Future Notre Dame OT Charles Jagusah takes heart in the face of adversity
The fact that Charles Jagusah played more than half his senior football season on a Rock Island (Ill.) Alleman High School team going nowhere, with a PCL tear that would require surgery, says something about his pain threshold.
And even more about the soon-to-be Notre Dame offensive tackle’s quest to improve himself and everyone around him, no matter what the circumstances.
“I thought I had pulled a hammy and just kept going,” Jagusah said this week of the right knee injury that was surgically repaired on Feb. 6.
Kept going on a team whose only loss closer than 40 points over the six-game stretch that he played injured — and both ways, offense and defense, at that — was a 2-0 forfeit to Moline.
How that will translate to the Notre Dame career for one of 11 Irish summer-arriving freshman football players, set to start classes June 12, is something recruiting analysts labored to put into precise context for the Rivals four-star prospect, who projected as a five-star recruit by some.
With so much pointing to the best is yet to come.
“There’s three things you always look for in a tackle in his situation,” said longtime recruiting analyst Tom Lemming of the Prep Football Report, one of the analysts who did give Jagusah five-star status.
“One, the size that fits the position. He has extraordinary size that fits the position, so he’s an A-plus there.
“Second is potential. And he’s got great potential — great length, long arms. He’s got the build of someone real good.
“Then, the third is heart. He played on a bad team in a good area. Quad Cities has pretty good football. So the competition isn’t bad, just his team is. I would say Charles has unlimited potential with coaching. If [new Irish offensive line coach Joe] Rudolph is a good coach, Jagusah will be an All-American. He’s that talented.”
Patience now is part of the equation. The realistic timeline Jagusah has been given where playing/practicing at 100% is most likely is September/October. August training camp isn’t out of the question, though. So far, the 6-foot-7, 330-pounder — who hopes to shed 10-15 pounds this summer — has been cleared for jogging.
“Right now I’m with my physical therapist like four/five days a week,” Jagusah said. “Two to three of those days a week are like actual physical therapy on my knee and like weight lifting just specifically for my knee. The other two days are for following the program that Notre Dame gave me. But he’s kind of tweaking the program a little bit to try to make it fit with what I can and can’t do with the knee.
“It’s kind of rough, because you don’t want to be sitting out of anything. You want to get your reps when you can. It kind of gives me more of an opportunity to listen to the older guys and learn the playbook now, so when it’s really important for me to play, I can be ready.
“My physical therapist says I’m way ahead of schedule. Right now I feel like I have so much that I can get better at and so many technical things that I can clean up. It's like I’m happy with where I am now, but I have to keep getting better every time I go out on the field.”
He’s making the right kind of investments, spending a Saturday in the spring in South Bend, watching Notre Dame practice, then hanging around that Sunday with Rudolph watching film, while Jagusah’s girlfriend was visiting nearby Saint Mary’s College.
Rudolph replaced coaching icon Harry Hiestand in February, roughly two months after Jugusah signed his National Letter of Intent. Hiestand retired after one season in his second tour of duty at Notre Dame on Super Bowl Sunday, six days after Jagusah underwent surgery.
“It’s something me and my mom talked about when I was first considering committing to Notre Dame,” Jagusah said. “Where it’s like staff changes are going to happen, especially with coaches who are getting up there in age. So, I was surprised, but it’s not like I didn’t think it could be a possibility.
“But I think that [head] coach [Marcus] Freeman just did a great job of finding coach Rudolph. I met him a little bit when he was at Wisconsin. And I feel like we already have a pretty good relationship. So, I’m excited for what we can do in the fall.”
Jagusah is making the most of his spring after missing wrestling season, in which he would have returned as an undefeated defending state champion.
He’s back to detailing cars as a local car dealership when he’s not in school or working out. Jagusah is also mentoring local kids at a middle school chess club.
“I’m better at chess than I am handling middle school kids,” he said with a laugh, “but I can handle both.”
More difficult was missing wrestling. But it wasn’t as though he didn’t try. In fact, he was only through prepping for that sport that the torn PCL was discovered.
“It just kind of got to a point where I was cutting weight, and I’m like, ‘I can’t run enough to get my weight down.’ And it hurt too much to do half the wrestling stuff, so I had it looked at, and I just kind of had to shut it down.”
By the time he arrives at Notre Dame next month, Jagusah expects to be far enough along that he’ll no longer need a full-time physical therapist and that the ND training staff and strength coaches can take over.
“So much happened the past couple of years with COVID and then all this other stuff that happened with our high school administration changing and everything,” he said, “I’m really looking forward, the most of anything, to kind of just getting into a rhythm for the first time in a long time.
“Just kind of being normal.”
Normal in routine, but not in potential.
“I think coming out of high school, Charles Jagusah is as good as Ronnie Stanley and Quenton Nelson and better than Mike McGlinchey,” Lemming said of ND’s three most recent Irish offensive linemen who evolved into first-round NFL Draft picks.
“The challenge is always the next step. The other three took that next step. Having two great tackles to learn from ahead of him, in Joe Alt and Blake Fisher, is going to help Jagusah. Coaching and desire to be great will figure in too, but he’s built to dominate and seems wired to do that too.”
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