Seantrel Henderson has good visit to Notre Dame

Originally Published: October 20, 2009

Henderson has good visit to Notre Dame

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By Steve Wiltfong
IrishSportsDaily.com
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Seantrel Henderson (St. Paul, Minn./Cretin-Derham Hall) and his family have done their homework on Notre Dame, and the five-star offensive tackle's official visit to South Bend met expectations.

Last weekend, the 6-foot-7, 295-pound Henderson and his parents visited the Irish campus, arriving on Friday and leaving on Sunday.

"We had a good meeting with coach (Charlie) Weis and his staff," Sean Henderson, Seantrel's father said. "We were very impressed overall. He liked it.

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"We liked the whole thing of having somebody like (former Cretin-Derham Hall teammate) Mike Floyd down there to help him with the transition of going from Minnesota down to Indiana, and having someone he's used to playing with in the past.

"The outlook and what the team is looking like next year is good. The overall value and prestige factor of having a Notre Dame degree was the biggest factor overall."

Henderson has already taken an official visit to Ohio State, and plans to also take visits to USC, Florida and Oklahoma before deciding. His father wants him to get a feel for different schools in different conferences in different parts of the country. Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa and Wisconsin also remain under consideration.

"The one thing that is surprising, but not even surprising, for them to have a smaller campus, it still has a big campus feel," the elder Henderson said of Notre Dame. "The support of the fans, you have these real big campuses, and they're putting 100,000 people in there, and Notre Dame is smaller and they're packing in 80,000 people and it's been sold out since the 1970s, that's a lot of dedication. A lot of school spirit.

"A lot of people would think the school, since it's based around education, socially it would be a decline because it's such an incline education wise, but it's very balanced. I like the fact people pride themselves on being from Notre Dame. From every school, people pride themselves, but you can feel a traditional value at Notre Dame."

Weis and the Henderson family talked about the close 34-27 loss to rival USC, and what the Irish program needs going forward.

"He asked me what I thought the difference was in the game, and I was like one second, a play here a play there, the pass rush and things like that. You leave Jimmy (Clausen) in the backfield a couple more seconds on a couple more plays, and you guys would've scored earlier. It was great to get the interception to bring it into a clutch situation, but that was a situation where the game could've been won earlier if some of those sacks could've been prevented."

Weis and the Hendersons also talked about the opportunity freshmen have to come in and play, and that Sam Young earned a starting job at right tackle as a true freshman four years ago.

"The thing is, we don't expect Seantrel to be given anything, and it's kind of mandatory that I voice that," Henderson said. "I want him to be given the opportunity to prove himself, but if he's not the best man, I want him to be able to learn from the better man. I want him to be able to learn and develop and grow into players like Korey Stringer or Orlando Pace or Bryant McKinnie. All these guys earned their position to earn their name in the game, and I want to see someday hopefully, somebody say they want to be the next Seantrel Henderson."

A look around at some of the best ESPN affiliate team sites have to offer today. Some of the following links may require a premium subscription to the ESPN affiliate site.

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