Once cut from the team, Wake County football player finds a home at Notre Dame

Ebenezer Ewetade grew up understanding little about football, but the South Garner High senior defensive end learned quickly. He progressed so far so fast, his college destination is hallowed ground.

Notre Dame.

Ewetade, now a 6-foot-4, 225-pound 4-star prospect, knows the sport better, but Notre Dame’s tradition requires taking on another learning curve — Irish lore. Hollywood makes movies about Notre Dame, with a future American president playing the part of George Gipp.

Along with The Gipper, there’s coach Knute Rockne and The Four Horsemen; 11 national titles; coach Frank Leahy and quarterback Johnny Lujack, one of seven Irish Heisman Trophy winners as the 1947 recipient; coach Ara Parseghian and quarterback Terry Hanratty, the 55th and latest Irish College Football Hall of Famer in the Class of 2025; two “Games of the Century,” with Lujack in the 1946 edition and Hanratty in 1966; coach Dan Devine and the 1978 green jersey game; and much more leading up to last year’s national championship runner-up finish under coach Marcus Freeman.

But when Freeman visited South Garner’s campus, all that mattered to him was Ewetade picked up the sport enough to project to the next level.

“Notre Dame likes how he can be a rangy EDGE guy who rushes or drops back, or he could put on some weight and be attached to the line,” South Garner coach Greg Greene said. “Coach Freeman thinks he really fits in well with Notre Dame and the kind of players they want.”

These days, Ewetade takes the field looking like a gifted athlete, but he still plays as hard as earlier times when he was intent on proving himself to people who saw him merely as a scrawny kid.

Last week, he recorded five tackles and a sack in the Titans’ 29-10 loss to Garner in a Greater Neuse River Conference game. The Titans (3-5, 1-3 GNR) face another league foe in a 7 p.m. home game Friday against Fuquay-Varina (4-4, 1-3 GNR).

Adapting to American life

Ewetade ’s backstory makes his development into an elite college prospect all the more remarkable.

He was born of Nigerian parents in Raleigh, but when he was 4 years old, the family returned to Lagos, Nigeria. By age 7, though, his divorced mother, Mariama, who wanted a better life for her son with U.S. citizenship, had him return to Raleigh to live with his grandmother.

As he adapted to American life, the Carolina Panthers’ 2015 Super Bowl run captivated him as a second-grader.

“I didn’t know much about football, but I saw everybody was excited,” he said. “On the bus (to school), everybody was cheering and talking about the Panthers.”

His future was again in question at age 10, when his grandmother died, but family friends, Taju and Helen Rosiji, adopted him.

By middle school, Ewetade looked forward to his first organized football opportunity playing on East Garner Middle School’s team for seventh- and eighth-graders. But as a seventh-grader during the 2020 pandemic, school was virtual, and football was canceled. When school and football resumed in eighth grade, he was cut from the team.

“I was skinny and frail,” Ewetade acknowledged with a chuckle. “But I wanted to make the team so bad. I went up to coach crying, saying, ‘Please!’”

Cutting Ewetade, especially in retrospect, sounds like coaching malpractice or at least evidence school programs should be no-cut.

‘He believed in himself’

A year later, Ewetade benefited from a no-cut policy as a freshman on South Garner’s JV team (freshmen and sophomores). He wasn’t a star, but he was learning the game and especially enjoyed being part of the team.

“I love to hit, but I also love football for the family part,” Ewetade said. “I like the brotherhood — people to laugh with and joke with. It gives me feelings like when I was (in Nigeria) with my (older) siblings playing with them.”

Ewetade said after his freshman season he knew he had to hit the weights, but he didn’t know how to go about it. That changed when Greene and his staff were hired to take over the program in the spring of his freshman year.

In the weight room, Ewetade observed how the coaches worked with the Ogoboko brothers, Nnamdi and Ekene. Nnamdi Ogoboko (6-4, 340) is sophomore defensive lineman at Georgia. Ekene Ogoboko (6-6, 310) is a South Garner senior committed to Georgia as an offensive lineman. Ewetade asked for a similar workout program.

“He believed in himself,” Greene said. “He had stick-to-it-ness. He had been playing basketball and running track all along, but after his freshman year, he slept in the weight room.”

Ewetade lacked bulk in his younger days, but he always possessed height and speed. As a freshman, he ran 400-meter legs on South Garner’s 1,600 relay team that qualified for the state meet. His current 225 pounds is heavy for a sprinter, but the heart of a quarter-miler remains speed and lung strength.

“When college coaches were coming to see Nnamdi, my coaches also put my name in the conversation,” Ewetade said. “They said I was tall, fast, putting on weight and still had room to grow more.”

On to Notre Dame

As a sophomore, Ewetade developed to 6-3, 175. He made some plays while he split time on the JV and varsity rosters. It was enough for Greene and his staff to put together a recruiting video.

“It was only about 1:27 long,” Greene said. “But he had four or five sacks and a strip fumble he recovered.”

The highlights started a trickle of scholarship offers. Temple was the first school, and Duke the first Power 4 program. The offers turned into a flow by the end of his junior season as a 6-4, 210-pounder.

“I was overwhelmed with the first offer,” Ewetade said. “I thought, ‘Dang! This is how it feels.’ But at the same time, I wasn’t satisfied. I kept working.”

Another twist to his evolving football career is he developed during college football’s nascent era of revenue sharing and Name, Image and Likeness. The kid cut in eighth grade now fends of calls from agents.

“I get the calls all the time,” he said, adding he hasn’t signed with anyone while still grasping the process.

Ewetade graduates in December and enrolls in January at Notre Dame. But before he deals with agents, before he steps into a Notre Dame classroom or on Freeman’s practice field, he faces another kind of teaching challenge.

It will take some explaining for his mother halfway around the world to comprehend her son’s chosen next step on his American dream journey includes learning to sing Notre Dame fight song lyrics such as “Wake up the echoes!” and “Shake down the thunder!” while alongside classmates dressed as leprechauns.

This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.