'A unicorn': How Notre Dame has 'once in a lifetime' player in freshman LB Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa

Four-year-old Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa was just as resilient in comparison to his peers as the teenage version of himself, and that’s someone who’s a regular rotation piece in Notre Dame’s 2024 linebacking corps. Someone who recorded 12 total tackles in his first three games for the Fighting Irish and his first collegiate interception in the third.

The No. 43 player in the class of 2024, the No. 4 linebacker in that group and No. 27 in your Notre Dame game day program is a gamer. A football guy. He’s always been that way.

Viliamu-Asa’s pre-school flag football team was losing to a rival, if there is such a thing for head-to-head bouts among boys who don’t need all the fingers on one hand to count their age. Viliamu-Asa got kicked in the head during the game. A bump the size of a baseball sprouted above his eyebrow. His mother, Taliuta Viliamu-Asa, prepared to take her son to the hospital.

Or so she thought.

“Kyngstonn just starts crying,” she told Blue & Gold. “And he says, ‘Mom, I want to go to the hospital after I play this game.’”

Taliuta’s motherly instincts quickly shifted from cautionary and protective to understanding and trusting. Children are hardheaded. Sometimes, quite literally.

She let Kyngstonn finish the game. Her husband signed off on the decision.

“He went back in there and just destroyed it,” Taliuta said. “I mean, just destroyed it.”

Kyngstonn’s team came back and won. Kyngstonn’s teams usually win. He’s a product of St. John Bosco High School, the same all-boys powerhouse preps program that produced the likes of MLB All-Stars Nomar Garciapara and Evan Longoria and two-time Super Bowl champion and current Kansas City Chiefs defensive back Trent McDuffie and multiple other gridiron greats who made it to the NFL. Anyone who suits up for Bosco grows accustomed to winning.

There’s something about Viliamu-Asa, though, that’s just different on top of being the prototypical Bosco Brave. His high school head coach, Jason Negro, would know. So would Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden.

“His level of play is certainly something that’s spectacular,” Negro told Blue & Gold. “I refer to him a lot of times as a unicorn. In terms of football, he’s just so versatile. So dynamic. He can pretty much do anything. He could probably play every position on the field. He’s a once in a lifetime type guy.”

“I just see a young man that practices with a purpose every day, and I mean detailed,” Golden added. “I could talk about 6-7 instances today where maybe the average player or the slightly above average player would tag off. I see him trying to work to break down a stiff arm, I see him working a stab, I see him understanding the fit or when to leverage and when to go backdoor. He uses every rep in practice.”

The average freshman gets humbled in practices. Viliamu-Asa isn’t the average freshman, just like he wasn’t the average 4-year-old. He’s doing things kids his age can’t, like anticipating where a play is going and getting there while another first-year linebackers might be a few steps late in the same situation. Their comprehension skills in real time aren’t as sharp. Not many toddlers would have asked to get back into the game way back when, either. Viliamu-Asa understood the moment. Understood where he needed to be. He’s still that way today.

“He’s very, very instinctual,” Negro said. “He’s always at the right place at the right time. That’s probably his biggest strength, intelligence.”

It’s not like Viliamu-Asa came in as a know-it-all, do-it-all type of early enrollee, though. He said he started leaning on the only senior in his position group, graduate student Jack Kiser, from the first day he arrived in South Bend in January. He takes Golden’s coaching seriously, as he did Negro’s.

Innate, God-given, “once in a lifetime,” as Negro coined it, ability? Absolutely. But that’s probably not even the half of it. Most of what has allowed Viliamu-Asa to be a regular contributor for Notre Dame in year one is a product of dedication.

Viliamu-Asa soaks up everything he can from Notre Dame linebackers coach Max Bullough, for instance, who was more recently in his shoes than Negro, Golden or anyone else not named Kiser or any other teammates.

“He brings a great energy to the room,” Viliamu-Asa said. “He’s elevated my game as far as being violent, bringing the same energy every day and being intentional about what I do.”

There’s only one time Taliuta could tell her son wasn’t being violent, energetic and intentional on a football field; his first game back from the ACL and MCL tears he suffered in his freshman season at Bosco. The injury occurred at the tail end of spring 2021 in a shortened COVID season. Viliamu-Asa didn’t play in another competitive football game again until the fall of 2022. His knee was busted up pretty bad, and he didn’t take any chances coming back too soon.

He wondered if he’d come back at all.

“He doubted a lot that he would,” Taliuta said. “He doubted a lot that he would even play football again.”

In his heart of hearts, though, he believed. Belief isn’t just a mindset. It’s actions. Intentions, as Bullough would have it. Viliamu-Asa didn’t distance himself from football because he couldn’t play and had a dark voice in his head telling him that it was all over for him. He got closer to it and let a lighter voice block the baleful one out.

“He was an inspiration for all of us because he certainly had every excuse in the world to not show up to practice or take periods off or not work out when he was supposed to be working out, and he never did that,” Negro said.

Viliamu-Asa went to meetings. Served and studied as a player-coach at practices. He only ever wasn’t with the team when he was at therapy.

“Which was very rare because he was schedule it around our practices,” Negro said.

It still wasn’t easy. Rehabilitation is never the smooth route. It’s bumpy and full of bruises, literal and figurative. But ask anyone like Viliamu-Asa who’s gotten through it and they’ll tell you the same thing.

The grass is actually greener.

“To remember what those days were like, I remember how I felt, the doubt that I had and other people had in my future, to know where I’m at, I’m blessed and thankful I got through that process,” Viliamu-Asa said. “I didn’t get through it by myself. I had a great support system. And I give God all the glory for that.” 

Sometimes you do have to take a trip to the hospital instead of shaking (crying?) it off and going back in. Viliamu-Asa has done both in his 15 years or so playing the game he loves. He doesn’t know if he’ll have to do either again before he’s done. That’s out of his control. Within it? Competing every day like it’s his last.

No problem for KVA.

“He’ll do anything you ask him to do,” Negro said. “That’s always a treat, when your best players are willing to do anything, because it gets everyone else to fall in line.”