8/6/2019 football Edit

Joe Sculthorpe, James Smith-Williams have terrific tug of war battle

Jacey Zembal • TheWolfpackCentral

Writer

On one side was NC State redshirt junior interior offensive lineman Joe Sculthorpe, and on the other side was his teammate, fifth-year senior defensive end James Smith-Williams, aka “The Freak.”

The two Wolfpack linemen went toe to toe July 13 in a game of tug of war, only it wasn’t rope that was being used. Instead it was a red circle with handles. The players had to cover 10 yards to be declared the winner.

The 6-3, 300-pound Sculthorpe had 35 pounds on the 6-3 Smith-Williams, and the former was a first-class prep wrestler coming out of Topsail High in Hampstead, N.C.

Sculthorpe was inches away from winning within the first six seconds of the battle, but it was almost as if Smith-Williams was just playing to the crowd and channeled his inner Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson wrestling personality. Johnson played with NCSU defensive line coach Kevin Patrick at the University of Miami before becoming a superstar WWE wrestler and now actor.

“My cleats were slipping and my hands slipped, and it was sweaty,” Smith-Williams said. “I was like the sixth guy to go. It was a mess and he was beating me, and he was beating me pretty soundly.”

For another four to five seconds, Sculthorpe tried to finish off Smith-Williams, who was named the No. 3 athletic freak in the country by The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman this summer. Smith-Williams turned it on and dragged Sculthorpe nine-plus yards in about 12 seconds.

“I make it a point to not lose,” Smith-Williams said. “I have a lot of pride to not lose and it was about not getting beat. You have a reputation and you want to preserve that on the team. I couldn’t lose.”

Sculthorpe laughed about what transpired, but called it “good competition.” He said there is a difference between going forward and backward.

“It is what it is, and that is all that I have to say,” Sculthorpe said.

Sculthorpe didn’t buy the “slip” angle at the start of the competition, but he knows how close he was to winning.

“I don’t know about that,” said Sculthorpe on the alleged slip. “There is tape and you can go back and watch it if you want. I don’t remember no slipping of the rope.”

Sculthorpe recalled a previous loss to sophomore defensive tackle Alim McNeill, and Smith-Williams still remembers maybe falling to former left tackle Tyler Jones in the past.

All in all, the contest took just 23 seconds to complete, but had all the ingredients needed to be a future segment on the ACC Network.

“I tried and those competitions get really tight and really intense, and sometimes you have to dig down in there,” Sculthorpe said.