North Carolina State University Athletics
Words To Live By
11/29/2004 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 23, 2004
By Annabelle Vaughan -
"Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; Your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil."
- James Allen
(Quote in Patrick Thomas' locker)
Each day, after he laces up his cleats and buckles on his shoulder pads, linebacker Patrick Thomas stops to study the pieces of paper he has plastered all over his locker before he heads out of the Murphy Football Center. Whether he's going out to play in the most important game of his career, or just going out for a brief workout in shorts and shoulder pads, the senior captain studies the words that he carefully taped up before the start of preseason camp - words that motivate him to go out each and every day, and give his all to the task at hand.
Everybody who follows Wolfpack football knows who #52 is. He ranks among NC State's all-time leaders in career tackles and tackles for loss and has ranked second on the team in tackles each of the past two seasons. But there is much more to Patrick Thomas than just tackles and statistics. As the quote from James Allen says, Thomas has always dreamed lofty dreams, even though those dreams might not necessarily be to achieve fame and glory. Instead, the Miami native dreams of accomplishment rather than accolades, of family rather than fame.
One of the first in a long line of Miami players to travel up Interstate 95 to attend NC State, Thomas' parents were both born in Jamaica, his mother in St. Andrew, an area near Kingston, and his father in Spanishtown. His mother, Monica, left her native land when she was 16 to find opportunity in the United States, says Thomas. "Back then, everybody in Jamaica wanted to make it here. That was where you could be successful." She went to New York City, where she met Thomas' father, Winston.
A few years later, Winston joined the Navy and the couple, who now had a young daughter, was stationed in California, where they welcomed Patrick into the world. Two years later, the Navy called them to New Orleans, where the family spent another year. The couple separated and Monica decided to take her young children to Miami, where she could be closer to her home and family in Jamaica.
Thomas' Jamaican heritage has always been an important part of his life, although people in Raleigh might not know it unless they hear the reggae music spilling from his earphones. His voice carries only an occasional twinge of an accent, even though he says it becomes much more pronounced when he talks to his mother. And although his favorite food is the Jamaican specialty curried goat with rice and beans, he still hasn't found a place in North Carolina that serves it quite to his liking.
"It's a very important part of my life," says Thomas. "Most of my family - aunts, uncles, cousins, even my grandmother - still live in Jamaica. I used to go there a lot before college- I loved to visit there. I wish I had more time to do it now."
His frequent trips to Jamaica accomplished more that just visiting his relatives. It also helped Thomas to learn to be grateful for what he had. "You think about ghettos in Miami, and there are some bad ones, but the ghettos in Jamaica are 10 times worse. There is a lot of poverty there and some of my family came from the bottom. It's a third-world country.
"I'm not ashamed that my grandmother stays in a little house in the country," he continues. "I remember going to stay with her when I was younger and there would be no running water, no hot water. Going there made me appreciate what I had and realize that I was fortunate. We didn't have a lot of money growing up, but we lived happy. Compared to the people in Jamaica, what I had was great."
Thomas gives his mother credit for instilling that sense of satisfaction and appreciation in him when he was still young. In fact, he give his mother credit for many of the positive qualities he exhibits as an adult. "She was a single mother in a tough area and she was tough on me. I think I got whippings all the way up until eighth grade. My mother never wanted me to be out late at night, playing outside and running the streets with the kids in the neighborhood. Her rules were much stricter than other people's. I appreciate it now but it used to embarrass the hell out of me!
"We would be playing basketball or hide-and-go-seek late at night and my mother would come looking for me. She would come screaming my name down the block or around the neighborhood, `Patrick! Patrick!' People would say, `Pat, your mama's calling you, man. She told me to tell you to get your butt inside.'
"I love her for that now. She kept me out of trouble and I realize how blessed I am to have a mother like that. A lot of the guys I used to hang around with ended up getting in trouble. Those guys tell me now that I'm the only one who actually made it. I attribute that to my Mother and God and football. A lot of the guys I grew up with were great at football, but never had that discipline that my mother had to keep them on track and in the books."
"If you're going to be number one, you've got to train like you're number two."
- Maurice Green
(Quote in Patrick Thomas' locker)
The other factor that Thomas attributes his success to is not something that impresses his family back in Jamaica very much. "Football is not big time there. They call it crash ball or American football. My cousins used to tease me about playing crash ball. They think it's kinda stupid - a dumb sport where people are running into each other. They love soccer and cricket down in Jamaica, but they know football will make you a lot of money in the U.S. one day."
Although he got his athletic start in soccer (and claims he was very good at it), Thomas loved all variety of sports. "When I was younger, I played outside all the time and whatever season was in, that was the sport we were playing. If the World Cup was going on, we played soccer out there in the street. If it was baseball season, we were playing that."
Thomas started playing football when he was only nine or 10, for one of the many park teams in Miami. He played for the Kendall Hammocks Optimist Park, the same park where his current Wolfpack teammates Miguel Scott and Stephen Tulloch, who also boast Jamaican backgrounds, played. "Everyone started in the parks down there. There was no middle school ball and every neighborhood had a park. That was a big thing: neighborhood against neighborhood. I played against Andre [Maddox], Frank Gore, Roscoe Parrish ... all of the good players from that area got their start in the parks."
Although he made an early debut on the gridiron, the Pack's ferocious, hard-hitting linebacker was an offensive star when he first started to play. "I was always the tallest, but I was skinny. I was fast ... faster than almost everybody, the fastest on my team. I played running back all my years and that was all I wanted to play. I didn't really like defense very much, but I used to run the ball mean. I used to run people over. I had to get out of that. My coaches wanted me to get more yards, but I didn't care about that - I just wanted to make somebody feel it." A plethora of good running backs at Killian High School forced Thomas to rethink his objections to tackling. He realized that he had an opportunity to play more if he moved to defense, so he became a strong safety. After spending the spring at that position, a coach came and told him that the squad had a void at SAM linebacker and wanted him to fill it.
"I didn't think I was big enough. `SAM linebacker?!? I'm not big enough to play that!' But I thought that maybe if I got a cowboy collar I could do it. It wasn't about BEING big back then, it was about LOOKING big. Everybody wants to look big when they played linebacker. My strength has always been good, but I wanted to look intimidating too."
"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."
- Vince Lombardi
(Quote in Patrick Thomas' locker)
That little boy who didn't like to tackle will go down as one of the top linebackers in NC State history. Thomas, a team captain for his final campaign, is known for his passion for the game. When he's not on the field, zeroing in on the opponent, he is on the sidelines, exhorting his teammates to play hard, to not accept defeat. He takes pride in going hard every single snap of the game, every single rep in practice, every single drill in the weight room.
"Yes, you love football at times. You don't always like it when you're at practice and going through two-a-days and winter workouts. But you have to understand that it's your job," Thomas says. "People think that it's always just fun. Some people just go out there and try to get through it. I want to get better and I want to be the best. If you don't approach practice like that, you're not going to get through it. Sometimes I just tell myself to put all I've got into it - I'm not going to die from this, so I might as well give it all I've got. That's why I have those quotes in my locker."
"If you don't invest very much, then defeat doesn't hurt very much and winning is not very exciting."
- Dick Vermeil
(Quote in Patrick Thomas' locker)
"I like to make things hard on myself because I know it will prepare me for the future. Football and college and my background have taught me that I can get through anything in life. I've been through losing, I've never won a championship. I'm drained after every game because I try to give it my all, keep people's heads up, keep people's spirits up. I'm trying to lead - I've got to do this, because this is my team."
Thomas says that drive and determination is not something he reserves only for football, and the Academic All-ACC performer will soon have a degree to back up that claim. "I would be the same way in anything I decided to do. Why not do it all the way? When I was younger, I used to throw my clothes in the drawer from the laundry or throw my towel any old way on top of my door, and I remember my uncle told me, `Fold it up and do it neatly. If you're going to do something, why not do it right?' That stuck with me and that's how I go about things. I try to be organized and neat. I want to do my best to do things the right way."
"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle, victorious."
- Vince Lombardi
(Quote in Patrick Thomas' locker)
Tonight (Nov.11), Pat Thomas will pause in front of the quotes taped on his locker for the last time before he plays a game in Carter-Finley Stadium. He can't believe that moment is actually here, since it doesn't seem that long ago that he was playing in the sunny parks of Miami. And although he'll leave his name permanently etched in the Wolfpack record books, Thomas has another legacy that he wants to leave.
"I want people to know that Pat Thomas is a guy that cares. Don't think that I have a soft side or anything, but people think that I'm the meanest person, but I just care so much. A lot of people see me screaming on the sidelines, trying to get across what I want to get across. I get aggressive when I'm trying to do things right. I want people to say `This guy is really on my side and will fight for me. He cares about this team and about me.'"
Thomas says that he really hasn't thought about what his emotions will be like when he walks down that tunnel tonight for the last time. "I hope I don't get emotional - hope people don't see me cry. It's hard not to when you put that much passion and intensity into something. But I've always said, I should just give it my all and see what happens. I guess we'll see what happens."
