Notre Dame Fighting Irish defensive end Kahanu Kia announced on Monday that he will be leaving to take on a two-year mission trip. Kia is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS / Mormon) and stated that this was an option he had already spoken with Notre Dame about during his recruitment.
The only other Notre Dame football scholarship player on record that left the program for an LDS mission was safety, Chris Badger, back in 2010. In Badger’s case, he went abroad rather than in the states and elected to transfer to BYU.