North Carolina State University Athletics
Catching Up With Brie Ward
10/27/2005 12:00:00 AM | Track
Oct. 27, 2005
Brie Ward, a junior on the NC State women's track & field teams, sat down with GoPack.com recently for a quick chat. Ward, a thrower from Stafford, Va., is an electrical engineering major who plans to graduate after this year. She competed in both the 20-pound weight throw and the shot put at the ACC Indoor Championships last year as well as the discus throw and hammer throw at the ACC Outdoor Championships.
GoPack: What have you been up to?
BW: I've been looking for a job. I graduate in May so I'm trying to get my whole job search together for after graduation.
GoPack: Are you looking for jobs around Raleigh?
BW: Doesn't matter. If I had my choice I would want to work for NSA, but that's pretty competitive to get in there.
GoPack: NSA, as in the government agency?
BW: Yeah, the National Security Agency. They do a lot with encryption and signal processing, coding, encoding and that kind of stuff.
GoPack: What is your specialty?
BW: Communication Engineering. Signal processing and DSP.
GoPack: What is DSP?
BW: Digital Signal Processing.
GoPack: You've got another year of elegibility left after this season, are you not going to use it?
BW: Not unless I go to grad school.
GoPack: Is that an option that you are considering?
BW: I'm keeping everything open, but I can't really afford grad school right now. I need to work first.
GoPack: What events do you compete in?
BW: Hammer, discus and weight throw
GoPack: Which one are you best at?
BW: Hammer. I have the most fun doing that.
GoPack: Where did you go to high school?
BW: Brooke Point High School
GoPack: What did you compete in there?
BW: I did throws and triple jump. I was also on the swim team for four years.
GoPack: What did you swim?
BW: Distance ... anything longer than 200m
GoPack: Were you any good?
BW: I was decent. I wish I could have practiced more because I always ended up starting over again each year because I wouldn't swim year-round. So I always had to swim myself back into shape. For two of those years I had indoor track and swimming going on at the same time. That kinda wore me out.
GoPack: So you had swim practice before school and track practice in the afternoons?
BW: For awhile it was like that, but then we ended up having swim practice late at night, so I would have track practice after school, go home and eat dinner and then come back for swim practice. It was fun though, I had a lot of friends on those teams.
GoPack: Why did you pick NC State?
BW: Out of the two or three schools I was considering, it was closest and more affordable. I liked the campus. I came here my junior year for a megatronics workshop and I really enjoyed being here. The professors all seemed pretty laid back and the people weren't really stuck up or anything, so I really liked the atmosphere.
GoPack: So you known you wanted to be an engineer for a while?
BW: I knew that I wanted to be an engineer around my sophomore year of high school, but I didn't really narrow down until I got here and I've just stuck with it.
GoPack: What is your family like? Do you have any brothers or sisters?
BW: I'm an only child. My family is pretty cool. They still live in Northern Virginia. It's a suburb between DC and Fredericksburg.
GoPack: Was track always part of the plan when you came here?
BW: No, I was actually done with track when I came here. I wasn't really enjoying it by the end of my high school career. I figured I would give it a shot though once I got here and I ended up really loving my teammates and coach, so I've stuck with it. It has definitely been a nice thing having the same coach all four years. I think we had a different coach every year and we were constantly having to get used to how they wanted things done.
GoPack: Did you show rapid improvement once you got here?
BW: Not immediately actually. I had trouble letting go of some of my athletic pride, learning to trust my coach and actually listen. That and the adjustment to the level of competition here in the ACC, made it a little intimidating. I had never even heard of the hammer or the weight throw before I got here, so I redshirted my freshman year to learn those and it literally took the whole year. Since then I really have made a lot of progress. A lot of that is because I have become so much stronger though. I had never really lifted weights before I came here.
GoPack: What are your team and individual goals for this year?
BW: I think our throws group should be much better this year. We only have two girls returning, but there's a bunch of new guys this year, so that should increase the daily competition and make everyone better.
GoPack: What about individually?
BW: I want to make the finals in every meet and obviously I want to score at ACCs.
GoPack: What is your favorite Coach Wood?
BW: I don't know, he has a bunch of funny sayings, but I can't think of a single one right now. I'll tell you that my favorite outfit of his is this cutoff polo that he wears all the time. It's a polo with the sleeves cut off of it and that cracks all of us up.
GoPack: Who has the best nickname in the throws group?
BW: We don't really have any good ones that we use all the time. Mitch's (Mitchell Pope) is Big. We just call him Big. Maybe we'll get some good ones for the freshmen.
GoPack: What is going on right now with preseason?
BW: It's a little more hard core in fall than during the season. We definitely do a lot more weight lifting and I've been doing a lot of cardio trying to speed up my throw. We're doing a lot of lifting right now and working a lot on technique.
GoPack: First meet is January 14. When does preseason end and the regular season begin for you?
BW: When we get back from winter break. We'll go real hard all fall and then go home to rest up for a couple weeks over the holidays, get healthy and then come back ready to compete.
GoPack: What classes are you taking this semester?
BW: Senior Design, Digital Signal Processing, Thermodynamics and Basic Drawing, which is for my art design minor.
GoPack: What are your favorite hobbies?
BW: I love getting together with friends. I'm an RA in my building and my residents are awesome this year. I love photography and I would love to travel more. I went to Italy and England over the summer and it was spectacular. I want to go back.
GoPack: What were you doing over there?
BW: I went with my mom. We wanted to do something fun together because we haven't had a chance to spend much time together since I left for college. I haven't been home much since because I've been interning here over the summers.
GoPack: Where have you been interning?
BW: Piedmont Electric. It's an electric CO-OP in Durham. I've been doing some engineering stuff for them. Mainly with their GPS system and their staking technicians.
GoPack: Their what technicians?
BW: Staking technician. They map out where they're going to put stuff.
GoPack: Oh.
BW: I've worked with them the past two summers now.
GoPack: How long were you in Europe?
BW: Ten days. I was working, and as an intern, I didn't have a lot of vacation. But I had a blast spending time with my Mom. We spent seven days in Rome and the last three in London. I wore out a pair of shoes walking all over the place just seeing everything. I took a lot of pictures ... I shot 18 rolls of film and some of them were 36 exposure, plus I took a bunch on my Mom's digital camera too.
GoPack: Are your parents big Wolfpack fans now?
BW: My Dad is now hardcore. My Mom went to West Virginia, so she's about half and half. But all their neighbors are Hokie fans, so she loves being an NC State fan now that we're in the same league as them.
GoPack: Do they make to many of your track meets?
BW: They've seen me a couple times. They came down for the Raleigh Relays last year and spent the whole Easter weekend here. I had my own little fan section that day, which was pretty funny. My Dad is getting into now. He's always asking me about my technique.
