A Special Trip | by Jay

Saw this on the Rivals recruiting wire this morning, an update on Irish commit Kerry Neal:

Neal ready for Notre Dame visit

Notre Dame commit Kerry Neal of Bunn, N.C., will take his first trip to South Bend, Ind., this weekend as he and several members of the Bunn High staff will be visiting. A local church sold chicken plate dinners to raise the money for Neal and the Bunn coaches to travel to Notre Dame this weekend. Neal also added two offers from Alabama and Nebraska this week.

I know it probably shouldn't have, but that bolded line really jumped out at me. Given the economic profile of a "typical" Notre Dame student, a trip to ND doesn't seem like a prohibitive expense; certainly not so pricey that you'd have to convene a Church fundraiser to cover the cost. And yet, amid the scores of kids at ND who got keys to a car on their 16th birthday and fly to exotic spring break destinations each year, it's easy to overlook fellow classmates (or potential classmates) who don't have the same means. We shouldn't, of course, but sometimes we do. Bunn, North Carolina, is a town of 357, half a square mile in land, where the median income for a family is $45,000 a year and 16% of the population is below the poverty line. For Neal and the parishoners at that church in Bunn (whether the church was Catholic or not), making a trip to Notre Dame is not a run-of-the-mill thing, as it is for so many other prospective freshmen.

So, thanks to those church members who made this trip for Kerry and his coaches possible.