
{"id":902,"date":"2007-09-13T10:40:17","date_gmt":"2007-09-13T18:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/09\/13\/pirates-of-the-past\/"},"modified":"2007-09-13T10:42:21","modified_gmt":"2007-09-13T18:42:21","slug":"pirates-of-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/09\/13\/pirates-of-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Pirates of the past"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Frank Heath<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I was not present last Saturday for UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thrill-a-minute 34-31 loss to East Carolina, but I can imagine Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in Greenville must have been a pretty loud and frenetic place, packed to the gills with 40,000 screaming Pirates fans.<\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because the last time North Carolina lost to ECU, I had the singular privilege of spending the afternoon on a fishing boat with one of the Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 more vociferous \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and perhaps typical \u00e2\u20ac\u201d supporters.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nIt was October 25, 1975, and my father had finagled a day trip at the coast for my brother, him and me on an impressive yacht that belonged to one of his colleagues. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never been on a boat (other than a canoe at Grandma Lake), so it took a bit to get accustomed to the rolling of the deck, the speed and spray and the roar of the engine. Once that happened, though, the adventure became quite fun. We departed in the morning out of a place called Wanchese and an hour or so later we were miles out in the open water, away from view of any land. It was a completely new experience for this dry-land guy.<\/p>\n<p>There was the anticipation of fish to be caught, and sandwiches to be eaten, and one other thing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d would the transistor radio on the boat get the game? The Tar Heels had been enduring a lackluster season in football, but that Saturday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s match-up was a home game against East Carolina, so the three of us Chapel Hillians remained optimistic that the Heels could squeeze out a win.<\/p>\n<p>The only other person present on the boat was the captain, a rugged sort who I guess you could say had our lives in his hands. The row of instruments he sat in front of may as well have been the control panel of a jet plane, for all the three of us could make of it.<\/p>\n<p>It turned out that, yes, the boat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s radio was able to pick up the game, but in order to hear it we had to sit up on the second deck with the captain, who, being a coastal resident, turned out to also be an ECU fan.<\/p>\n<p>You think State fans and ABC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ers are obnoxious? They paled in comparison to this fellow.<\/p>\n<p>Once Cappy found out we liked the Tar Heels, there was no end to the constant chatter and boasting about how the Pirates were gonna whip some tail today. And as the game turned from bad to worse for Carolina, the captain grew more and more gleeful. ECU ran the new-fangled wishbone offense at the time and quarterback Mike Weaver was picking the Carolina defense apart with his shifty moves at the corner.<\/p>\n<p>Carolina tailback Mike Voigt kept racking up the yardage, but ECU pretty much scored at will and made it a downer of a game.<\/p>\n<p>It got to the point where for one of the only times I can remember during a Tar Heel football or basketball game, my dad and I elected to go do something other than keep up with the action. Neither Voigt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 209 yards nor the unanimous agreement in Thursday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Chapel Hill Newspaper of CHN prognosticators Howard Owen, Steve Levin, Dan Collins, Carl Fincke and Tim Kirkpatrick that Carolina would beat the Pirates could change the fact that Carolina was getting hammered by its little step-brother. Luckily, the experience of being on the boat managed to win our attention back by the end of the afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>But if our boat captain that day was a typical ECU fan \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which I sort of get the feeling he was \u00e2\u20ac\u201d then the 2007 version of the Tar Heels must have gotten a true dose Saturday of what a real road game is. And I hope that somewhere in those stands, among the throngs, our yacht captain was out there, enjoying East Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first win over Carolina since that afternoon 32 years ago. It could be a while before they get another one.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving ECU behind, Carolina is now preparing for what will be its first ACC game, this Saturday against Virginia in more hospitable Kenan Stadium. The Cavaliers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fortunes have been on a downward slide in recent seasons, but they still managed to blank UNC last season up in Charlottesville. With Butch Davis now at Carolina and Steve Spurrier at South Carolina, one wonders when UVa may pull the trigger on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153upgrading\u00e2\u20ac\u009d its leadership as well.<\/p>\n<p>Even though Virginia whipped the Heels in \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc06, Coach Davis and his team do not consider this a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153revenge\u00e2\u20ac\u009d game; Davis prefers to approach each contest as an opportunity to learn and compete, and an equal challenge to all of the others. I liked his quote this week: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no wasted game for us. You could put black helmets and black jerseys with no numbers on all 12 opponents and it would seem significant as far as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m concerned.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>The rebuilding process continues on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frank Heath I was not present last Saturday for UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thrill-a-minute 34-31 loss to East Carolina, but I can imagine Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in Greenville must have been a pretty loud and frenetic place, packed to the gills with 40,000 screaming Pirates fans. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because the last time North Carolina lost to ECU, I had the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}