York junior Joseph Reiff has a few advantages most prep football players don’t enjoy.
The defensive lineman and Notre Dame commit has a lanky, 6-5 frame, the speed of a sprinter and the strength of a weight man.
He also can ask his dad about football, a subject he knows plenty about. Joe Reiff was a starting defensive lineman for Northwestern’s co-Big Ten championship team in 1996.
But what stands out to Dukes coach Mike Fitzgerald is not the younger Reiff’s physical gifts nor his football pedigree.
“He’s an incredible human being, his character’s off the charts,” Fitzgerald said. “For his age, the maturity that he’s shown me and the discipline he’s shown me is really remarkable.”
One example: Reiff set a goal of gaining weight after his sophomore season to be better able to match up against opposing offensive linemen. Part of the process of gaining 30 pounds to his current 235 was spending time in the weight room, part of it was eating right.
“Our [offseason] workouts will start at 6 a.m. and he’ll be there in a stretch line eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Fitzgerald said. “You can tell a kid, ‘Hey, you’ve got the frame but you’ve got to put on weight.’
“And sometimes they don’t follow through. [But] he’s very calculated about what he’s doing and the way he behaves and the way he acts.”
That deliberate approach was evident in Reiff’s decision to commit to Notre Dame last week. In the portal age, it’s rare for juniors to commit this early in the recruiting cycle. But Reiff — a consensus three-star prospect ranked 11th in the state and 40th nationally among defensive linemen in the class of 2025 — saw no reason to wait.
“I knew what I wanted in a school,” Reiff said. “I wanted amazing academics, amazing football and an amazing atmosphere. Notre Dame checked off all three of those boxes.
“And then another big part of it was the other recruits they brought in. I had gotten along with them well at my previous visits and I’m becoming friends with them. So it just felt right.”
The “a-ha” moment came during the Fighting Irish’s loss to Ohio State last weekend.
“There was a goal-line stand by Notre Dame where the crowd was going wild and the d-line made a big play,” Reiff said. “And then the fourth down after that, they tipped the ball up in the air and it was incomplete.
“And the crowd just exploded and I was like, ‘This is the defense I want to play for. This is where I always want to be.’”
Reiff has dabbled in other sports over the years, including basketball and soccer. Now he’s down to football and track and field, running the 55 meters indoors and the 100 outdoors, and also throwing the shot put and discus. That’s an unusual combo, but it speaks to his rare physical gifts and his willingness to do whatever it takes to get better.
“You’re getting out of a four-point stance, from a football perspective,” Reiff said of sprinting. “Just learning how to come out of the blocks and be explosive really helped with my first step in football.”
Now that his college choice is made, Reiff is looking forward to focusing on York football. The Dukes are enjoying a renaissance under Fitzgerald, ending a 10-year IHSA playoff drought in 2021 and reaching the state semifinals for the third time in program history last season.
“I think last year we set a standard and we definitely upheld that standard during the offseason,” Reiff said. “We have been doing our best to keep that standard and raise it.”
