North Carolina State University Athletics
Everette Sands Diary: Week 1 and Moving to Raleigh
9/8/2011 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 8, 2011
After a long summer, the football season's finally arrived again, and we're fully into our weekly routine of preparing for each game. I'm loving my time here so far, everything's great, and I'm excited to continue watching the team improve.
James Washington has been doing a great job for us, and earned the compliments he's been receiving from the coaching staff with a strong performance against Liberty. I'm looking for him to do some impressive things this year. He's really been standing out in practice with some good quickness, and I can tell he understands what we're trying to do scheme-wise.
While James has certainly proven himself, I don't believe that you can have just one guy in the backfield that you ride and ride all season. If we do that, it's asking for injury, so I'm looking to have to have at least two guys contributing every week.
We don't want a primary back taking 90-95% of the carries, because halfway through the season he'll be tapped out. So, I always believe that we need to have a two headed monster.
Curtis Underwood gave us that option in week one, giving a solid effort with the opportunities he was given. I also expect Anthony Creecy to eventually earn his way into the mix, once he fully recovers from an offseason injury. If Creecy didn't hurt his ankle, he would have been heavily involved against Liberty. I'm confident that once he gets back, he'll be contributing. It's always difficult to get three guys enough reps, but I think that we'll be able to find a way with this talented backfield.
I've enjoyed becoming a part of the coaching staff here at NC State. I'm trying my best to fit in with a staff that has a great deal of experience together, but sometimes they have a tendency to forget that I'm new here. At one practice, we were running our guys, and I wasn't sure how much rest to give them. I was giving my unit about 55 seconds, but after the first couple of sprints I started to realize that my guys were running while no one else was. About that time one of the coaches came up to me and said, "Oh yeah, coach I forgot to tell you, we're supposed to give them 75 seconds." It shows a lot about Coach O'Brien how close this staff is, and how well they know each other, and I hope to be a part of that group for a long time.
My family moved up in July, and I'm so glad to have them here with me to enjoy this experience. Before they arrived, I had to try hard to find ways to occupy my time, so I jumped online and found a softball league to join and played a lot of racquetball at the YMCA. I'm glad to have my family with me again, but I've definitely had some withdrawals from not being able to play softball anymore.
Despite losing out on my weekly softball games, being together again brings back plenty of comforts that I missed. From February 15 to July 11, I was away from my family, and I had to eat take out almost every night. By the time they moved here, I couldn't wait to finally get a home cooked meal again, I had been missing that. We finally got furniture in our living room this past week and my kid told me that it's finally starting to feel like home now, which is good.
I'll leave you with one last story about one of our recent practices. Although I'm a big Steelers fan, Franco Harris and I probably wouldn't have gotten along, because Franco used to run out of bounds. Staying in bounds and making the defense tackle you is something that I try to preach to the guys every day. At practice, James broke about a 35-40 yard run and when the safety had almost reached him he ran out of bounds. He was probably only two steps out of bounds before I was right there, getting after him. A couple of guys were saying "Coach I didn't know you run that fast!" I didn't want to make a big deal about it, but that didn't stop a couple of players from letting me hear it.
This week, we're busy preparing for our first road game, and our ACC opener, against Wake Forest. We're excited for the opportunity to improve to 2-0 on the year, and thank all the fans for their support so far this season. GO PACK!
