Coach | 2025 Notre Dame DE Target Damien Shanklin "Fun To Coach"

Mike Kirschner knows what Notre Dame - and a host of other schools - see in 2025 Indiana defensive end Damien Shanklin‍.

“He's long, he can run really well, physical football player,” Kirschner, the head coach at Warren Central High School, says of Shanklin.

“And overall, a really good kid, which makes him fun to coach.”

The 6-foot-4, 230-pound Shanklin has offers from schools like Notre Dame, Michigan, Tennessee, USC, Texas, Iowa, Michigan State and Duke among several others.

Shanklin has made multiple trips to South Bend this year, including two games this fall and a stop with his head coach to check out an Irish bowl practice earlier this month.

“Loves the climate,” Kirschner says of Shanklin’s interest in Notre Dame. “I've talked to him numerous times about the school. I've had kids who have played there. The potential of the quality of education you're going to get, the connections that you'll have for a lifetime as a Notre Dame grad, those kinds of things. 

“But just the overall climate of a game is pretty intriguing when you're playing at Notre Dame.”

Kirschner says Shanklin’s ceiling is high.

“He needs to put on weight there isn't any question,” he says. “He's about 230. When we were at practice, he saw how large everybody was at that level.

“But the biggest thing is just general knowledge of scheme. Obviously, when you go to the level that Notre Dame plays at, the scheme's level is much more complicated than it maybe at a high school level. But he'll be able to handle it.”

Shanklin isn’t in a rush to make a final decision.

“We've had a lot of traffic in this winter; USC, Tennessee, some places,” says Kirschner, noting Shanklin has also been to games at Tennessee and Michigan while seeing the Trojans in person against the Irish.

“So he's kind of made his rounds. I don't know that he's down to the last two or three. If somebody forced his hand, he'd make a decision. But he's going to kind of wait and see here, get through the recruiting part this winter and kind of see where he is at from there.”

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