The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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14 ■ THE WOLFPACKER TRACKING THE PACK NC State graduate student and softball player Randi Farricker is a star on and off the field. When she's not busy playing shortstop and hitting balls over the outfield fence at Dail Softball Stadium, she's working towards completing a master's degree in animal science. Farricker graduated with a bachelor's degree in animal science last spring. When her playing career is over (she has one season of eligibility remaining), she plans to pursue her lifelong dream of working with animals at a doctorate level, whether it's as a veterinarian or through research in the academic world. "I've always loved animals," Farricker said. "We had family dogs, and I rode horses growing up. My cousin is a veterinarian, and I shadowed her in her clinic. I was always around that, and I've always been a science kid that's super into STEM. "It was just the best of both worlds that I could pursue science and also work with animals every day. It would be hard for me not to choose that as a career field." She was one of four players on the softball team in 2021 to earn ACC All- Academic honors. On the diamond, she was one of the conference's best power hitters and was named third-team All-ACC this spring. This past season, Farricker became the third player in program history to lead the conference in home runs. She hit a career-best 17 homers, which ranked 22nd nationally and were the fourth-most in a single season in school history. Farricker's .788 slugging percentage also ranked second in the ACC and was the second-best single-season mark in program history. "It was all connected to the mental game," she said. "I was in a good place during the season. I've done a lot of preparation, and I've been playing softball for a long time. "Mechanics don't change a lot. By the time you get to college, you're not making huge adjustments to your swing. I finally got to a place where I accepted where I was, and I allowed myself to really be confident in my preparation." A former transfer from Arizona State, Farricker was ranked 94th nationally in the 2016 recruiting class by FloSoftball. In three seasons at NC State, she has a career batting av- erage of .292 and slugging percentage of .636, which ranks second all time in the program's record books. In 291 ca- reer plate appearances, Farricker has hit 25 home runs, 21 doubles and two triples while knocking in 67 runs. "I have two really strong priorities, and I want to do well in both of them," she said. "If I do really well in softball, then I'm going to feel good about myself in the classroom. If I go out and do well in the classroom, then I'm going to feel better and not be stressed out about softball. It works both ways." — Justin H. Williams STUDENT-ATHLETE OF THE MONTH SOFTBALL SHORTSTOP RANDI FARRICKER The Wolfpacker Podcast records at least once a week, and is always available to listen to on The- Wolfpacker.com and most everywhere else podcasts can be downloaded. Video streams of the show are also available on The Wolfpacker YouTube channel. Here are some excerpts from when co-host of The OG on 99.9 The Fan in Raleigh Joe Giglio joined the show to discuss his recent six-part pod- cast, Never Failed: The Russell Wilson Story. Why did you feel now was the right time to come out with this podcast, reliving the Wilson story? "The idea came about during the football season when Seattle and Russ got off to such a hot start. Invariably, it will always come back to, 'What hap- pened at NC State, why did he leave NC State?' The story, in my opinion, has never been told completely. "A big part of that was the graduation speech in 2016 that Russell Wilson gave at Wisconsin, where he was rather loose with the facts and people have just adopted that as the truth. "I've always felt that there was a better way, a more complete way, to tell the story based on my own experience during that time and based on being able to talk to some of the people that were there, including [NC State head baseball coach] Elliott Avent, [quarterback] Mike Glennon and [Wolfpack offensive coordinator] Marc Trestman. "I was glad to get the people that we did to talk to us. I thought they were really honest, and it worked out really well. … To now be at WRAL and 99.9 The Fan, to have access to those archives [of old inter- views], really tied the whole thing together." What did you learn while doing the podcast? "I knew through Elliott Avent that Marc Trestman had a very high opinion of Russell. I did not know, until reading The Wolfpacker's Oral History of Russell Wilson, that Marc conducted a workout with Russell before the NC State camp. That article really was the first time I knew about that specific workout. "When we interviewed him, Marc said that he gave Wilson a third-round NFL Draft grade based on that workout as a 17-year-old. He talked about Russell's leadership and how he gave him that very specific grade. I'm like, 'You got all of this out of a workout, in shorts, against no defense?' And he's like, 'Yeah.' What is your opinion on how NC State handled the situation with Russell? "I thought it was an inevitable conclusion for him to transfer. My ultimate takeaway is that Tom O'Brien was right about Wilson making a commit- ment. Once Russell gave up baseball, his football career took off. There's absolutely no denying that. "Tom should have handled that situation better, bottom line. He really believed that Russell would have been better as a junior if he was at spring practice and offseason workouts. "Tom never got over the ECU game. In his mind, it was, 'We lost this game very specifically because you weren't here.' His thought process at that time was that he knew he would have Mike here the whole time, and he knew Mike was going to be a good college quarterback, which he was. "Did NC State do Russell wrong — he had a scholarship and then all of a sudden he didn't have a scholarship. "It's like being a parent. You tell a kid here are the rules, and then they don't follow the rules. Is it your fault as the parent or did a kid do something where this is the consequence?" — Justin H. Williams Co-Host Of The OG On 99.9 The Fan In Raleigh Joe Giglio PODCAST HIGHLIGHTS Farricker, who is pursuing a graduate de- gree in animal science, led the ACC and ranked 22nd nationally with a career-best 17 home runs in 2021. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS