The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/790572
30 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY TIM PEELER A t the top of the list of things NC State men's golf coach Richard Sykes wants to do when he retires at the end of the 2017 spring season is finally play the Lonnie Poole Golf Course. Yes, the man who pushed more than any- one to build a home — an Arnold Palmer Design Company-designed championship course, no less — for the Wolfpack men's and women's programs has never played a full round at the place where he has shown up for practice every day since it opened in 2009 and where his new office has been located in the Carol Johnson Poole Club- house since it opened in 2014. He's been busy. For 46 years, Sykes has coached the Pack men's team. He coached it part time while he was still an assistant pro at the Carolina Country Club in Raleigh and head pro at Lakeside Country Club in his home- town of Wendell. He coached the squad when he wasn't allowed to leave the borders of North Caro- lina to recruit players. He coached it when the only place he had to practice was a makeshift tee and green he built by hand in the east parking lot of Carter-Finley Sta- dium and practice consisted largely of hit- ting wedge shots into a trash can. And he coached it as a full-time athletics department employee when he had second- ary jobs that included motor pool manager, video coordinator and director of game-day operations at both Reynolds Coliseum and Carter-Finley Stadium. "There were a lot of hours associated with all of those things, but it never seemed like work," Sykes said. "I was looking after fields and going to games, or being around people who were involved with sports. "I was a sports fan. I might have been there at the crack of dawn and stayed until late at night, but I got to strut around like I was something. I got to sit at the scorer's table in basketball. I was part of the game. It couldn't have been better if I was play- ing myself." Athletics has changed since those early days, but so has the world. Sykes was hired as the temporary replacement for former golf coach Al Michaels, who had to give up his secondary duties in athletics in August 1971 — during the first administration of President Richard Nixon — because of his day job. When Earle Edwards abruptly A WOLFPACK INSTITUTION Richard Sykes, NC State's Longest-Ever Tenured Coach, Will Retire At The End Of The 2017 Men's Golf Season During his 46 seasons as the men's golf coach, Sykes tutored six individual ACC champions, two ACC Players of the Year, three ACC Rookies of the Year, 45 All-ACC selections and 32 All-Americans. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS