Editor’s note: this story appears in Blue & Gold Illustrated’s 2020 Football Preview magazine.
Derrek Hamilton is careful to mention a disclaimer before he begins a phone interview one May evening.
“I cleared it with Kyle,” he said of his son, Notre Dame’s freshman safety sensation in 2019.
His policy is to ask Kyle permission to give interviews in which Kyle is the subject. “It’s not my life,” Derrek said.
And Kyle has a halfhearted interest in attention and renown, even as the son of a retired basketball player and trainer who has been around pro athletes and their spoils his entire life. He is, after all, the kid who wears shoes even after holes are torn in them and told his mother, Jackie Hamilton, he likes the look “because it’s retro.”
Kyle Hamilton just wants to play football. He was 3 years old when he first asked, only to be told the minimum age for park district leagues was 6. He stored that in his memory and on his sixth birthday asked Jackie to sign him up. After ninth grade, he asked her for one more year when she suggested he stop playing and turn his full attention to basketball. Tulane had already offered him a basketball scholarship.
One more season, turns out, illuminated his natural fluidity, instincts and a penchant for hard hitting. College coaches noticed. Two years later, he arrived at Notre Dame and shoehorned his way into the safety rotation despite the presence of two established starters.
“They almost thought it was a matriculation process, you go play for your high school team,” Jackie said of her son’s mindset. “Never thought about not making the high school team. You make the team, you play high school and go play in college. After college, go to the league.”
Hamilton is stocked in self-efficacy, but wired with modesty. In the latter stages of his progression, though, the spotlight is inescapable. After an ascent to top-75 recruit, Freshman All-American and perhaps Notre Dame’s best NFL prospect regardless of class, attention is here to stay on an indefinite lease.
In Notre Dame’s first practice of 2019 fall camp, Hamilton intercepted three passes in 30 minutes. His first defensive snap in Notre Dame Stadium was a 34-yard interception return touchdown. He ended the season with 41 tackles, four interceptions, six passes broken up and only seven catches allowed, per Pro Football Focus. Trying to contain him is like trying to throw a butterfly net on a shadow. He’s omnipresent, an undying nuisance for offenses.
