BGI Special Edition

2013 Notre Dame Football Preview

Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football

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Notre Dame's dream season in 2012 ended in the BCS National Championship Game, when Alabama's 42-14 beating on the Fighting Irish extended the SEC's streak of national titles to seven. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL Can The T SOUTH BE CAUGHT? A culture of year-round football below the Mason-Dixon Line is churning out more and more of the country's best prospects and has left the rest of the nation searching for a way to keep up 32 ! BY DAN MURPHY he plans for Paul Szczesny's 7,000-square-foot facility in the suburbs of Chicago include an artificial turf football field, a classroom equipped for film study and a handful of other training tools he'd rather keep to himself for the moment. Szczesny started training high school football players who hope to play at the next level three years ago. His client list, a mixture of average players with big dreams and some of the Midwest's top blue-chip prospects, has grown at an accelerating pace. A little more than a year ago, he and his staff of former collegiate players scraped together 20 skill-position athletes to form a team that played in seven-on-seven tournaments throughout the region. This year, 180 athletes from the area tried out for the team. The new training warehouse is the next step for Szczesny's Core 6 Athletes, part of an industry of year-round football trainers that is picking up steam in the Midwest and around the country. He said he set out with an aim to level the playing field for athletes trying to compete for college scholarships against their peers from southern states, where practicing football is as much a part of the daily routine as lunch and dinner. "That's been the mindset since I started. That's the whole point in starting Core 6 for year-round football," he said. "I think it's getting to the point where there is a demand for it, where people have seen the benefit of it." BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2013 FOOTBALL PREVIEW 32-35.Can the North Rise Again.indd 32 6/25/13 10:44 AM

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