SOUTH BEND — Ever since he was young, Samuel Voelz knew he wanted to end up at the University of Notre Dame.
His journey took a quick detour on the route there, but once he made it, it didn’t take long for the New Palestine native to make a big impact.
As his first season comes to an end at Notre Dame, Voelz has reached a pinnacle already. He and his three teammates on the Irish’s distance medley relay team are national champions.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
“Going back to high school I would never have guessed it would have happened this early in college,” Voelz said. “I thought that my hard work would pay off maybe my senior year.”
Having grown up in the middle of Indiana, Voelz had his eyes set on Notre Dame for as long as he can remember. Though his parents went to Ball State and DePauw, they told him that Notre Dame was the pinnacle of education in the Midwest and urged him to push himself to try to get there.
They bought him Notre Dame blankets, Notre Dame clothes. Growing up, ND was everywhere, but after completing a successful high school career as a state champion at New Palestine in 2017, Voelz didn’t end up going straight to Notre Dame.
During his senior year, Voelz said he was being recruited by multiple big schools. He said that was a neat experience to be recruited by “awesome schools,” but he knew they weren’t the right fit.
He had a different fit in mind.
Voelz kept waiting and waiting for a call from Notre Dame. Once it finally arrived after his New Palestine graduation, it was too late to be admitted to Notre Dame for his freshman year.
The plan changed. Go to a D3 school and transfer after a year. He chose DePauw and hoped the pieces would fall into place.
They did. Voelz was successful at DePauw. He broke a school record. He earned All-American status.
But the best was yet to come. Voelz said he enjoyed his time at DePauw, but now that he has reached his ultimate destination, everything has fallen firmly into place.
“It’s been one of the best years of my life,” Voelz said. “I love Notre Dame, love everything about it, the people, especially the team. We’re a team of 25 guys, and I spend six to eight hours of my day with some of those guys.
“I just need it to slow down. It’s going too fast.”
Voelz stepped right into a role on the distance medley relay team, a group that finished second in the NCAA Championships in 2018.
It was a perfect fit.
“We knew we needed a strong 800-meter leg of the relay to help us move up a spot,” Notre Dame head track and field coach Matt Sparks said. “Samuel’s ability to move us into position for our anchor leg truly is what propelled us to the championship.”
Paired with freshman Dylan Jacobs, sophomore Yared Nuguse and senior Edward Cheatham, Voelz and the distance medley team set a school record time this year, which also was the second best time in NCAA history. They entered the national championships as the top seed and defended that seeding to bring home a championship.
The chemistry they’ve developed already certainly helped with that.
“I’ve only known them for six months now, but some of them I feel like I’ve known my entire life,” Voelz said of his teammates at Notre Dame. “We have a shared, common belief in our program. It’s pretty awesome.”
Despite being an underclassmen, Voelz has stepped into more of a leadership role in his first year with the Fighting Irish.
“Although Samuel technically has freshman eligibility, he does not carry himself as such,” Sparks said. “He has confidence paired with his fitness that allows him to compete with the best in the country. He has an energy that is infectious and has made the culture of our program stronger. Our men’s distance coach, Sean Carlson, has leaned on Samuel for leadership within his middle-distance training group. For an underclassman, Samuel does not shy from pressure situations.”
There’s no bigger pressure situation than racing for a championship, and Voelz did his part during the race. After winning a national title on March 8 in Alabama, Voelz said he received a lot of texts.
One was a bit more meaningful, from someone he looked up to for a long time, someone who helped him make it to Notre Dame in the first place.
That text came from Pat Feeney, a 2010 New Palestine graduate who then went on to run at Notre Dame. Voelz grew up looking up to Feeney and has gotten to know him more as the years have gone on.
“He sent me a text after we won Friday, and that was maybe the best text I got all night,” Voelz said. “That was really neat. He was the reason I always wanted to run and wanted to go to Notre Dame. ”
The Irish were on spring break right after the national championships, and Voelz said during the break that the fact that his team had won still hadn’t totally sunken in.
He suspected that once he got back to campus it would sink in more. He doesn’t feel any different, but there’s one big change now as he moves forward in his Notre Dame career.
He’s not just a state champion now. He’s a national champion.
“Nothing really about us has changed, but it’s cool to think that we can call ourselves that now,” Voelz said.