Throughout the majority of the game, the crowd faintly cheered back and forth at its rivals, but in the bottom of the ninth inning, the atmosphere changed drastically.
A one-out hit by junior center fielder Matt Camp in the final inning put the crowd in a frenzy and pushed the Wolfpack to a 22-8 overall record.
Coach Elliott Avent, who is now 8-8 against East Carolina following N.C. State’s dramatic 5-4 victory Wednesday night at Doak Field, said the atmosphere played a huge role in the outcome of the game.
“It’s the best crowd I’ve ever seen at N.C. State,” Avent said. “We really appreciate the support, the turnout. I think the crowd really had a lot to do with us coming back, as much as anything.”
Camp said more people have been making it to the baseball games this season.
“It was unbelievable. We used to have a good show of fans, but ECU fans seemed to overpower,” Camp said.
“But this year, our fan base has picked up a lot, with the Avent’s Army and just a bunch more people coming out. It’s a lot of help when our fans overtake theirs and when everyone is going nuts in the ninth inning.”
Pirates fans also took notice of the atmosphere.
ECU fan Daniel Morris, a 2002 ECU graduate in marketing, said he’s attended the rivalry game for the past three years.
He said even though fans love coming to a great atmosphere, he and other Pirate fans feel disrespected when the two teams face off.
“Most ECU fans feel we don’t get any respect from the ACC schools,” Morris said. “N.C. State fans tend to think they are higher-caliber than us. We’ve had to fight our way into everything.”
While the two teams are continuing to play each other on a regular basis, Chris Banker, a sophomore in mechanical engineering, said the schools are not even close to the same level.
“They think they’re on the same level as State,” Banker said. “But in reality, they are no better than a community college.”
During last year’s game, there was an incident in which Pirate fans brought megaphones and Wolfpack fans brought signs. Adam Viverette, a 1998 graduate of ECU in industrial technology, said he remembers the situation clearly.
“Last year, the guys I was with brought megaphones in,” Viverette said. “The State people brought posters and wrote f— ECU and stuff like that. But there were no fights or anything like that, though.”
Sue Frederick, a 1985 graduate of ECU in education, grew up a State fan but ended up at ECU for school.
She remembers the incident, but she took a much more subtle approach to the rivalry.
Frederick stated the rivalry is friendly and far from hostile.
“I love both schools,” Frederick said. “This is a great rivalry. There might be small things that happen rarely, but all in all, it’s great to be a part of this.”
Some fans were attending the rivalry game for at least their tenth time, but Chris Yoder, a freshman in mechanical engineering, said it was his first baseball game at State.
“I heard a lot about this game,” Yoder said. “I figured I would come out and see how good ECU really is. It’s been just an awesome atmosphere.”
With one game down, the Pack and the Pirates are set to face off twice more. The next takes place in Greenville on April 12 while the finale comes back to Raleigh on April 18.