Gregory Patrick has a bit of a different perspective as he returns to South Bend for visits now that he’s a Notre Dame commit.
“At this point now when you're committed and you're going there, it's more of a mindset of what I can do to prepare to get ready to get to campus,” Patrick told Irish Sports Daily.
“So it's a little bit different and you kind of just are a little more comfortable since you're going to be there every day in the next year.”
The 2026 Michigan offensive lineman, who made his pledge to the Irish back in April, returned for his official visit earlier this month.
“It was awesome,” Patrick said. “It was really fun.
“It was just really good being able to see all my future teammates, seeing how great everybody is, how nice of people everybody is, and it was just fun getting back to campus. There wasn't a ton of new stuff for me since I've been there so much, but it was just good hanging out with everybody.”
The Portage Northern High School standout loves the people within the program.
“Everybody's super genuine,” he said. “Everybody's very real. There's nobody with big egos. Everybody just has the same goals and I feel like everybody has the same vision in the process of getting those goals too. So it's pretty cool.”
Patrick was excited to see the offensive line group round out with the additions of Grayson McKeogh and Charlie Thom over the past week-plus.
“It's pretty cool,” he said. “They got two great kids. I was able to hang out with Grayson a lot on the OV. Grayson was awesome on the OV. It was fun to hang out with him.
“We never really heard much about Charlie, but Coach Rudolph talks about him to us now and he seems like a great kid, so it's a great sixth guy to have.”
And Patrick is fired up about the Irish’s 2026 class as a whole.
“I guess you could say I was more in the middle of the timeline of kids committing, so it's just pretty cool being a commit and then seeing a lot of other kids see the same things that you saw and commit because of that,” he said.
“It is pretty cool now being in more of obviously a recruiting role with Grayson on the OV. We were really trying to get him, obviously something must have worked there and now it's pretty cool just being able to recruit and get kids to come join.”
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