Rhody native makes impact on, off field
A chance to be closer to home: Harrison Leonard transfers from Notre Dame to URI. PHOTO CREDIT: gorhody.com
With three seasons of college football and a college degree under his belt, Harrison Leonard is returning to the place where it all began.
After spending 2019-2021 with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish following his stellar high career at Avon Old Farms School that landed him as the ninth-ranked kicker by ESPN out of high school, Leonard transferred to the University of Rhode Island for the 2022 season, just down the road from his hometown of Jamestown, Rhode Island.
While the redshirt sophomore kicker considered other top schools, including Arizona, UCLA and Ohio State, URI gave him something that those other programs could not — the opportunity to see his family regularly during the year.
“Playing at Notre Dame, I didn’t get to see my family much,” he said. “Living in Jamestown and getting to go home to them every day, it’s really nice.”
After spending three seasons with the Fighting Irish, Leonard joined the Rams with the opportunity to make a difference right away. Despite joining camp just two weeks before the start of the season, he eventually earned the full-time kicking role by week three.
“I knew it was going to be a big challenge to get the job,” he said. “I just trusted [myself] and worked hard every day, and eventually I got my chance.”
Going into Saturday’s game against Elon, Leonard is 2-for-3 on field goals and 14-for-15 on extra point attempts, with the lone point-after miss being blocked. In South Bend, the Jamestown native only attempted five extra points over three years, making all five.
Leonard’s career is also beginning to blossom off the field. Back in July, he co-founded a program known as Caktus.ai. According to Leonard’s LinkedIn profile, Caktus “is the Microsoft Excel of writing,” making the writing process for students easier and less time-consuming. All of this, according to Leonard, is done with the focus of creating a more personalized learning experience.
“What Caktus does is it enables thinkers to actually learn about what they’re learning in the classroom,” Leonard said. “It’s awesome, we did a whole deal with everyone on our team.”
Caktus has taken a hold of the locker room, according to URI Head Coach Jim Fleming, and is spreading to other schools around the country as well.
“It’s cutting-edge, as far as I’m concerned, [in] what it’s able to do to enhance the educational experience for his peers, and around the country,” Fleming said. “He is very committed to that project, and I think it’s taken off for him in a big-time way.”
Leonard said that Caktus has grown from 500 users up to about 5,000 in the three-month period since its launch in July. Outside of URI and Notre Dame, Caktus has users at schools including Michigan, Yale, Georgia Tech and UMass Dartmouth. The program is also plagiarism-free, as each generated response is unique to the user.
At Notre Dame, Leonard also helped pave the way for athletes to secure NIL (name, image and likeness) deals when the NCAA’s policy on profiting in relation to player likeness was changed in 2021. From November 2021 to September 2022, he co-founded Our Playbook, a program which helps to grow a player’s brand through “providing opportunities for internships, sponsorships and brand ambassador positions”, according to LinkedIn.
“NIL is a really interesting space,” Leonard said. “It has a lot of potential to make money, especially for athletes that aren’t on the top tier.”
In October 2021, Notre Dame secured the largest NIL deal at the time with the help of Our Playbook, signing 105 players to Ikonick, a rapidly-growing digital art company based on the west coast.
In terms of future plans, Leonard is “not sure yet” where he’ll go from here. He’s currently pursuing his master’s degree in business administration at URI and has two more years of college eligibility on the gridiron. More information on Caktus.ai can be found at https://www.caktus.ai/.