Editor's Note: This story ran in the Blue & Gold Illustrated August 2021 edition of the magazine. Subscribe to the magazine here.
Zeke Correll was quite literally born into the heat of competition.
Eighteen years after Steve and Lisa Correll had their first child, Sarah, they had their last, Zeke. In between, the Correll family grew by seven children, four of which were boys. The youngest of five brothers, Zeke learned from an early age nothing would be handed to him.
Absolutely nothing.
“Our whole family is competitive, and Zeke hated — hated — to lose,” Steve Correll said. “They wouldn’t give him any slack. They’d go out to play hoops, they’d beat him and he’d start crying. They wouldn’t let him win. And this was every day.”
The consolation of getting his teeth kicked in — not literally, of course, unless it was an accident — on the daily?
“It made him better,” Lisa Correll said.
It made him good enough to be the next starting center at Notre Dame, in fact. Correll started in place of injured junior Jarrett Patterson against North Carolina and Alabama last season. Patterson is expected to move from center to guard as a senior, leaving snapping duties to Correll as a junior.
Starting a Division I football game is a height Gabe Correll never reached. Or Caleb. Or Jesse and Josh. That’s not to say that quartet wasn’t an athletic one. They all achieved plenty in their athletic endeavors.
Gabe played tight end at Kentucky. Caleb played baseball at King University in Bristol, Tenn. Jesse started his college football career at Butler, but he transferred to Division II Malone University to team up with Josh.
