Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM NOV. 15, 2025 17 sessions. Then straight to work as a con- crete contractor and landscaper. Manual, intensive labor, all day, even after starting early and enduring gru- eling life-preserving treatment most people couldn't begin to imagine. "Not once did you see him flinch or complain, no matter how many surgeries he went through," Donovan said. "He's always straight back to work, always head down going to work because he wants to set an example to us that he's not going to get beat. No matter what gets thrown at him, he's not going to get beat." DEFENDING THE FAMILY NAME Donovan has always taken his father's example to heart. "To see my dad and the stuff he went through, it was hard not to be gritty for him," he said. The football field is a me- dium for him to unleash that grit. The sport isn't life or death, but it might as well be. Every time Donovan gets be- tween the lines, he isn't just doing it for himself. He's do- ing it for the 10 guys he's on the field with. For the 11 guys on the other side of the ball whose job is to back the defense up, and vice versa. For Notre Dame as a whole. For Kurt. For his two other siblings. His mom. His dad. Oh, absolutely, his dad. He's doing it for family. That's the Pittsburgh way. "And that's the bottom line," Kurt Sr. told Blue & Gold Illustrated. "What does that family name mean to you? To me, it means everything. If your name's gar- bage, you don't get no respect. You don't get no respect. It just means everything. "When people hear our name, they know who the boys are. People know our name, they know who my wife is, they know who I am, they know who my brother is. We're a no-nonsense family. To have pride in your name and your family history, it means everything." Kurt Sr. practices what he preaches. If the bus scene way back when wasn't evi- dence enough of a Hinish defending his name, another fracas that occurred in the stands at Alumni Stadium on the campus of Boston College when Notre Dame was there to play the Eagles Nov. 1 sure was. Kurt Sr. nearly had his foot amputated because a side effect of one of the types of chemo he's been subjected to is deteri- oration of the dermis. Or, as Kurt Sr. put it, "it eats a hole in your skin." It com- promised his foot so badly to the point of him breaking bones while trying to work through the debilitating dilemma. There's been less work for Kurt Sr. since then, much to his chagrin, but he still gets around. He went to Boston Col- lege for the game, and he likes to stand while watching Donovan play. But he can only stand for so long with the state of his foot, so he was back and forth through the aisle to get from the concourse to his seat and back. Eventually, a few BC fans sat on the steps in Kurt Sr.'s path. "So I said, 'Hey, can you please go?' And I was real nice about it," Kurt Sr. said. "I said, 'Take your seats' or what- ever. And he's like, 'C'mon, dude. We're just trying to watch the game, bro.' And it got to a point where they were either going to get beat up or they had to leave. That's the way it goes." Don't like it? Leave. EMBODYING THE LIFESTYLE Donovan caught some of the commo- tion from the sideline. He wasn't com- pletely sure his father was at the forefront of it, but he had a feeling. Sure enough. Is the whole thing worth bragging about on the surface? Probably not. But is there something to be said about sticking up for yourself and not tak- ing anything from anybody? Abso- lutely. If you don't stick up for yourself as a Yinzer, a common term for someone from Pittsburgh, you're not really a true Yinzer in the first place. Donovan doesn't have that problem. "He embodies it," his brother Kurt said. "But I think it's one of those things where you either are that way, or you aren't that way. You're not going to teach someone to be that way. You ei- ther are that way or you aren't that way. Everyone from my mom, to my cous- ins, to my other brother, my sister, my nephew, everybody with the last name Hinish is like that." Having coached both Kurt and Dono- van at Notre Dame, Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman is well indoctri- nated in the Hinish family's ways. Free- man said for all that Kurt Sr. has been through, he still thinks it's the kids' mother, Tawnie, who is the toughest of the bunch. She has a special connection with Donovan, him being her youngest. She doesn't just call him her pit bull; she calls him her bear cub, too. Donovan has a tattoo of two bears on his shin with a moon hanging over them. It's scripted, "I love you to the moon and back." It's not that Donovan is some big softie. (Well, he sort of is, in a way; his brother said if there's one thing you need to know about him it's that he is "a very, very, very, very loving and protective family mem- ber.") Moreover, it's that he knows where he came from and that if it weren't for his mom doing all she did for her children when Kurt Sr. couldn't be there because he was at the hospital or one of the many doctor's offices he's been forced to frequent, the odds of him simply being at Notre Dame — let alone being a team captain — would be much slimmer. Much slimmer, but not nonexistent. He was always going to find a way. That's what a Hinish does. "I think he is a consistent person and high achievers are consistent, right?" Freeman said. "He consistently chooses hard. When I think of Donovan Hinish, I think of a guy that, just from where he's from, how he was raised, from his par- ents, his brother and sister, he is a guy that, that's who he is. He's a guy that consistently chooses hard. And when you do that enough in practice, then all of a sudden it happens in a game. That becomes who you are. "And he's a tough, tough guy battling through injuries and continuing to put team first. Every week his role might change a little bit, but he puts team first while battling through tough injuries. I'm glad we have him. And his brother was another great example of that. That's how he does it, right? He's not a big, rah-rah talk guy. He's 'a go about my business' every single day. And Sat- urdays are no different." ✦ "He's a tough, tough guy battling through injuries and continuing to put team first. Every week his role might change a little bit, but he puts team first while battling through tough injuries. I'm glad we have him." NOTRE DAME HEAD COACH MARCUS FREEMAN ON HINISH