by Jashvina Shah/Staff Writer (@icehockeystick)
Notre Dame’s Jake Boltmann and Grant Silianoff live a few blocks from each other. In Minnesota, that is.
At Notre Dame, they’re roommates. But in Minnesota, Silianoff and Boltmann both grew up in Edina. But it wasn’t until their teenage years they skated together, and they never reallly played together, missing the opportunity because Silianoff left to play at Shattuck St. Mary’s.
But now they’re just two of eight players from Minnesota who skate for Notre Dame. They’re the only two from Edina, while four are from Maple Grove (coincidentally the pairs of brothers — Trevor and Justin Janicke, and Henry and Danny Nelson.)
“The Gophers can’t take every kid out of the state,” Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson quipped. “I’m not going to sit here and say that we take their leftovers, because the kids that we recruit are a product of our priorities for us. They’re important recruits to us.”
It may sound strange, as Notre Dame and Minnesota are starkly different. And South Bend isn’t like the Minneapolis metropolitan area, either. Many of these Minnesota players grew up going to Gophers games, and some even dreamed of donning maroon and gold. But the Fighting Irish, largely thanks to associate coach Andy Slaggert, have developed a Minnesota to Notre Dame pipeline.
“I’m not going to take credit for how it started, because I’m sure (former ND coach) Lefty Smith had a lot to do with that. He was a Minneapolis-St. Paul guy,” Jackson said.
“The type of kids, the quality of the kids, the character of the kids has a lot to do with it. In Minnesota, all their kids generally come up through the Minnesota high school system where kids learn to play other sports. And education is important. And those to me are both critical things and why Minnesota kids select Notre Dame. Because they’re, in many cases, more well-rounded athletes. And the majority of the kids that we’ve ever got from Minnesota are always really good students. So education and all those things, the family values in the state and the emphasis on their kids going to school and doing well academically certainly bodes well for us to have that opportunity to get in there and make Notre Dame a priority for kids out of the…
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