Play like a champion today.
Over the decades thousands of players have left the Notre Dame locker room and been moved by that simple message on a plain blue and gold wooden sign on the wall.
For Kirkland’s Chris Secreto and 49 other campers, that experience was made available via the Notre Dame Football Fantasy Camp on June 25-29. The five-day camp gave Notre Dame fans the chance to interact with the players and coaches they follow on the campus they love.
“Basically, it’s 50 crazy, passionate guys that pay a fair amount of money to go do this thing,” Secreto said.
Campers go through two days of two-a-day practices before the camp culminates with a flag football game on the field of Notre Dame Stadium. All the while campers get to learn from and interact with the Notre Dame coaching staff, past legends of the program and even current players.
The game itself also has a realistic flair: Crowd noise mixed with music from the school band is piped in through the stadium’s loud speakers, giving the feeling that the stands are full, even though only about 200 or 300 people attend the game, Secreto said.
The camp accommodates 50 people at a cost of more than $5,000 apiece.
Secreto said he’s been a Notre Dame fan since the age of eight. He’d watch the replays of Notre Dame games on Sunday mornings. Raised in the Catholic Church, Secreto was sold on the Irish as soon as he found out Notre Dame was a catholic school.
He estimated that over three quarters of the camp members didn’t attend Notre Dame, but were simply “long distance alums” or “subway alums;” guys who feel very strongly about the program, the school and everything associated with Notre Dame.
“It’s more than just football for guys like me,” Secreto said. “It’s living out a life-long dream… It’s my way to say now I’m connected with the university.”
The camp helped him overcome the regret of not applying to Notre Dame in high school, he said.
“It’s the biggest regret of my life that I didn’t even try to go there,” he said. “This is therapeutic. I’m a very content person and now I don’t have those same regrets.”
To create space for new members, the program limits campers to four years of eligibility. This summer was Secreto’s fourth, or senior, season.
“You either do one year or four years, once you do it a second year you have to do it all four,” Secreto said. “I’ve got it out of my system now… I’ve done my time and I owe my family some vacations to Europe.”
The camp also fulfilled another dream of Secreto’s: making it onto ESPN SportCenter’s “Top 10” plays. The final play of the camp’s flag football game involved a Hail Mary — an irony he said was not lost on the campers.
Going up for the prayer-of-a-long pass among a group of defenders, Secreto tipped it to teammate, who caught it and ran untouched into the end zone for a tie-breaking and game-winning score.
“It was surreal seeing myself on ESPN,” Secreto said. “ It was pretty exciting.”
