Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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2015 RECRUITING ISSUE BY ANDREW IVINS Trevor Ruhland is the type of person that likes to keep an eye on the big pic- ture. He claims that his focus is on just two things — winning football games and doing whatever it takes to win them. So when the Cary-Grove High offen- sive lineman tore his meniscus playing basketball just a week and a half before National Signing Day Feb. 4, he didn't view it as a setback. No, he looked at it as an opportunity to get better. "I'm just lucky," Ruhland said. "It could have been something way worse, and that wouldn't have been good. But since it was just a meniscus, I'm still able to workout my arms, and hopefully that means I'll be a full-go by summer." Those are optimistic words coming for a student-athlete who's future flashed right before him with a non-contact in- jury, but if you anything about Ruhland you understand where the positive atti- tude comes from. He's a self-proclaimed kid from a suburban school outside of Chicago that brings a lunch-pail mental- ity to work every day. "In the three years he started, we played in two state title games," Cary- Grove head coach Brad Seaburg said. "For a player that's going to Notre Dame, I think he's very team oriented. "He's a guy who really wanted to do whatever it took to be successful. He understood the team's success went hand in hand with his individual suc- cess." Ruhland, who chose Notre Dame over the likes of Nebraska, Duke and North- western, was never one to promote him- self. He attended just a handful of re- cruiting camps and combines, and was Trevor ruhland has FuTure In MInd despITe Injury Ruhland, who blocked for a triple-option offense that ran for 4,377 yards in 2014, suffered a knee injury while playing basketball in late January. PHOTO COURTESY RIVALS.COM