North Carolina State University Athletics
Patrick Thomas Mini-Camp Diary
5/1/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
May. 1, 2005
Patrick was yawning on Sunday afternnoon when he called in from the Jacksonville airport, where he was waiting for his flight back to Miami. He admitted that he was glad that mini-camp was over, but at the same time can't wait to get back to Jacksonville in a couple of weeks. The Wolfpack family appreciates him taking time to share his thoughts and activities with us during this important time in his life.
"Today was good. Ater breakfast, I went to chapel. The speaker talked about belief and about having faith and letting that work in your everday life. It was a good message.
After chapel, we had meetings. I was wrong - I didn't think we would add any new plays today, but they gave us two before we went out on the field. We went out around 10. Practice was easier, maybe because I'm getting more comfortable. I still made a couple of mistakes, but I did some good things out there. There has been no hitting in practice, but yesterday, I went for the ball and ran into my teammate and we both fell down. The crowd loved it.
After practice, they had a bar-b-que on the field. It was was nice and that was some good food - ribs, chicken, cole slaw, potato salad, sweet tea. Some of the rookies had to carry the vets' helmets, but nobody asked me to carry theirs'. They'll get me sooner or later - I know they will.
They gave me an offseason workout program - I'll start working out tomorrow because we have to be back in couple of weeks. I'm glad to be going back home, but they wouldn't let us take home our playbooks, and I wanted to study. I do have all my notes, so I'll study that. I talked to Dre [Andre Maddox] just once when I was here. He sounded like he was going through the same thing - having to learn fast. We'll probably get together this week and see how everything went.
A week ago, I wasn't even drafted yet - I didn't even know where I'd be this week. Now I've been through camp and I'm on the team. It's like being a celebrity overnight - Yesterday let me know that. I'm on the way to living my dream.
I feel good about how I handled things at camp and feel confident about how it's going to be. But right now, I'm just looking forward to getting back home and getting on the phone. I haven't been really talking to everybody since I've been at camp, so I've got to catch up with all my friends.
