By John Brice
Special Contributor
Spring semester classes had not yet started at Notre Dame in mid-January, and cold weather, like the snow a month earlier, blanketed the region.
“It snowed,” said Kaleb Smith, “from the second I got here on my official until I left, but I fell in love with here.
“I fell in love with Notre Dame.”
Undaunted by the snow on his official visit in December and likewise disinterested in anything outside of his new football world, Smith – the Fighting Irish’s prized graduate-transfer signee from Virginia Tech – scrolled through his phone to send a text message.
Smith, after all, still had Sam Hartman’s phone number from some half-decade earlier when both players were committed to Wake Forest.
Their paths diverged; Smith went from hard-scrabble Hokies walk-on to team captain before he elected to play his last season of college football in new environs.
Hartman went on to set numerous school and Atlantic Coast Conference records at Wake Forest before he, too, inked with Notre Dame late in 2022 to play his final year of college beneath the arms of Touchdown Jesus.
Effectively, Smith typed “Let’s get this work.”
Soon thereafter, Smith and Hartman unofficially began their Notre Dame football careers inside the cavernous but state-of-the-art Irish Athletics Center.
“Week Zero, maybe, we got here a little bit before everybody else got back, and we were so excited to put on some cleats, break in our new cleats before the first workouts,” Smith said. “So we came out here (to the IAC) and threw a bit.”
How quickly did the two playmakers begin to redevelop their on-field rapport?
“Honestly, probably the first time he threw a ball to me,” Smith said. “It was going again.”
Added Hartman, “Just watching him at Virginia Tech through the years, watching him play, he’s a special athlete. He does a really good job tracking the ball, and I think he’s going to have a big year. I’m excited, and it was great just having a somewhat-familiar face here in a new place.
“I feel like with Kaleb, he’s just going to track the ball well and you just give him a chance.”
Like Hartman, Smith had no shortage of suitors once he elected to exit from Virginia Tech, degree in tow, after his redshirt-senior season.
Engaged to Mikayla Mance, a former VT soccer player, the 6-foot-2, 222-pound Smith counseled with his fiancé and parents, James and Kimberly Smith, both former NCAA Division I…