said, smiling, in December 2023 when Lambert signed with the Irish. "And you're talking about a top- 50 recruit in the country." At Notre Dame, Lambert has taken advantage of what the university has to offer. He said when he enrolled that he wanted to take the "hardest classes," the most difficult of which this semester is intermediate theory for microeconomics. "Just the time management, I'd say," Lambert said when asked what his big- gest academic challenge is. "Econ is not an easy major." It was school, in fact, that convinced Guerline Lambert to let her son play football. All she knew about American football were the injury-related horror stories, and she was against the idea. But Lambert's trainer, also of Haitian descent, convinced her. "He was like, 'This could open a lot of doors for him. He could get free col- lege,'" Lambert said. "And she was like, 'All right, I'll let him try it out.'" Lambert promised his mom that he would keep his grades up, and he did. Guerline Lambert held up her end of the bargain, too, and embraced her son's new sport. "She is the biggest football fan I know," Lambert said. "She'll watch any NFL game. She'll watch any team. She doesn't care who's playing. She'll watch every single game." RAPID DEVELOPMENT Every snap, Lambert lines up next to veteran right tackle Aamil Wagner. Wag- ner will tell the youngster what he sees pre-snap, which was touch-and-go for a while but is now paying dividends. "At first it was gibberish and then now it's like 'OK, I'm understanding. It's slowing down to me,'" Lambert said. "He's a great communicator. Some- times he tells me what I'm about to do before I do it." That's a microcosm of Lambert's growth — and the growth of Notre Dame's offensive line — since Week 1 at Miami. The youngster made that block on Carr's touchdown run, but he largely strug- gled against the Hurricanes. Since then, though, the progress has been obvious. "[Offensive line] coach [Joe] Rudolph, he was telling me as a starter your big- gest leap is going to be from Week 1 to Week 2," Lambert said. "First time play- ing, and I think that was true for me so far. I feel like from the first week to the second week, I was able to learn the speed of the game." Lambert's development was rapid in high school, too, after he switched from soccer to football. Several traits that helped him on the pitch translated to the field, such as footwork and playing in space. Freeman has called him the "Dancing Bear" for his movement skills at 6-foot-7, 335 pounds. In Week 3 against Purdue, Lambert's skill set was on full display — particu- larly when he pulled or climbed to the second level. "I don't know how many rushing yards we had, but they did a heck of a job in the run game," Freeman said. "There's bodies on bodies, when you see big guys covering up big guys." Lambert is still raw from a technical standpoint, but he gets after it when he has the chance to play in space. That's along the lines of what Mahoney saw in high school; even though there were aspects he could improve, his potential was obvious then and even more so now. You don't need to tell his mom that, though. She's seen it all his life. "If Guerby wants to be No. 1 in the country, I can tell you he is capable of doing that," Guerline Lambert said. "Because the thing is, once he says yes for something and puts his mind on it, he will just push for the best." ✦ "He's obviously a talented player. We knew that from the moment he walked in here." NOTRE DAME HEAD COACH MARCUS FREEMAN ON LAMBERT