Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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starting role during spring football practice. "The guys on the team were excited about it. We got out in the local community a little bit more and made sure everybody knew about it. I think this is something that a lot of fans would like to do." Schmidt and a small committee of other players worked to plan the event with Uplifting Athletes, an organization that helps college football players develop charities for rare diseases. Uplifting Athletes provides some ideas and a bit of know-how, but tries to get each team on its roster to be as independent as possible when planning event, according to chapter manager Becky Mayes. "We provide the toolkit and they can build whatever they want," Mayes said. "Joe is a very enthusiastic, very motivated guy. He cares a lot." Schmidt said managing the logistics of setting up the event was less daunting than the first time around, but still more time consuming than he expected. Along with Uplifting Athletes, he got help from his par- ents, who plan an annual golf charity outing near their home in Southern California. Grewe and Schmidt first spent time together when the teenager was in the hospital during the 2012 season. They have stayed close since by occasionally eating dinner together and hanging out when Grewe visits the team at practice. "Me and Joe are really good friends. He is one of those guys that really came up to me and wanted to get to know me better and took time out of his day to visit me," said Grewe, who received a clean bill of health last month. His disease has been in remission for a full year. Grewe said his bowling scores topped out around the 140s, which was competitive with a lot of the Notre Dame players who were in attendance. UNDER THE DOME Senior linebacker Joe Schmidt (center) organized a meet-and-greet of Irish players and fans at a South Bend bowling alley May 3 to raise money for osteosarcoma (a rare form of bone cancer) research. PHOTO COURTESY JOE RAYMOND