Notre Dame’s Clark Lea Has Interesting Connection To Stud 2022 LB
Nashville (Tenn.) Christ Presbyterian Academy class of 2022 linebacker Langston Patterson has steadily added new scholarship offers in the past few months. Louisville, Nebraska, Notre Dame and Tennessee have joined his offer sheet, bringing his total to 13.
“It’s pretty crazy,” Patterson said of the recruiting process during the coronavirus pandemic. “I want to get up on visits and put names to faces, but you can’t go anywhere. But it’s cool talking to coaches and realizing that this is what you dreamed about as a little kid.”
Notre Dame is the most recently school to offer the 6-1, 208-pounder.
“It came out of the blue,” Patterson said. “A couple of their coaches followed me on Twitter, and my coach [Ingle Martin] is good friends with Clark Lea, their defensive coordinator. Coach Martin has been talking to him a bit, and he told me to give Coach Lea a call.”
Interestingly enough, Lea and Martin played high school sports together Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville and remain friends to this day.
Notre Dame only has a couple players from the state of Tennessee on its roster, but the Irish would love to change that by adding Patterson to the program in a couple of years.
“He was saying how he likes how I play downhill and aggressive,” Patterson said, regarding his phone call with Lea earlier this month. “I liked that he was to the point, and Coach Martin was telling me that [Lea] is an honest guy — no bullcrap. He’s going to tell you what he thinks and is straight up.
“I like that about him. He seems like a really nice guy and I can’t wait to get up there and meet everybody.”
Patterson is looking forward to learning more about the Fighting Irish football program.
“I’m not too familiar; It’d be important for me to get up there,” Patterson said. “Coach Martin says that he loves it at Notre Dame and that it’s one of his favorite campuses. He says that the athletics there are cooler than any others and the academics is really good.”
Rivals lists Patterson as an outside linebacker, and while he could play there at the next level, he’s more of an inside player at the high school level.
“I can play both,” he stated. “Tennessee is open to playing me at both inside and outside. For my school, I’ve been playing mostly inside but I’ve played some on the outside and rushed off the edge.”
During his sophomore year, Patterson recorded 119 tackles and 14 tackles for loss.
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