Sam Hartman Has Won The Notre Dame Locker Room
Veteran Sam Hartman was the biggest free agent on the college football market when the transfer portal opened last December. The now 24-year-old quarterback brought his 45 career starts and nearly 1,600 pass attempts from his first five seasons at Wake Forest with him to Notre Dame. He could have approached his role as a “arm for hire.”
That's not how things have gone for Hartman since his arrival on campus in January. Sure, there was a feeling out process for him as he got familiar with his new surroundings, teammates and coaches. There was also the matter of the spring competition for the starting job with Tyler Buchner, who has since transferred to Alabama.
As the quarterback, Hartman still needed to win the locker room. Without this it wouldn't matter how many yards he's thrown for or touchdowns he passed during his Wake Forest career.
It didn’t happen overnight, but eight-plus months since arriving at Notre Dame, Fighting Irish quarterbacks coach Gino Guidugli is confident in Hartman’s place on the team.
"We had a thing this summer with (strength and performance) Coach (Matt) Balis, where they kind of gave awards out based on the summer training,” Guidugli explained. "Sam received one of these awards, but you could just tell by the reaction of the crowd. We were all in the auditorium in the Gug, and they said Sam's name. The reaction of his teammates told you that he has won the locker room, and he'll be a great leader for those teams.
"Sometimes there's a feeling-out process involved, like in the spring when he and Tyler were both here, you’ve got two guys vying for a position,” Guidugli continued. “It's hard for one to kind of establish himself as a leader. They're both trying to do it and with Tyler's exit, it became clear who the guy was going to be. Sam took the bull by the horns and this summer did a great job with those guys in the summer — where the coaches can't be around. It's kind of player-led — of leading the offensive side of the ball in everything we did — and you can see it now in fall camp.”
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