Talk to any NC State baseball player, and he’ll tell you about the family atmosphere within the program.
“We're all so close to each other,” sophomore center fielder Tyler McDonough said. “We're all best friends and you could almost say we're all family.”
But when the Wolfpack travels up to South Bend, Ind. this weekend for a series against a conference opponent that has had as strong a start to the 2021 season as anyone in the country, senior second baseman J.T. Jarrett won’t just find his family in his own dugout.
Across the diamond, he’ll see his own father, Notre Dame head coach Link Jarrett.
“I'm proud of the kid, but that doesn't mean you don't want to beat them,” Coach Jarrett said. “But as a parent, it's a pretty neat moment for [my wife] Jen and myself.”
The elder Jarrett has managed his Fighting Irish squad to a 16-6 overall record through mid-April. After being selected to finish in last place of the Atlantic Division in the preseason ACC coaches poll, Notre Dame leads the conference with a .727 winning percentage as of April 15.
In the latest Baseball America Top 25 poll, the Irish were ranked No. 7 nationally.
NC State will have its work cut out for it as it fights to strengthen its postseason resume after winning 11 of its last 13 contests — which was preceded by a sluggish 4-9 start — but so will Notre Dame, as it will have to face a Pack team that could fairly consider itself road warriors, claiming an 8-0 record away from Doak Field this season.
Not only will the elder Jarrett have to prepare his team for a weekend series against the red-hot Wolfpack, he’ll also have to individually prep to compete against his own son.
"This is an interesting one too for me because my son, No. 15, he's played about 150 games for NC State,” Coach Jarrett said. “You sit there sometimes and you're like, man, this guy has been on the Dean's List three years. He's been in a couple of regionals. So for my wife and I, this is a unique one for us. I'm proud of what he's done.”
“I get play-by-play, blow-by-blow highlights. I can't watch all their games, and I don't. But there's somebody in my house who does. My wife watches them. So I get some interesting feedback on what No. 15 has done. It's just interesting to go into this with that dynamic because I don't know how many people have gone through something like that at this level.”
The younger Jarrett has indeed had quite the career over four years at NC State. He's started in 113 of his 145 career appearances, hitting 16 doubles and four home runs with a .975 fielding percentage.
This season, Jarrett is batting .258 in 97 plate appearances, claiming six doubles and one home run with 13 runs batted in while starting in every game.
The elder Jarrett also had some strong words of praise for his son’s head coach, 25-year NC State skipper Elliott Avent.
"Great head coach,” Coach Jarrett said. “Elliott is a great head coach, a tremendous head coach. From afar, I've learned a lot from how Elliott handles his program. And the one assistant coach, Chris Hart, has been their recruiting coordinator for probably over a decade now, and I coached him in college. And the other assistant, Joey Holcomb, was an assistant I hired at UNC Greensboro. Going into this for me, this has a different twist.”
NC State currently sits in fifth place in the Atlantic Division of the ACC, just one game back of third-place Florida State in the conference standings. After dropping its first three series against ACC opponents this season, the Pack has won two of its last three, with a 3-0 sweep of one-off non-conference contests in between.
The Wolfpack will kick off its weekend series against the Fighting Irish on Friday at 5 p.m. in Frank Eck Stadium. The series will continue with a Saturday contest at 2 p.m. and a Sunday meeting at 1 p.m. All three games will be broadcast on ACC Network Extra.
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