From family farm to football field, Notre Dame lineman Billy Schrauth takes no shortcuts

Tim Schrauth provides a quick and no-bull answer when he’s asked about the expectations he holds for his son Billy Schrauth at Notre Dame, and they have nothing to do with football.

It would be easy for a proud papa to get caught up in the hype and headlines when Billy — a sophomore Irish offensive lineman — earned his first career start today against Wake Forest. 

Instead, the elder Schrauth takes a drastically different approach.

“If you look at the big piechart of life, football is going to be such a thin slice, and I truly believe that,” Tim Schrauth shared with a warm chuckle. “Yeah, Billy’s a football player. But truthfully, that doesn’t mean jack squat to me compared to him being a good person. Just because you’re on the field at Notre Dame doesn’t mean you’re better than anybody else.”

Tim’s message of respect and hard work is a consistent one that has been ingrained in Billy and each of the seven other children in his family all the way back to when as youngsters they’d all pitch in around the family’s cattle farm in rural Campbellsport, Wis.

Whether it was cleaning barns, mowing grass, washing trailers, milking cows, or whatever else he was asked to do, helping his parents around their modest family farm was a way of life for Billy growing up, as were the lessons he learned while doing his chores. 

“My upbringing taught me that nothing is given to you, everything is earned, and I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he said. “I want to feel that feeling of earning an opportunity, of earning what’s in front of me.” 

And what’s in front of Billy Schrauth is a chance to play his way the rest of this season into an opening-day starter spot in 2024. 

“I owe my evolution to my teammates, they’ve been pushing me to get better. But I put a lot of pressure on myself too,” Billy said. “It’s been good to see the progression. It’s been hard and I’ve had to put a lot of work in.”

An Unlikely Course

The fact that Billy Schrauth even ended up at Notre Dame was an unlikely and pleasant development. 

It’s no secret that standout players from The Badger State — especially offensive linemen — almost dutifully play their college football at the University of Wisconsin.

In fact, Schrauth became the first high school player from Wisconsin to sign with the Fighting Irish since offensive lineman Brian Beidatsch did so in 2001. 

But something felt different about Notre Dame for the entire Schrauth family. It was an attraction that Billy couldn’t ignore while he was being recruited out of little St. Mary’s Springs Academy — about a 200 enrollment in grades 9-12 — by Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly and Irish offensive line coach Jeff Quinn. 

Schrauth was rated as a four-star recruit, the No. 2 overall prospect in Wisconsin and the nation’s No. 9 interior lineman, per the On3.com Consensus rankings. 

Kelly and Quinn both departed before Schrauth signed his national letter of intent. But Schrauth stayed true to his verbal commitment when Marcus Freeman was hired as head coach and two months later brought in Harry Hiestand as his first offensive line coach. 

“Coaches come and go,” Billy said. “But culture, and the stuff that is really important that are instilled in programs, and the tradition, that never leaves. That was something that I thought about a lot and it drew me to Notre Dame.”

Coach Freeman made certain that Schrauth wouldn’t end up elsewhere. Only minutes after Freeman was introduced as the next Irish head coach in December of 2021, the new Irish skipper was whisked away and put on a flight to Fond du Lac, Wis., for an in-person visit with his star recruit. Schrauth held offers from Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin and Oregon, just to name a few. So, he had plenty of terrific Plan B options that Freeman wanted to immediately squash. 

“I better be the No. 1 recruiter,” Freeman said before the trip, stressing the importance of keeping his first recruiting class together. 

Hiestand spent only the 2022 season under Freeman at Notre Dame — Schrauth’s freshman year — and traded his whistle for retirement last February.

The next chapter

But as fate would have it, a familiar face was brought in this preseason to replace Hiestand when Freeman hired veteran Joe Rudolph as his next offensive line coach. Rudolph recruited Billy to play for Wisconsin a few years prior when the former was an assistant in Madison, and the two built a strong and lasting relationship.

Schrauth arrived to Notre Dame as an early enrollee freshman in January of 2022 but never cracked the lineup, in part because foot surgery required about four months of rehab and kept him out of spring ball.

Fully recovered, the 6-foot-5, 311-pound 2022 All-American Bowl invitee came out of spring ball this year healthy and looking like a lock to become an opening-day starter at one of the guard spots against Navy in Dublin, Ireland.

Instead, he was beaten out during fall camp by junior Pat Coogan on the left side and junior Rocco Spindler on the right. 

But in a case of one man’s misery is another’s opportunity, when a knee injury and subsequent surgery sidelined Spindler for the rest of this season, Schrauth was the next man in, and ready to go. 

“Billy wants to play, he’s a competitive guy,” Tim Schrauth said. “But I always told him to have patience because everybody at Notre Dame is a good football player. But when you get your opportunity seize the moment.”