The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1137844
JULY 2019 ■ 33 FOOTBALL PREVIEW 2019 SHINING EXAMPLE Fifth-Year Senior Defensive End James Smith-Williams' Work On And Off The Field Justifies Wearing The Coveted No. 1 Jersey BY MATT CARTER O n April 8 at 7 p.m., 350 male NC State student-athletes were at the Hunt Auditorium on Cen- tennial Campus. For the next hour, they listened to the story of Brenda Tracy. Tracy's story is haunting and chilling. It is about a tragic upbringing and the un- thinkable six-hour gang rape that occurred in 1998 by two football players at Oregon State University, a high school recruit on a visit and a friend of the prospect who played junior college football. Although all the athletes confessed to varying degrees that a sexual assault oc- curred, charges were never brought. Tracy has now spent decades battling the trauma of what happened, and sportswriter John Canzano of The Oregonian brought her story to the public in 2014. Through that, Tracy began a new path as a speaker, mainly to audiences like the one she addressed that April evening in Raleigh — male student-athletes — and discussed the problems of domestic and sexual vio- lence. WRAL.com's Lauren Brownlow was there that night and in an online story about the assembly detailed the depth of Tracy's recounting of the night. It's enough to make any reader — much less a listener in the same room — uncom- fortable, but there is a method to Tracy's approach. "If you hear nothing else that I say to- day," Brownlow reported Tracy saying, "I want you to listen to what I'm going to say right now. Please pay attention right now. "I am not here because I think you're the problem. I am here because I know that you are the solution. Every single one of you in this room right now, you are the solution to this issue." In that room taking it all in was NC State fifth-year senior defensive end James Smith-Williams. "She challenged us with what are we going to do to help change the culture," Smith-Williams remembered. "What are we going to do to help make a difference? That really resonated to me. That hit home to me." Smith-Williams worked with Tonya Washington, the assistant athletics director for student enhancement and leadership at NC State, and Annabelle Myers, the as- sistant athletics director for communica- tions, to set up a donation drive for Interact, a Wake County-based non-profit agency providing support for domestic and sexual violence survivors. Originally, talk centered around doing it in the fall, but Smith-Williams couldn't wait that long. "I wanted it done as soon as possible," he said. "I pressed to find a date that would work as soon as possible." So on May 10 at Doak Field during NC State's baseball series finale against Clemson, Smith-Williams and his football teammates responded to Tracy's challenge to be a part of the solution with a donation drive. It's a prime example of Smith-Williams knowing his priorities and leading the way on and off the field, and another reason why he is wearing the coveted No. 1 jersey for the Pack this fall. Becoming A Success On The Field Smith-Williams gives all the credit to his mother Wendy Williams, a first-generation college student who graduated from UNC Greensboro, for his strong classroom work. He finished his time at Millbrook High in Raleigh with a weighted grade point average of 4.9 and scored a 30 (out of 36) on the ACT. He was the rare high school student whose favorite classes were pre- calculus and calculus. Smith-Williams was also a gifted ath- lete. In the summer before his senior year at Millbrook, he showed up at NC State's camp, checked in at 6-4, 196 pounds and ran the 40-yard dash in 4.53 seconds. He also had an impressive 10-foot-3 standing broad jump. The athleticism was too enticing to pass up. The Wolfpack offered him, as had Boston College previously. The decision for Smith- Williams though was an Ivy League educa- tion at Columbia or major college football in his hometown. He chose the latter. Smith-Williams was a defensive end at Millbrook and tied the school record with 19 sacks as a senior. But NC State first tried him at nickel. "I would say nickel is probably the hard- est position on our team," Smith-Williams said. "You're a linebacker, you're a safety, you blitz also. There's a lot of different things to have to be, to be a nickel. "It was really tough, but it gives you a perspective of what the whole defense was doing." The Pack then tried him at weakside linebacker. "It was more natural," Smith-Williams admitted. "But we have a complex defense. A linebacker is making a lot of different calls, and I didn't have the background of it in high school. … I was kind of out of my element, a little bit." When he was 220 pounds and in his redshirt freshman season, Smith-Williams received a call from the coaches. "They said, 'We think you are a defen- sive end, whether you want to acknowledge it or not,'" Smith-Williams remembered. The move has worked out. Following some of the blueprint used by his former teammates and now NFL starters Brad- ley Chubb and B.J. Hill, Smith-Williams bulked up to 270 pounds and maintained his trademark athleticism. The Athletic's Bruce Feldman rated him No. 27 on his annual college football "Freaks List" last summer. More importantly, Smith-Williams emerged as a full-time starter in 2018. He finished the year with 37 tackles, 9.5 stops for loss and tied for the team lead with six sacks. He was particularly strong at the start of ACC play when he had 2.5 total sacks against Virginia, Boston College and Clemson. Smith-Williams, however, only gave himself a B-minus grade for the campaign. "It was just okay," he said. "I feel like there's a lot of things I left on the field, for one. I think to take the next step, I need to make a constant impact on the game." Expectations are higher for Smith-Wil- liams this year. He was named preseason third-team All-ACC by Athlon and Ben Fennell of the NFL Network has him on his early top-10 list of the best edge players for the 2020 draft. Smith-Williams emerged as a full-time starter in 2018 and tied for the team lead with six sacks. He also contributed 37 total stops and 9.5 tackles for loss. PHOTO BY KEN MARTIN