North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: Warren Always Wanted to Wear Wolfpack Red
3/19/2010 12:00:00 AM | Softball
RALEIGH, N.C. – Landon Warren doesn't remember the exact day when she was a baby that the late NC State basketball coach Jim Valvano bounced her on his knee.
She knows that it was at the wedding of a family friend, that her grandmother forced her into his arms and that no one took a picture. It's one of those hand-me-down stories that is constantly retold at family reunions.
Even before that day, when she wasn't yet a toddler, Warren felt like she was destined to attend NC State. That might seem odd, since her grandfather Wiley was an All-American first baseman and junior varsity basketball player at Wake Forest and her parents, Jeff and Kennetha, are both graduates of East Carolina, where he played baseball.
But they never dressed her in gold-and-black and purple-and-gold.
"I always wore NC State red," she says.
It was her uncle, Mike, who had the biggest influence on helping her choose a favorite team. He was a member of Valvano's legendary 1983 NCAA Championship basketball team. A former prep All-American at Raleigh's Broughton High School, Mike Warren was one of Valvano's first recruits and a teammate of current Wolfpack head coach Sidney Lowe.
Softball was always Landon's sport of choice. She tried tennis as a pre-schooler, at the urging of a grandmother who was a tennis instructor. But the tomboy in her absolutely despised the silly skirts. Plus, every time she hit the ball, she practically knocked it over the fence.
"She needs to be playing ball," said her grandfather, who in 1952 played for the first team in Atlantic Coast Conference history to advance to the College World Series.
She started in tee-ball, moved on to coaches' pitch and right on through the youth league ranks. By the age of 10, she was tearing the cover off the ball on a traveling team.
Though her blood was always Wolfpack red, she was just bummed early on that the school did not have a softball team. She wondered if she would have to make the difficult choice between playing collegiate softball somewhere else or attending the school that she loved ever since her parents dressed her in an NC State cheerleading outfit.
So she still remembers the day, eight years ago, when her dad told her the exciting news that NC State was adding softball to its roster of varsity sports and that Lisa Navas would be the head coach.
"You know, I am going to have to go there, right?" she told her dad.
Warren knew Navas from summer softball camp, back when Warren was still a catcher and Navas was her position instructor.
Truth be told, that was the day Warren knew that her future was set. After an all-star career at Broughton - where her grandfather, her father and uncle were all stand-out athletes - Warren came to NC State a year-and-a-half ago, as a freshman shortstop.
She knew it would be a transitional year, making the leap from high school to college, so she wasn't disappointed in her first-year debut: in 29 games, she hit .243 with one extra base hit and two stolen bases.
In the off-season, she doubled her efforts in the batting cages in the basement of Reynolds Coliseum, improved her arm strength and made the move from shortstop to outfield.
She's been in the starting lineup all 27 games, helping her team compile a 16-11 record. Heading into the first ACC series of the season, a three-game set beginning Saturday against Virginia Tech, Warren is ranked in the top 10 in hits, batting average, runs and on-base percentage.
"She is playing really well right now," Navas says. "She is very confident at the plate and has a great eye for the ball. We moved her to the outfield so she could utilize her speed."
Warren admits that she is a bit of a fatalist: She tends to expect the worst. But so far this year, she is well on her way to exceeding her own pre-season goals.
"I still get butterflies when I play, just like I did when I was playing tee-ball," she says. "But now I kind of feel like I have been here before. I feel comfortable with how I am playing."
And she really feels at home wearing Wolfpack red.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
