The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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NOVEMBER 2016 ■ 23 game against Bucknell in 1911. He had al- ready signed a contract with the Giants by then, and McGraw honored his commitment and turned Robertson into a slugging out- fielder. Within three months of becoming NC State's first professional athlete, Robertson was on the Giants' major league roster. He twice shared the National League lead for home runs with 12 in 1915 and '16. He eventually made it to the 1917 World Series, where he became the first player to get a hit in every World Series game by going 11 for 22 against the White Sox. Following a nine-year major league career, the native of Norfolk, Va., returned to his home state to become a game warden and sporting goods store operator. He died on Nov. 5 1970, at the age of 89. Dick Christy, Football While known for scoring every point in the game that gave NC State football its first ACC championship, Dick Christy meant more to head coach Earle Edwards' program than just that 29-26 victory over South Carolina in 1957. The Pennsylvania native was part of Ed- wards' first recruiting class, a collection of Quaker State players that the coach lured south to build a championship program. Christy and his classmates struggled their first three years, winning only two ACC games, but caught magic in their final season, opening with a victory over North Carolina, tying national power Duke at home and losing only one game all season. Christy, after scoring four touchdowns and running for a two-point conversion, talked his way into hero status after the final seconds ticket off the clock down in Columbia, S.C. The Gamecocks had committed a pass inter- ference penalty on the final play of the game, giving Christy and the Pack one final chance to break the 26-26 tie that would have given the ACC title to North Carolina. Christy had never tried a field goal in his career, but convinced Edwards to let him try a kick from the 36-yard-line for the win. The ball was windblown and wobbly, but it made it through the uprights. Christy was named 1957 ACC Player and Athlete of the Year and earned first-team All-America honors. After being signed by the Pittsburgh Steel- ers, Christy played five years in the NFL with the Steelers, Boston Patriots and New York Titans, before his life was tragically claimed in a car accident not far from his hometown in Pennsylvania in 1966. His No. 40 jersey was posthumously hon- ored at Carter-Finley Stadium in 1997. Don Easterling, Swimming Head Coach For months, Don Easterling had no idea that he had been hired as former NC State swimming coach Willis Casey's successor. Casey had taken over as athletics director in 1968 and spent one year as a dual coach and AD. He interviewed Easterling after the native of Texas guided tiny Texas-Arlington to a runner-up finish in the 1969 NCAA Cham- pionships. Casey wrote Easterling with the good news, but Easterling never checked his mail. He finally accepted the job after calling Casey on the telephone to confirm the offer. It was a fortuitous decision for Wolfpack swimming and diving — Easterling led the men's swimming team to 15 ACC titles, in- cluding 12 in a row from 1971-82. In 1973, Easterling's Wolfpack pulled off one of the most dominant accomplishments in the his- tory of college swimming by winning each of the 17 events at the ACC Championships. He also began the NC State women's swimming program and led it to back-to-back ACC titles in 1979-80. Seven of his swimmers qualified for the Olympics, and five of them won medals. He was a three-time ACC Coach of the Year and was once named National Coach of the Year. He's been inducted into the Texas Legends of Swimming (1996) and the As- sociation of Swimming Coaches of American Hall of Fame (2004). But nothing compares to being enshrined on Reynolds Coliseum grand hallway, which is only a few feet from where his former of- fice used to be. "It means the world to me," Easterling said. "Of all the honors, this means the most. It is the culmination of all my dreams." Linda "Hawkeye" Page, Women's Basketball Linda Page wore jersey number 43 to honor her NC State basketball hero Charles "Hawkeye" Whitney, but it was Page, not Whitney, who put that jersey in the rafters of Reynolds Coliseum. Her jersey is one of seven retired num- bers for the Wolfpack women's program, an honor the Philadelphia native received after twice earning All-America and All-ACC honors during her career. She ranks second in school history in scor- ing with 2,307 points and third with 18.8 points per game. She is one of just four Wolf- pack players to score 2,000 points in a career. Page helped Kay Yow's program win a pair of regular-season ACC titles (1983 and '85) and the 1985 ACC Tournament cham- pionship. She died at the age of 48 in 2011 in her hometown of Philadelphia. Stan Cockerton, Lacrosse Yes, Stan Cockerton took some time to chat with NC State athletics director Debbie Yow during the Hall of Fame weekend about reinstating lacrosse as a Wolfpack varsity sport. And, no, he doesn't expect that to hap- pen quickly. But who better to lobby for such a thing The Wolfpack inducted its 2016 Hall of Fame Class in renovated Reynolds Coli- seum on Sept. 16. PHOTO BY KEN MARTIN