Notre Dame flips Wisconsin commitment, kicker Erik Schmidt

Good stuff

On Monday, Notre Dame added another player to its 2025 football recruiting class as it flipped kicker, Erik Schmidt. The 6’1” 185 pounder from Marquette University high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had been committed to the Wisconsin Badgers and Luke Fickell since June — but apparently Marty Biagi and Marcus Freeman won him over.

We thought the new model for kicker acquisition was going to be hitting the transfer portal every year or two. While I still consider that to be a good route to follow — it should never keep a program from recruiting good high school talent. While the commitment of Schmidt seems like a convenient set of events considering Notre Dame’s current issues at the position — Notre Dame offered him back in April. This, I feel, means that Notre Dame is doing exactly that… using the portal most of the time, but not all of the time.

Good stuff.

Schmidt is ranked as a 3-Star kicker across all of the recruiting services, and as a 5-Star on Kohl’s Kicking website.

Schmidt competed recently at Kohl’s National Scholarship Camp in July of 2024. He was again the best punter at camp and earned a spot in the Under Armour All-american Game. His score of 114.9 was six points better than the 2nd place camper in the 2025 class. His kickoffs were also outstanding with a score of 111.07 points. Schmidt is a special D1 talent, he has a very bright future at the next level! At Kohl’s Midwest Showcase in May, he hit a kickoff that went 91 yards and had 4.34 seconds of hang-time! He is a D1 punter and has the ability to kick field goals, punt, and kickoff at the D1 level. At a December 2023 Showcase Camp, he scored 116.78 points in punting. He had many punts travel over 50 yards in the air during the charting session. He earned an invite to the Underclassman Challenge in January with his strong performance at camp. Schmidt also recently competed at the National Scholarship Camp in July of 2023. He led the camp with a final punt score of 112.6 points. He was also dominant on kick-offs scoring 116.37 points. His field goals were solid as he scored 27 points. He is clearly a D1 talent. At the Underclassman Challenge in January of 2023, he competed very well in the competitions vs the top 2024 players in the country. Schmidt scored 14 points on field goals, 106.53 points on kick-offs, and 104.3 points on his punts. In December of 2022, he showed again he is ahead of his age on FG’s, Kick-offs, and Punts. In July of 2022, he made 26/36 points on field goals and hit a 69-yard 3.9-second hang-time kickoff. Schmidt has consistently been in our top 10 as both a kicker and punter. Schmidt has rare power and consistency for someone his age, a talent that should take him very far as he continues to train and develop over the coming years!

Notre Dame has now brought their commitment total to 24 with Signing Day coming up on Wednesday.

Unless Notre Dame signs another 5 players for this class (at least), we may end up seeing 20+ enter the Irish football program via the transfer portal. I don’t see where the commitments will come from, so… it will be a very busy transfer portal season in my opinion.

It’s a good get for the Irish. They targeted Schmidt, and got him to commit. It’s a job well done.

WELCOME TO ND ERIK!