Prep Coach Hansen Talks Wimbush, Ademilola Twins And Notre Dame Football

St. Peter’s Prep churns out dynamic football players to Notre Dame.

Rich Hansen, the all-time most-winning coach in Prep history, has been coaching football at St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, NJ for 35 years. He’s seen a lot of talented players come and go including those who went on to play in the NFL as well as countless division 1 programs.

Current Irish quarterback, Brandon Wimbush, won a State Championship in 2014 at St. Peter’s Prep as part of a star-studded team that went 11-1 on the season. Wimbush threw for 2,702 yards and 31 touchdowns as well as added 586 yards and 8 touchdowns on the ground that year.

Twin brothers, Jayson and Justin Ademilola, are in their junior years at St. Peter’s and are currently verbally committed to Notre Dame.

Jayson plays defensive tackle and Justin is a defensive end-outside linebacker hybrid who will play the ‘drop’ end position in Mike Elko’s defense.

Jayson and Justin are both heavily recruited athletes who work extremely hard on and off the field. Their skill sets are very advanced as they have received top tier coaching and have trained rigorously inside and outside of the program.

Must Read: Ade Ademilola Talks About His 3 All-Americans

As I have interviewed the twins’ father, Ade Ademilola, as well as their private trainer, Pete Kafaf, I decided that I would also speak with their head coach to get his thoughts on Brandon Wimbush, the Ademilola twins, the Irish coaching staff and rover target Shayne Simon.

I started by asking Rich Hansen about his 2014 State Championship team, lead by Brandon Wimbush and Alabama star Minkah Fitzpatrick.

“It was a really talented group, but more important was the group of guys that really worked hard together and cared about one another, a really competitive group,” said Hansen. “You could tell pretty early that they were going to be special. It was a great year.”

“Our only loss that year was to IMG. We had four touchdowns called back in the first half. If it wasn’t for that, we probably would’ve had a shot at the national title. It was tough to take. Brandon threw for almost 500 yards that night. He was unbelievable,” said Hansen.

Like his career at Notre Dame, Wimbush had to earn his starting role under Coach Hansen.

“As a sophomore, there was a lot of pressure to start him. I really didn’t feel that he was one-hundred percent ready and I knew what kind of player he was going to be, so I didn’t want early bad performances to hinder what we knew what was going to happen,” Hansen explained.

Hansen explained that Wimbush made the best of his situation. “He did a great job with it. He stayed a student of the game, worked hard, he was a good leader and when he got his opportunity to take it over, after his sophomore year, he obviously embraced it and did a great job with it,” Hansen said proudly.

To this day, Hansen stands by his decision to keep Wimbush on the sideline early in his career, and believes it’s still paying off.

“I’ll tell you this, he could’ve been a four-year starter for us. It would’ve been really easy for me to just stick him in and be our guy for four years but it served him well at Notre Dame and it will serve him well while he carries the torch,” Hansen told me.

Brandon Wimbush and Rich Hansen still keep in close contact. “We talk pretty frequently. We talk and text and when he’s back, he comes and visits and we get a chance to go over some stuff and just kind of be a sounding board for him,” he explained.

“He’s such a level headed kid and he’s so driven. My staff and I are going to come down for the spring game and enjoy that and hopefully he does a great job. I’m really excited for him,” Hansen said. “I think performance obviously dictates, but, he’s got so many things going for him. He’s such a special kid. I’m really excited for him.”

Next, I asked Coach Hansen about his pair of prized defensive lineman, the Ademilola twins.

“Obviously they’re big kids, they’re athletic kids. They play different style games, obviously. one is an inside guy, Jayson, and Justin is more of an outside guy, defensive end-outside linebacker type of guy,” he said.

Hansen explained that the twins do share more than a birthday. The twins have been making progress in the way they prepare and bring a new focus to their intensity.

“I think that the one common thread that they do have is that I think they’ve learned, not always the easy way, but I think they’ve learned that it’s really important to turn it up a notch and practice that way because it carries over into games,” said Hansen.

Coach Hansen has a special way in which he mentors the Ademilolas. “My theme with them, all off season, is going to be that they need to practice from Monday to Thursday, like they do on Friday for a Saturday’s game, and I think they understand what that means now. They get it,” he said.

After a lot of training and hard work, Hansen started seeing results. “You could see last year, they kind of turned a corner in terms of competitiveness in practice and working hard everyday and the value of competing with the guy in front of you, in our scheme of things,” Hansen explained.

Last season, Hansen began to really notice progress with one of the Twins in particular.

“Particularly Justin. He had to go against a pretty darned good player every day, who’s maybe the best we’ve had, in Ben Petrula,” said Hansen who then explained that Petroula is a 6’6, 310 pound offensive tackle who is on his way to a four-year career at Boston College.

“Ben made him work hard and made him understand that there was a correlation between what you do on Tuesdays and what you do on Friday nights and Saturdays. I think that distinction for them is going to make all the difference in the world, because when they play at that level mentally, they’re really really special,” said Hansen.

Coach Hansen is very intrigued by the multi-faceted player that Justin Ademilola is. He took some time to explain to me, his skills.

“He’s an athletic kid. I think when he’s got his hand down and he comes off the edge, he’s got a special explosiveness and really does a great job of being able to pressure the quarterback from that spot,” said Coach Hansen.

Hansen explained Justin Ademilola’s skills as it relates to the drop end position that he will play in Mike Elko’s defense.

“From the flip side or when he stands up or we run zone blitz with him and he gets himself into drops, that athleticism really plays itself out. To play that spot, you can’t just put anybody at that position. You’re just asking them to do so much and you’re asking them to do so many things,” he said.

“When you have a kid who puts his hand down and ask him to put pressure off the edge and to play in space, there’s a certain skill set that goes with that and there aren’t a lot of kids in the country who can do that effectively in that scheme and I think he’s definitely one of the guys that can do it because he does it for us,” explained Hansen.

Coach Hansen finished discussing Justin by explaining why he thinks the talented hybrid is a good fit at Notre Dame.”I think that part of picking where you go to school has to do with what they’re going to ask you to do. In his case, I think it’s a really good fit for how Notre Dame is going to use him,” he said.

Coach Rich Hansen then shifted his focus to the Ademilola twins fit at Notre Dame. Jayson and Justin haven’t had the easiest path to St. Peter’s Prep. As their father Ade had explained to me, the Ademilola family live quite a ways away from the campus.

As a result, the twins have been commuting 90 minutes each way to get to school every day for going on 3 years. This is just one example of the sacrifices they’ve had to make to be a part of the St. Peter’s Prep program.

“What is part of what they do everyday, is what Coach Kelly is going to ask them to do everyday at Notre Dame. They’re going to get up early, they’re going to the lifts, they’re going to have to go to meetings, they’re going to go to practice, they’re going to have to eat, they’re going to have to go to class. So, the early start to their day is not going to be a challenge for them or be a difficult transition because it’s what they do everyday. That makes a big difference for division 1 players,” said Hansen.

“I talk to them all the time about prepping for what’s going to be asked of you,” he said. ” It gets hard, it gets difficult, you get tired, you get cramped up a little bit, but as long as they keep seeing the big picture, they’re really good at what they do. They see the value in it, and that’s the important part.”

Notre Dame is in search of linebacker-safety hybrids who can play the new rover role in the revamped defense that Mike Elko brought with him from Wake Forest with his linebacker coach counterpart, Clark Lea.

Must Read: Notre Dame Offers Star Safety Shayne Simon Of St. Peter's Prep

St. Peter’s Prep Shayne Simon is a perfect fit this role. The Irish coaching staff visited St. Peter’s Prep in January to meet Simon in person. Before they left for South Bend, they gave him an offer. He is high on their board. I asked Coach Hansen about his talented defensive standout.

“Shayne is just a special kid, a special player, special mentality, a tremendous leader, a kid with a skill set that’s really really unique. He’s a hybrid safety-outside backer-defensive end. He can do so many different things, so athletic,” said Hansen.

“He was a quarterback for us for two years. He wasn’t going to be the quarterback of our program, but I didn’t want to waste him so I moved him to a wide out spot for the first time in his life. He had 47 catches.”

“He’s really really smart. Very, Very high end work ethic. I can’t sit here and say a bad thing about the kid. There isn’t a red flag in his arsenal,” explained Hansen.

Hansen explained that Simon and his family take academics very seriously, always a good sign for Notre Dame. “The academic piece for him and his family is very important, so there’s just a handful of schools in this country that we recognize as one of those places and Notre Dame is one of those places,” said Hansen.

"“That offer was important to him and obviously, they’re in his top 5,” Hansen explained."

Here is Shayne Simon’s impressive junior season Hudl film.

Coach Hansen then explained St. Peter’s Prep’s relation to the University of Notre Dame and their football program.

Hansen talked about former Irish coaches that he has known and provided assistance in recruiting in the past.

“We have a lot of alumn that are Notre Dame alumn. I’ve been to Notre Dame several times. Coach Weis and Bobby Diaco were my initial connections,” he said.

He then moved on to explain the current staff and his involvement with them.

“We’re very close. I just spoke to the new defensive coordinator the other day. We probably speak once a week or once every other week,” he explained.

“Their coaching staff does a phenomenal job in terms of paying attention to our kids. They do a great job on follow up on recruiting our kids,” he said. “They do a phenomenal job in helping my staff in terms of professional development and having access to what they do and how they do it.”

“I’ve spoken to Coach Kelly now a couple of times in the past month or so. It’s a really good working relationship and we have a special respect for who they are, obviously, and what they do. Our kids are attracted to environments like that,” said Hansen.

Hansen feels that his players at St. Peter’s Prep gain a lot of the tools in his program and as a student of the prep school, that make them a great fit at Notre Dame.

“We’ve sent some guys there over the years and the intangibles that Notre Dame looks for, I like to think we have in our program and with our kids,” he said. “For a lot of our kids, it’s just such a great match. Great academic school, Christian environment. There’s an element of accountability that they hold their players to.”

Hansen then made his closing statement. “Listen, when you graduate from Notre Dame, you walk away with a degree, in Brandon’s case a Master’s Degree in Finance, life doesn’t get better than that. Kids are set up for life when they leave Notre Dame,” he said.

Must Read: Top 5 Players From The 2015 Notre Dame Recruiting Class.

Coach Rich Hansen runs his program in a fashion that by the time his players graduate, they are truly prepared to play division 1 football and balance the academic rigors of a school like Notre Dame.

The St. Peter’s Prep football program is, always has been, and always will be a hotbed of talented student-athletes who Notre Dame will recruit.