North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Coaches Wowed by Largest Caravan Meeting
5/8/2007 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
RALEIGH It was the biggest tent revival meeting in memory for Wolfpack Club executive director Bobby Purcell.
An announced crowd of 1,432 Wake County NC State supporters gathered Monday night in a tent set up on the football practice fields adjacent to Carter-Finley Stadium to hear from the largest panel of Wolfpack coaches gathered on the booster club’s spring tour of the southeast.
“It’s the biggest meeting ever, that I can remember,” Purcell said.
They came to hear a pair of keynote speakers, new football coach Tom O’Brien and basketball coach Sidney Lowe, but those coaches were joined on the dais by men’s and women’s track and field and cross country coach Rollie Geiger, tennis coach Jon Choboy, volleyball coach Charita J. Stubbs, softball coach Lisa Navas, women’s golf coach Page Marsh and, briefly, baseball coach Elliott Avent. (Avent was in a car accident earlier in the day and had to leave shortly before program was underway.)
“I think it is great the enthusiasm we have seen so far,” said NC State director of athletics Lee Fowler, who served as the evening’s master of ceremonies. “Our facilities improvements are winding down, we have good coaches in place and there seems to be excitement everywhere we go. We were in Wilson a couple of nights ago and there were 350 people there, and the most they had ever had was a couple hundred.
“I think people feel good about where the Wolfpack is headed.”
Monday’s event was certainly the feel-good moment of the spring, as local fans showed their appreciation to Lowe for taking a team that was picked to finish last in the league to the ACC Tournament championship game with a standing ovation. O’Brien, who was hired in December, got a similar enthusiastic reception, particularly when he noted that some preseason prognosticators had picked the Wolfpack to finish last in the ACC’s Atlantic Division. He, like Lowe last winter, has no intentions of seeing that prediction fulfilled.
O’Brien, who has been to nearly a dozen stops on the Spring Caravan, said he has been overwhelmed by his reception this spring.
“I didn’t have any expectations, but everywhere we have gone, there have been record numbers,” said O’Brien, holding a plate of McCall’s barbecue and a cup of sweet tea. “Usually the message has just been Welcome to North Carolina.’ I get to meet a lot of different people, see the enthusiasm and see the excitement.”
There are tangible ways to gauge the excitement, as well. The deadline for football season-ticket renewals is next week and athletic department officials expect the programs eighth consecutive sellout of season tickets. Purcell also said that all remaining lifetime seating rights were nearly sold out.
Purcell, recently named college athletics fundraiser of the year, said the Wolfpack Club is nearing its goal of 20,000 members. Only two other NCAA schools, Texas A&M and Clemson, have ever reached that level of membership. Purcell said the club is less than 1,000 away from reaching that goal.
“On our first Caravan stop,” O’Brien told the appreciative crowd, “I signed up, along with all of my coaches, so we are at least 11 closer than we were.”
Four teams represented Monday softball, men’s and women’s tennis and women’s golf are headed to postseason play. Navas, whose team is the reigning ACC champion, will travel with her team to Tallahassee, Fla., this week in hopes of defending that league title. The men’s tennis team will play William & Mary in Chapel Hill this weekend in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, while the women’s tennis team will play Auburn on Saturday in Athens, Ga. Marsh’s team leaves Tuesday for its sixth consecutive appearance in the NCAA East Regional, held this year in Baton Rouge, La.
The crowd observed a moment of silence in memory of the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting, and many signed a banner of support that will be sent to the Blacksburg, Va., school. There was also a prayer request for Wolfpack women’s basketball coach Kay Yow, who is currently off her chemotherapy treatments and has gotten good reports from her doctors. Yow is out of state on vacation and was not available to attend Monday’s meeting.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
