By Mallory Mattingly
Fr. Nate Wills couldn’t be more grateful for his position as Notre Dame football’s team chaplain.
“It’s been just blessing upon blessing,” he told Irish Illustrated Interviews of his role with the team. “It’s not something I ever expected…the best part about it is honestly that I get to see another side of our university, of the football team. I get to see kind of our our players in three dimensions, to see, you know, their personal and spiritual life, the ways in which they’re so thoughtful and creative and hungry and inquisitive. I mean, those are just real gifts.”
He took on the position in 2018, and since then, he’s been impressed to see that “most of our guys are just very serious about their faith.”
“They’re intense about everything in their life,” he explained. “They’re intense about the way they work out. They’re intense about their studies. They’re intense about everything and so why wouldn’t they be intense about living out their faith life?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3TM7hGed4I
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He thinks the “sacred stories from the sidelines” are worth sharing, so he published a book called
Wills shared on his social media that through his book, readers can “Join the players’ walk to the stadium, where a roaring crowd and the Notre Dame band create an electrifying atmosphere. Step inside practices and the training facility, where the team embraces the motto: ‘Choose hard’ and pursues ‘team glory.’ [And] discover how faith is embedded in every aspect of the program, from game-day rituals to personal moments of reflection.”
But some of his favorite sideline moments didn’t make it into the book.
“I think of the big victories, right? Like the big wins and Clemson when all the students rushed the field during COVID, that was just an awesome game,” Wills revealed. “I didn’t talk about that in the book.”
Another special moment came during his first season as a chaplain in 2018.
“One of the things that was really cool is that we played Ball State, and a kid who was in at St. Joe Parish [the parish Wills worked at previously], who grew up there as a kid and played for Ball State, Danny Pinter,” he said. “And he was just the sweetest kid growing up, and I remember seeing him. He was stretching out in the end zone, and I went over and just kind of waved to him, and he walked over and gave this big bear hug. I mean, he’s a big dude.”
“That kind of came full circle for me; [it] was just really remarkable, and he’s not the only one,” Wills added. “There have been other guys who went to the St. Joe grade school and now are, you know, [are] on the team, and right now there are two guys who went to my high school on the team. I think there are a lot of little things like that.”
Ultimately, Wills recognizes the importance of his role in the players’ lives.
“I think my role is to just remind them of this fact: You are more than what you can do on Saturday,” he told Today’s Catholic in 2023. “You are a beloved child of God before and after you’ve ever stepped on the field, and there’s nothing that you can do in your life to change that identity…Because football will go away. Football will not always be there in your life. And there’s so much more to you and to the world.”
His new book,
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