Catching Up With Former ND Athletes
Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 11:15PM By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- I count among the friends I've made in my 15-year news career a pair of former Notre Dame student-athletes, both of whom I worked with in the great city of Louisville, Ky.
Andrea Stahlman (nee Armento) played volleyball and Tom Parnell played baseball for the Irish, and each was nice enough to answer a few questions via email for me this week.
Both seemed to appreciate in their college days and still enjoy a few of the traditions that make an autumn game-day special in South Bend. Here's how Parnell described it:
"Home games were an incredible experience," he said. "We'd awake at 7 a.m., out the door to tailgate at 8, and start sipping warm Busch Light and Mad Dog 20/20 with the masses until game-time around 2:30 p.m. Alumni with motor homes were always a welcome sight, as they would pull us in for some great BBQ and home-cooked football feasts. Once inside the stadium, we were on our feet for four hours, cheering on the Irish, enjoying Sheriff McCarthy’s corny jokes in the fourth quarter and finishing every game arm-and-arm with friends singing the alma mater."
Added Stahlman, who, like Parnell, was at Notre Dame when Lou Holtz was coaching: "Campus is electrifying on game day. There is so much tradition. For a student I would think it is like no other college football atmosphere."
Stahlman said she liked to tap the well-known "Play Like A Champion Today" sign, and appreciated the classy touch of weekly paint jobs on the ND helmets, which included real specks of gold. One of her most memorable times as a Notre Dame athlete was when the volleyball team had a game out at rival USC the same weekend the football team was playing the Trojans.
Both Parnell's and Stahlman's fathers went to Notre Dame, and Parnell said he remembers wearing ND gear as a toddler, and at age 11 he began making the annual pilgrimage to South Bend. He knew even long before high school where he'd attend college.
"But during my senior year of high school, a rejection letter sent me to the doorstep of Holy Cross Junior College across the street from Notre Dame," Parnell recalled. "Ironically, the movie 'Rudy' came out my freshman year, and I was able to transfer my sophomore year."
Stahlman, a reserve for the Irish volleyball team, recalls her own "Rudy" moment in South Bend.
"Starting my senior home game and having everyone yelling, 'Rudy! Rudy!' was pretty funny," she said.
Parnell counts a 1993 Notre Dame defeat of visiting Florida State as the most memorable game he saw in person. The win sent the Irish to the top of the polls, but coach Holtz couldn't win a second national championship after ND's perfect season in 1988. The Irish haven't been close to a title since.
"The next three years found the Irish struggling against the top teams, and starting to show signs of the current climate," Parnell said. "The next three years saw ... equal doses of brilliance and baffling play-calling. I watched Holtz get carried off the field in my last home game as a senior, and thus began the Bob Davie-Tyrone Willingham-Charlie Weis disaster."
Stahlman, who has two young sons, also lamented the post-Holtz mediocrity, but said she still likes to get to South Bend to see old friends at least every other year when those hated Trojans come calling.
"I'm anxious to take my boys to the games, and I love re-connecting with my old teammates and college friends," she said.
She'll have a chance on Oct. 17 when USC and its highly heralded freshman quarterback, Matt Barkley, pay a visit for the annual beat-down.
Notre Dame, USC
Reader Comments (2)
"annual beat-down"???? Who besides Navy do you annually beat down. Go Sparty, let's make it SEVEN in a row.
Moager, please re-read the last graf. Annual beat-down refers to USC's yearly defeat of Notre Dame.