North Carolina State University Athletics
Bowl Diary, Day 5
12/18/2001 12:00:00 AM | Football
Dec. 18, 2001
Orlando, Fla. - I'm feeling a little nostalgic today. Seeing our seniors practice for the last time was a little sad for me - I started at NC State in October of 1998, so I was a Wolfpack rookie when those guys were rookies. It's been such a pleasure to see them mature as players and people. I asked Levar Fisher after practice if he was sad to be practicing for the last time and he laughed at me! B ut as macho as these guys are, I know they were thinking about it too.
We honored the seniors in a very unique way at practice today. Coach Amato called it "The Senior Hit," and it was a hit with whole team. He lined the team up in two lines and put a tackling sled between them. Each senior got to pick someone to stand on the sled while they attempted to hit it as hard as they could. I think Levar got Coach Amato, Keegan Weir picked athletic trainer Jamey Coll (with two broken legs in his career, he probably spent more time with Jamey than anyone else!), and Willie Wright even picked one of the sportswriters who made the trip to be the target of his senior hit. Even the senior managers got to strap on a helmet and hit the sled. There was a lot of laughter and trash-talking out there, but it was also a lot of fun. WRAL, WTVD and WXLV were out there - tune into one of those stations tonight and I'm sure you'll get to see some of the highlights.
Another tradition that was observed today was that of everyone switching jerseys. Sterling Hicks wore Philip RIvers' black #17 (quarterbacks wear black every day). Ray Robinson was wearing William Brown's jersey, Brian Williams was masquerading as Patrick Thomas and Levar Fisher was Terrance Holt for the day. The TV folks were really sweating it - it's pretty hard to get video of a certain player when you have no idea what jersey number they're going to be wearing.
Lots of the guys headed to Universal's Islands of Adventure this afternoon. Today is their last day with free time - curfew is at midnight tonight and then tomorrow is filled with meetings. The guys are having a lot of fun, but I think they're hungry to hit somebody on another team.
As much fun as I'm having with this team, I'm having basketball withdrawals! I missed Saturday's game and will miss another one tomorrow night. The day after I return from Florida, I'll head to Houston with the hoops team, so I'll get to see a little roundball before Christmas. I'll be listening in on gopack.com tomorrow night.
Well, I guess it's time to put my game-face on, because it's nothing but work from here on out. Maybe I'll take another quick run to the outlets before the ESPN folks get here!
