‘Ruthlessly competitive’: How Chris Ash worked his way from small-town Iowa to Notre Dame football

SOUTH BEND— Half a lifetime ago, long before he would land at Notre Dame football as the replacement for the reigning Broyles Award winner, Chris Ash slept on the couch in the Drake football office.

This was 1997, and funds were limited at the Division I-AA program. Yet Ash, just a year removed from an inspirational career as a Bulldogs safety and special teamer, didn’t mind roughing it.

“It was a very low-paying, menial job,” former Drake coach Rob Ash (no relation) said in a phone interview. “He said, ‘I don’t care. I want to coach.’ “

Two or three weeks into the arrangement, Rob Ash noticed something unusual about his new hire.

“He was always in the office when I got there, and he was always there when I left,” the elder Ash said. “Finally, I said, ‘You’re spending a lot of time in the office.’ “

The younger Ash had to confess.

“Coach, I’m sleeping here.”

Ash was on a mission to learn everything he could about the game while working on a staff of just two full-time assistants and a revolving crew of low-paid dreamers. This included reading through a collection of thick coaching manuals that lined the walls of the Drake football office.

“I had probably 30 or 40 of those manuals that each had 30 or 40 football lectures in them,” Rob Ash said. “They were these big manuals from the ‘coach of the year’ clinic. That’s what Chris did. He just sat in the office at night and read those manuals.”

Growing up in Ottumwa, a southern Iowa town of about 25,000, the younger Ash once recalled a boyhood regimen of “nonstop work.” He’d wake at 4 a.m. to deliver newspapers; after school and on weekends, he’d paint houses or work in the cornfields.

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/ruthlessly-competitive-chris-ash-worked-131946481.html

Author : South Bend Tribune

Publish date : 2025-02-25 13:19:00

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