North Carolina State University Athletics
Program Spotlight: William Lee
10/3/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
Raleigh, N.C. - At first glance, NC State long-snapper William Lee seems just a little bit of a contradiction. We’re talking about some who is country (as in very country), an unabashed NASCAR fanatic who loves country music yet is trained in classical guitar, and a graduate student in mechanical engineering whose lowest grade in five-plus years at NC State was an A-minus. An A-Minus!
Talk to Lee for more than a few minutes and it becomes abundantly clear that he is not a contradiction at all, just a really smart, well-educated guy from the country with a lot of disparate interests, the most obvious being football and stock-car racing. Especially stock-car racing. William Lee’s love of NASCAR took root at an early age.
“I’ve followed NASCAR since right before I started first grade,” Lee says. “I watched a few races that summer, and my family got tickets to North Wilkesboro for that fall’s race. We had tickets on the backstretch. They’d just put up, I believe they were wooden bleachers and we were on about the fourth row.”
Beginning that Sunday afternoon in North Wilkesboro, Lee was hooked on NASCAR. And there is no element of the sport too insignificant for Lee. He knows drivers — his favorite is Bill Elliott — cars, racetracks, sponsors. He collects NASCAR memorabilia. He also understands the history and the culture of the sport, which explains why his role model is Richard Petty, who retired from driving in 1992, just two years after Lee started watching the sport..
“He was always really really good with fans, the way he would stick around and sign autographs for everybody,” Lee says. “He was basically how NASCAR was back then. It was a little more fan-friendly. I remember the race I went to at North Wilkesboro, they opened the gate and all the fans could walk on the track before the race and talk to the drivers as they came out, have a picture made by the window of Geoff Bodine’s Explorer. There’s no way that would happen now. Drivers do all these appearances now for sponsors, but it’s not quite the same.”
Another change in NASCAR, and one that Lee says is not necessarily for the better, is the homogenization of race tracks. The small tracks, such as North Wilkesboro, have been phased out in favor of the large super track, large ovals with seating for close to 200,000 fans.
“I think NASCAR lost something when it lost North Wilkesboro,” Lee says. “I can kind of understand Rockingham going because there were a lot of empty seats, but what else would you expect in North Carolina in February and November? It’s gonna be cold. But North Wilkesboro was packed every time.”
Every sports fan dreams at some point of a career in sports, in a particular sport, and Lee is no different. He has thought about a career in NASCAR for a long time, but not as a driver. He quickly admits that he’s too old to be starting out as a driver. Instead, Lee’s ultimate job would be as a NASCAR crew chief, which in part explains the path of his academic career.
“That would be a great job,” Lee says. “I want to try to start out with something, maybe design engineer or something like that and try to get on a pit crew. That’s one of the reasons I chose mechanical engineering, because it would allow me to do something like that.”
Assuming Lee is able to join a race team following grad school, it will be because of more than just the degrees in mechanical engineering. It also will be because Lee is highly motivated and has a tremendous work ethic. That would explain the 4.0 GPA, which would grade out to somewhere around 4.2 if A-plusses were counted beyond a 4.0 on the grading scale.
“My parents were both teachers, so it was impossible not to get good grades,” Lee says. “I don’t know how to study not to get an A, because I’m afraid if I try to study for a B or a C, it will be worse than that. My parents always said when I was growing up that if I got a B and I tried my best that they wouldn’t be mad, but if I did get a B when I could have gotten an A, there were problems there.”
Lee’s study skills actually helped him get into long-snapping.
“My eighth-grade teacher made a deal with me that fall that if I made 100 on a test that he would take me and a friend of mine to see the State-Carolina game,” Lee says. “I made 100 on my test and we went to the game. We were messing around in the parking lot before the game and I was snapping the ball to him. I had decent speed on it, at least for eighth grade, and he said, ‘Why don’t you turn your hand this way?’ and he showed me how to snap and use the form I’m using now.”
Lee did not get to use his newfound long-snapping skills in a game for another two years, when he was with the jayvee team at Fuquay-Varina High School.
“I started 10th-grade year and had a bad game my second game,” Lee says. It wasn’t bad results as far as the end result. The snaps were bad. There were four of them that were all on the ground. Two of them he got off with a punt, and the other two he ran for a total of 130 yards and a touchdown, so it worked out okay. So the punt was our best play that game.”
There haven’t been too many bad snaps since then. A lifelong NC State fan, Lee and his high school coach approached then-Wolfpack special teams coach Joe Pate about walking on the following year (2002).
“I came up and talked to Coach Pate, and he showed me the depth chart,” Lee says. “First team, Young; second team, Young; third team, Young. Danny Young was taking care of everything, so he told me that they really needed another long snapper. Everything else has fallen into place.”
Lee backed up Young those first three years, then took over when Young graduated in 2004. He’s now in his third year as the Wolfpack’s long-snapper, and has handled the job pretty much without incident. Following tonight’s game with Boston College, he’ll have eight games left in his college career.
“For a while I thought it was never going to get here, but now, seeing how many games we have left, wow, this is it,” Lee says. “I know this season’s going to fly by a lot quicker than last season did because our schedule is a lot more regular. Last year’s schedule was wild, Sunday night game, two Thursdays in a row. And now it’s here.”
Talk to Lee for more than a few minutes and it becomes abundantly clear that he is not a contradiction at all, just a really smart, well-educated guy from the country with a lot of disparate interests, the most obvious being football and stock-car racing. Especially stock-car racing. William Lee’s love of NASCAR took root at an early age.
“I’ve followed NASCAR since right before I started first grade,” Lee says. “I watched a few races that summer, and my family got tickets to North Wilkesboro for that fall’s race. We had tickets on the backstretch. They’d just put up, I believe they were wooden bleachers and we were on about the fourth row.”
Beginning that Sunday afternoon in North Wilkesboro, Lee was hooked on NASCAR. And there is no element of the sport too insignificant for Lee. He knows drivers — his favorite is Bill Elliott — cars, racetracks, sponsors. He collects NASCAR memorabilia. He also understands the history and the culture of the sport, which explains why his role model is Richard Petty, who retired from driving in 1992, just two years after Lee started watching the sport..
“He was always really really good with fans, the way he would stick around and sign autographs for everybody,” Lee says. “He was basically how NASCAR was back then. It was a little more fan-friendly. I remember the race I went to at North Wilkesboro, they opened the gate and all the fans could walk on the track before the race and talk to the drivers as they came out, have a picture made by the window of Geoff Bodine’s Explorer. There’s no way that would happen now. Drivers do all these appearances now for sponsors, but it’s not quite the same.”
Another change in NASCAR, and one that Lee says is not necessarily for the better, is the homogenization of race tracks. The small tracks, such as North Wilkesboro, have been phased out in favor of the large super track, large ovals with seating for close to 200,000 fans.
“I think NASCAR lost something when it lost North Wilkesboro,” Lee says. “I can kind of understand Rockingham going because there were a lot of empty seats, but what else would you expect in North Carolina in February and November? It’s gonna be cold. But North Wilkesboro was packed every time.”
Every sports fan dreams at some point of a career in sports, in a particular sport, and Lee is no different. He has thought about a career in NASCAR for a long time, but not as a driver. He quickly admits that he’s too old to be starting out as a driver. Instead, Lee’s ultimate job would be as a NASCAR crew chief, which in part explains the path of his academic career.
“That would be a great job,” Lee says. “I want to try to start out with something, maybe design engineer or something like that and try to get on a pit crew. That’s one of the reasons I chose mechanical engineering, because it would allow me to do something like that.”
Assuming Lee is able to join a race team following grad school, it will be because of more than just the degrees in mechanical engineering. It also will be because Lee is highly motivated and has a tremendous work ethic. That would explain the 4.0 GPA, which would grade out to somewhere around 4.2 if A-plusses were counted beyond a 4.0 on the grading scale.
“My parents were both teachers, so it was impossible not to get good grades,” Lee says. “I don’t know how to study not to get an A, because I’m afraid if I try to study for a B or a C, it will be worse than that. My parents always said when I was growing up that if I got a B and I tried my best that they wouldn’t be mad, but if I did get a B when I could have gotten an A, there were problems there.”
Lee’s study skills actually helped him get into long-snapping.
“My eighth-grade teacher made a deal with me that fall that if I made 100 on a test that he would take me and a friend of mine to see the State-Carolina game,” Lee says. “I made 100 on my test and we went to the game. We were messing around in the parking lot before the game and I was snapping the ball to him. I had decent speed on it, at least for eighth grade, and he said, ‘Why don’t you turn your hand this way?’ and he showed me how to snap and use the form I’m using now.”
Lee did not get to use his newfound long-snapping skills in a game for another two years, when he was with the jayvee team at Fuquay-Varina High School.
“I started 10th-grade year and had a bad game my second game,” Lee says. It wasn’t bad results as far as the end result. The snaps were bad. There were four of them that were all on the ground. Two of them he got off with a punt, and the other two he ran for a total of 130 yards and a touchdown, so it worked out okay. So the punt was our best play that game.”
There haven’t been too many bad snaps since then. A lifelong NC State fan, Lee and his high school coach approached then-Wolfpack special teams coach Joe Pate about walking on the following year (2002).
“I came up and talked to Coach Pate, and he showed me the depth chart,” Lee says. “First team, Young; second team, Young; third team, Young. Danny Young was taking care of everything, so he told me that they really needed another long snapper. Everything else has fallen into place.”
Lee backed up Young those first three years, then took over when Young graduated in 2004. He’s now in his third year as the Wolfpack’s long-snapper, and has handled the job pretty much without incident. Following tonight’s game with Boston College, he’ll have eight games left in his college career.
“For a while I thought it was never going to get here, but now, seeing how many games we have left, wow, this is it,” Lee says. “I know this season’s going to fly by a lot quicker than last season did because our schedule is a lot more regular. Last year’s schedule was wild, Sunday night game, two Thursdays in a row. And now it’s here.”
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