As NC State tries to clinch the school record with its seventh ACC win of the season and awaits what might be one of the league’s higher-profile bowl destinations, redshirt freshman corner Shyheim Battle thinks back to the start.
Not the season-opening win over Wake Forest. Nor is it when the ACC over the summer went full speed ahead with playing college football this fall. It dates all the way back to when the team returned from the disappointment of a 4-8 season in 2019 that included just a single conference victory.
Back in January, head coach Dave Doeren had his team go through “The Program.” It is an organization that designs a two-day camp of sorts to build team chemistry and leadership through military-style discipline and drills.
Battle can recall getting up and being ready at Carter-Finley Stadium by 4 a.m. in an assembly line. All you could pack was an extra shirt, deodorant and a sandwich that you would be given all of five minutes to eat during the one break you received. Each day featured tasks with the goal of being a more cohesive unit when finished.
“We had to just work as a team to get everything completed,” Battle said. “And I feel like that kind of got everybody bonded together.”
One drill included holding a heavy wood log on one shoulder with three other teammates. Players would alternate carrying 25-pound sandbags to the objective and back, and then hop back onto holding the pole while another teammate went out.
There was strategy involved to make sure no one was carrying too much of the burden of the weight holding the pole.
“It shows how you have to have balance, and how you can’t count anybody out, and it just made us work together and uplift each other,” Battle explained.
Another day featured underwater exercises. A pair of teammates would have to take off their hoodies in the middle of a 12-foot pool, swap them and then put on their other teammate’s hoodie in a certain amount of time.
There was also a group swim from one end of the pool to the other.
“If there was a good [swimmer] way out front and a person way out back, you basically left a guy behind,” Battle explained. “It was all about finishing at the same time. That just goes to that togetherness that we just helped us build each other up.”
Redshirt sophomore linebacker Payton Wilson probably appreciated the swimming aspects more.
“I’m not a great swimmer,” Wilson clarified. “I needed some people to help me out, and I was helping people. It was just great to see everyone helping each other out, because, I mean, if you can’t swim you drown.”
Fast forward to the current day, and NC State has pulled out some nail-biting, last-play wins. It needed a defensive stop to ensure wins over Wake Forest and Syracuse. It needed a last second touchdown drive to win at Pittsburgh. It took a blocked field goal to beat Liberty.
Fighting through the adversity to win those games can be traced back to "The Program."
“They were really tough on us,” Wilson said. “They taught us a lot of things. And it really just taught us how to come together. When we go through adversity, that's something that we really struggled with last year. When something happened we would just point fingers at each other, but this year is more of a … ‘Don't point fingers, let's fix it and move on.’
"We, the team, have really became a brotherhood.”
“There's no groups or anything like that, we're all together,” Battle added. “There's no separation and no individualism, none of that stuff. We got rid of a lot of a lot of bad energy last year.”
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