Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/669106
ND SPORTS "I'm thrilled for him, but I'm more grateful that we've had him for four years, and I get to watch him make one more play like that at the end of a game." As with any sport, recruiting tal‑ ent — prospects like Sullivan and Kavanagh — has been another key to success for both programs. Corrigan's staff has assembled a top‑10 class every year since 2013, highlighted by Inside Lacrosse's No. 2 haul in 2014. And Halfpenny's program has matched that effort by at least one publication, including Inside Lacrosse's third‑ranked class nationally in 2015. "The reality is, it's Notre Dame," Halfpenny said. "When you call people and it's Notre Dame at the other end, they answer. "We're going out and identifying players that fit this brand — this fast, relentless pursuit of the ball on offense and defense. The beauti‑ ful combination is Notre Dame and the ACC. They're synonymous with athletic and academic excellence, and that's been a wonderful pack‑ age to sell. "You absolutely can come here. We've got an indoor facility and outdoor facility; weather doesn't matter here. We're a spring sport. We practiced in sunny and 70 de‑ gree weather today." For both programs, the next rung ahead is achieving postseason goals. The men's squad has knocked on the door of a national champi‑ onship for a few seasons now, and this could be the year that open‑ ing finally gets blown down. They advanced to the NCAA's Final Four in 2012, 2014 and 2015, but only advanced to the championship game in 2014 and ended that season with an 11‑9 loss to Duke in the title game. Halfpenny's team qualified for the NCAA Tournament in each of her first four seasons in South Bend — the first such occurrence in school history — and aims to ad‑ vance at least to the quarterfinals this year, after falling in the second round in two straight seasons. "It's all about taking the next step now," Halfpenny said. "We're in the toughest conference in the country, and we've done an outstanding job of growing every year. "It's all part of the building pro‑ cess. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to learn by losing, but I'm really proud of the brand that we're putting out there. We've been known as a defensive prowess for years, but our goal in August was to become more of an aggressive of‑ fense, so we took our brand and put it at the offensive end. "While we've continued to learn and grow with our personnel, I think we're finally getting to that stage of an aggressive and passion‑ ate prowess. "April is a big month for us to put the exclamation mark on it all." Looking ahead for both squads, more than one exclamation mark might be necessary. ✦