2025 DE Daeden Hopkins Recaps First Trip To Notre Dame

About a month after first hearing from Notre Dame, Daeden Hopkins‍ made his way to South Bend to see the Irish take on Pittsburgh on Saturday.

The 2025 defensive end from Missouri was impressed.

“It was great,” Hopkins said. “I loved it. I loved the environment. It was awesome.”

The 6-foot-6, 204-pounder has early offers from Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State. 

“I didn't think I would get any offers during the season,” said Hopkins. “I thought that was something that happened after the season, so that kind of took me by surprise, but it's awesome.”

He began his visit to Notre Dame with a stop at the indoor facility for registration, measurements and food. Then, the Hermann High School standout and the other recruits went to watch the Irish walk into the stadium. The visitors heard from the staff before pregame warmups and then headed to their seats to watch the game.

The Irish’s 58-7 blowout of the Panthers didn’t leave much suspense.

“I thought they played amazing,” Hopkins said. “They all played really well. They kind of surprised me by the score. I didn't think it'd be that big, but it was awesome.

“The recruits were taken back to the locker room and we got to see the head coach do the postgame speech. It was great.”

Hopkins heard from Irish Director of Recruiting Dre Brown about a month ago.

“He contacted me and wanted to invite me out to a game and to see facilities, the gameday atmosphere,” he explained. “I've just been communicating with him so far.”

Hopkins had the chance to meet Brown in person on Saturday as well as head coach Marcus Freeman.

“They said they're going to keep evaluating me and they're going to try and get me there for a Junior Day and really just go from there,” he explained. “So they're going to keep an eye on me.”

Hopkins has already made trips to Iowa, Iowa State, Missouri and Nebraska in addition to Notre Dame. He has one more scheduled to Kansas State. 

He’d love to return to South Bend and his interest in Notre Dame is obvious.

“Great school overall. The academics there are amazing. The fans and the atmosphere, it's wild. It's obviously a great football program as well.”

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