Meet Notre Dame’s team chaplain: Prayer medals, social media and support in Marcus Freeman’s Year 1

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Father Nate Wills needed the right subject and didn’t let the biggest game of Marcus Freeman’s first season as head coach stop him. So as Notre Dame ran roughshod over Clemson on the field, its team chaplain worked the sidelines, looking for the perfect player to hold up that week’s prayer medal, the silver thumbnail-sized token players receive at team Mass before kickoff.

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That week, Wills had chosen the medal of St. Thomas Aquinas, a saint born nearly 800 years ago in Italy. Aquinas, perhaps more applicable to Notre Dame football as the name on multiple high schools the Irish recruit, was known by some as a “dumb ox” and underestimated for his size. That night, the biggest athletes on Notre Dame’s roster helped the Irish rush for 263 yards against one of the nation’s top defenses.

That all led Wills to Blake Fisher, sitting on the bench mid-game, where Notre Dame’s offensive line sets up shop between possessions. Fisher’s right hand, index and middle fingers taped, thumb also wrapped, dwarfed the medal that has “pray for us” stamped on the back. The right tackle smiled. Then Wills faded into the game day background, for reasons of custom and self-protection. Blessing the players as they return to the locker room before the game, at halftime and after the game doesn’t interfere with the traffic flow of a college football game. Grabbing a player on the sideline for a photo shoot in the middle of the game might.

“I have yet to get called into the principal’s office on this. I haven’t gotten in trouble yet. But I think I got pretty close that weekend,” Wills said. “I would not, nor would anyone, mess with (offensive line coach) Harry Hiestand. I got Blake to hold (the medal). One of the players said, ‘Just so you know, Coach was coming and I blocked him out.’ Way to go, O-line.”

Because moments must be posted on social media or they didn’t happen, even in a faith-based field, Wills created an Instagram account (@PrayLikeAChampionToday) to document them. To underscore Wills’ vibe — he wears an Apple Watch and considers a black Notre Dame football quarter-zip with Under Armour logo priestly apparel — the account includes a pitch-perfect parody of the moment when Tommy Rees screamed at Drew Pyne to do his “(expletive) job,” recorded before the Stanford game.

Did my job ✅

— natewills (@natewills) October 27, 2022

So no, solemnity is not required at all hours for Notre Dame’s team chaplain. That includes the time Wills picked out a location for a crucifix inside football’s indoor facility, then put it above the defibrillator and half-joked, “Look, there’s two life-saving devices right on one wall.” Or when he revisited his saint choice for Stanford weekend, St. Teresa of Ávila on her feast day, and wondered if the game went haywire because “she’s Spanish, so maybe more of a soccer fan.”

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Wills, who is also a director in Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program, travels with the team to road games and administers pregame Mass on Saturdays away from the Basilica. During the Shamrock Series weekend in Las Vegas, Wills concluded the Mass by reminding Notre Dame it was the home team against BYU and that “if you know anything about Las Vegas, it’s that the house always wins.” The team went nuts before heading to Allegiant Stadium.

After the game, Freeman asked Wills to repeat that line, catching the chaplain totally off-guard.

“I’m staying in my lane. That’s not my time to say anything. I’m standing back, waiting for the prayer to happen,” Wills said. “It looks relaxed, but in my brain I’m like, ‘What do they always say? Is it amen? OK, he means that.’ I just repeated that line.”

The house always wins#GoIrish

— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) October 9, 2022

Wills was also Freeman’s point of contact when the head coach began the process of converting to Catholicism last summer. The two knew each other during Freeman’s one season as defensive coordinator, but when Freeman was promoted to head coach last winter, Wills volunteered to stand down if the new head coach had another team chaplain in mind. Freeman shot down that notion immediately to keep Wills in his current role.

“He’s been amazing,” Freeman said. “To have that outlet for our players, I think it is important. Obviously he runs our Mass, but the ability to be a spiritual advisor or somebody that our players can go spend time with if they want to … they have it there.

“He’s been great for me personally, but also our program.”

If the counsel afforded by Wills offers intangible support for the Notre Dame football program, the prayer medals he hands out serve as tactile reminders of his work. The prayer medal tradition has existed since at least the first time Notre Dame played Alabama for a national title, back at the Sugar Bowl in 1973.

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Some players hold these medals dear during the season. Others discard them after each weekend. Senior offensive lineman Josh Lugg puts them in his suit pocket every week before heading to the stadium, then removes them all at the end of the season. Due to a finite number of saints available, Wills chooses medals on a five-year rotation. Lugg is one of a few players who may have duplicates.

“It’s something special,” Lugg said. “It’s something the guys really appreciate.”

Wills blesses nearly 200 medals for home games and 150 on the road. First, he replaces the flimsy clasp on each with a split ring more durable for a football player’s hands. After Mass, Bivin and assistant strength coach Fred Hale, who also serves as Freeman’s get-back coach, hand the medals out. Sometimes game day officials ask for extra medals inside the stadium. Sometimes flight attendants on road games do.

“It’s really beautiful. People will bring them to their families,” Wills said. “It’s a very Notre Dame thing.”

Wills tries to match the saints with that weekend’s game or where their feast days fall in the Catholic calendar.

For Navy, Wills chose Mary, Our Lady of the Rosary, whose historical significance is tied to a naval battle in 1571. Braden Lenzy held up the medal on the sideline after his circus touchdown catch. Last weekend before the Boston College game, the prayer medal was St. James the Greater, the message tied to the long pilgrimage to visit his remains in Spain. Fifth-year senior (with the potential for a sixth) Justin Ademilola held up the medal. Before the BYU game in Las Vegas, Wills got Jerome Bettis and Tim Brown to hold up medals of St. John Neumann, a relatively modern saint from the 1800s.

“I think it’s an opportunity to see things that are hiding in plain sight, stories, inspiration and people who are right there,” Wills said. “It’s an opportunity to build culture. You can build an appreciation for things that you can build more deeply. I’ve heard several of our players and several of our coaches say, I appreciate what we’re doing more because I understand it more.”

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About 18 months ago, Brian Kelly’s personal assistant Beth Rex approached Wills about finding the prayer medals that corresponded to each Kelly victory, ahead of the coach’s record-breaking 106th win against Wisconsin. The problem was that while former chaplain Rev. Mark Thesing maintained records of which saint went with which game, the actual medals were a jumbled mess.

“Father Mark gave me this huge box, ‘Here are all the extras from past years,’” Wills said. “It was a bit of a ‘Beautiful Mind’ situation. I had literally hundreds of medals spread out. It took forever, but now I have alphabetized packets of the saints medals.”

Kelly was presented with framed art of each prayer medal corresponding to each of his career wins after he beat Wisconsin, where coincidentally Wills had done his graduate work.

“I’m an education professor. I can’t pass up opportunities to teach on this stuff,” Wills said. “Sometimes we’re talking about saints that lived halfway across the world, 800 years ago. But we still find relevance in their story of their life today. And inspiration as well.

“The saints give us encouragement that there’s a million paths to God, right? And a million different ways in which we can connect and become closer to Christ. Walk in the Gug, there’s national championship trophies, Heisman Trophies. There’s encouragement to know that you’re not the first. There’s a path, and you can do it just like they did.”