North Carolina State University Athletics
Woodard Happy To Be Needed
2/15/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 15, 2011
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Paige Woodard had given up the dream to play for the NC State women's basketball team. She had moved on with her life, away from the sport she dearly loved to another that she had never tried.
She found a new challenge as a walk-on member of the Wolfpack's cross country and track teams, even though she had never participated in a race in her life until last fall. Saturday night, just hours after running the mile in her first indoor track meet, she was getting dressed up to go to her sister's corporate fundraising event on NC State's Centennial Campus.
At 7:20 p.m., her cell phone flashed up an unknown number. On the other end of the line was NC State women's basketball coach Kellie Harper, wondering if Woodard -- a former manager for the Wolfpack women's basketball team and a former player at Division II Converse College -- would be willing to hop on a plane that night to join Harper's team in Atlanta for Sunday afternoon's game against Georgia Tech.
Would she? Woodard was beyond thinking Harper would ever ask.
"I was pretty shocked when I got the call and excited when she laid out the opportunity," Woodard said. "I said, 'Heck, yes, I'll go to Atlanta and play some basketball.' I couldn't wait to jump on that plane."
She was unable to get a flight out Saturday night, so she changed from her party clothes into sweats, thinking she might need to polish up her rusty jump shot. But just finding a place to shoot proved almost as difficult as finding a place on the basketball roster.
She went to Reynolds Coliseum, where she found a gymnastics meet in full swing. She went to Carmichael Gymnasium, but it was closed late on a Saturday night. She ended up at an out-door court at University Village Apartments and spent a couple of hours shooting. Woodard doesn't give up easily, no matter what obstacles are in front of her.
She left Raleigh at 6 a.m. Sunday, the first flight of the day to Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport. By 7:30, just about 12 hours after Harper first called, she had rejoined the Wolfpack women's team, this time as a player.
Harper was clearly in a bind. Saturday afternoon during practice in Atlanta, guard Kim Durham suffered a concussion in practice, leaving the coach with just eight healthy players. Coming off a quadruple overtime game against Virginia Thursday night, the longest game in program history, Harper's team needed a set of fresh legs, just in case.
Even if Woodard's legs had just run a 5:22.19 mile at the UNC-Dick Taylor Invitational meet in Chapel Hill the day before.
Woodard is a former college basketball player. After graduating from North Raleigh Christian Academy, she went to Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., where she suffered a severe knee injury. She opted to leave school after a year, so she could walk on at UNC Pembroke. But another knee surgery ended that idea, and she returned to her hometown of Raleigh to enroll at NC State.
She twice tried to walk on to the Wolfpack women's team, cut first by Kay Yow and then by Kellie Harper. She opted to spend last season as a women's basketball manager. She regularly came to practice early or stayed late, taking hundreds of jump shots against radio announcer Patrick Kinas.
Last spring, her dream seemed to have ended. So she began working out with the NC State distance runners, even though she had never been a competitive runner before. The track coaches weren't sure she would help the team, but after watching how hard she worked during summer running camp, they gave her a shot.
Her work ethic reminded the coaches of Georgia Davis, who walked on to the track team as a sprinter, converted to a middle-distance runner and scored points for the team at the ACC Track and Field Championships.
"She so carefully did everything that we asked her to do," said women's cross country coach Laurie Henes. "It's been good for the team to have her around. She's really the hardest worker we have out there."
At heart, Woodard was still a basketball player. She attacked every five-mile training run as if it were an after-practice line drill. The track coaches tempered her enthusiasm enough to learn the art of preparation for distance meets. She competed in four cross country meets last fall, and saw her first action in an indoor meet this weekend.
In Atlanta, Harper was concerned about her team, which has suffered through multiple short-term and long-term injuries this season. She was texting back and forth with her husband and assistant coach Jon Harper, who was in Minnesota recruiting, while having dinner at Pittypat's Porch with the team, when he suggested giving Woodard a call.
When she heard Harper's voice on the phone, any disappointment she felt about her past experiences faded quicker than a morning fog.
"It was great to be needed by basketball because that was the sport I played my whole life," Woodard said.
And, yes, Woodard did see action in the 74-65 loss to the Yellow Jackets. She did not score in her minute of playing time, but just getting in the game fulfilled the dream that began in fifth grade, the first time she attended the Kay Yow Summer Basketball Camp.
"The first day of camp was when I set my goal to play on this team," said Woodard, who has been asked by Harper to remain with the team the rest of the season. "God worked it out. It was a dream that I thought wouldn't happen.
"Sunday proved that it still could."
Don't give up, people, don't ever give up.
• By Tim Peeler, tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
