Braden Lenzy Pt. I: Emerging Notre Dame Star, Impact Of Anime, Harry Potter
*Warning: this article contains spoilers for the movie Avengers: Endgame.
A cosmic force central to the Marvel Comic multiverse and the Avengers film series is the power that comes from collecting all six Infinity Stones. When used in coordination with one another, the energy from the six stones has the ability to wipe out half of the universe or bring it back to life.
Watchers of Avengers: Endgame know that trying to handle this much power can have fatal consequences, but apparently Notre Dame sophomore wide receiver Braden Lenzy is strong enough to withstand the adversarial effects.
He felt this level of cosmic energy moments after catching a 52-yard bomb from fellow sophomore and backup quarterback Phil Jurkovec in the second half of the week-three matchup against New Mexico — his first collegiate reception.
“I was just looking up; It was like finally, the time has come,” Lenzy said to teammates on the sidelines. “It felt like I just got all the Infinity Stones.”
Hyperbole aside, that catch and the touchdown he scored later in the game cemented the young wide receiver as a highly anticipated candidate for offensive breakout player of the year — an award no one was actually given at Echoes 2019, but Lenzy was certainly deserving of it.
Every time he touched the ball this season, whether that be from catching the ball on a deep post route or taking a handoff on a jet sweep, Fighting Irish fans knew the electric Lenzy had a chance to score.
During the 12-game regular season, he touched the ball 20 times, either in the passing game or on jet sweeps, producing 435 yards and a touchdown. That's good for 21.8 yards per play.
His sideline statement against New Mexico about the Infinity Stones also provided insight into Lenzy’s pop culture interests and the fantasy worlds he loves, which have had a significant impact on his life, from Harry Potter to anime.
Lenzy first began to show enthusiasm for anime while living in Taiwan. He was around the age of 10 and his family moved there because his father, Melvin Lenzy, had taken on a new role with Nike as the company’s director of marketing in the East Asain country.
“Probably the most impactful year and a half for me was in Taiwan cause that's when I first got into Anime and things like that,” Lenzy said. “I'm a big nerd, so I like all that stuff, and I didn't even know what it was until I got there. With sports, you could go out there and be really good at kickball and no one cares but you come up to school with the best Bakugan (a Japanese anime series and strategic card game) and you're a legend.”
Given this information, it's fitting that the Notre Dame video team gave Lenzy a Pikachu tail (a popular character from the Japanese cartoon Pokémon) in a video of the wide receiver taking a jet sweep 51 yards for a touchdown against USC.
Harry Potter and his wizarding world is another favorite of his, an interest he shares with his mother and younger brother.
"It's pretty cut and dry, Harry Potter is just sick," Lenzy said.
They were so loyal to the seven-part book and film series that he and his family often ignored other popular fantasy universes, such as the intergalactic cosmos depicted in Star Wars.
This semester, he took a class that required him to watch some of the original Star War Trilogy, so he decided to get the film series a chance, but seeing them did little to change his mind.
"Star Wars is, I guess, cool, and it's probably impacted more people, but the graphics for me are a big deal," Lenzy said. "The fight scenes, they're just lame. They're so anti-climatic. It's not for me."
While Lenzy can be opinionated and stubborn when it comes to his pop-culture tastes, he has been willing to jump on the bandwagon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He and then-teammate safety Derrik Allen, who transferred to Georgia Tech during fall camp, went to see Avengers: Endgame in theaters in the spring and it had a pretty powerful impact on both of them. This was special the case during the action-packed final battle scene when one of the film's main characters, Iron Man played by Robert Downey, Jr., dies at the end of the movie.
"I might've sat in the car with Derrik Allen for like 30 minutes,' Lenzy said. "We were just like, 'man, I can't believe that just happened. Like he's really dead.' I just remembered sitting in the theater in 2008 watching Tony Stark for the first time, and then [being] in the car like, 'man, he's really dead.' That's crazy.
"I cried, then I was hype and then I cried again. I was up and down. It was tough. [Derrik] was too. We were struggling. We were next to like these two little kids, they didn't even cry."
The wide range of emotions he felt that day would be a theme for his sophomore campaign, one that came with great highs and significant lows.
*Braden Lenzy Part II will be published tomorrow
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