What has eluded the 1983 N.C. State championship team for so long — 33 years, to be exact — will finally come to fruition in a few weeks. More than three decades after the Wolfpack claimed the 1983 NCAA Tournament championship, the team will finally get to visit the White House.
In the 1980s, not every championship team got the invite to hang with the president as teams do now. Louisville and Indiana did in 1980 and '81, respectively, but the Wolfpack squad led by Jim Valvano never did, and that was something that always nagged members of the team.
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Even though the team got to talk to then-president Ronald Reagan via satellite, N.C. State's title run never truly felt complete without the symbolic visit.
"Every time I've seen a team going to the White House over the years, I always felt like we missed out on something. To have this opportunity is like another dream come true," Ernie Myers, who was a freshman on the '83 team, said via GoPack.com.
Every summer for the past five years, the members of the team get together, and — inevitably — every summer the conversation somehow turns to the White House visit that never was. Thurl Bailey, who was a senior on the title team, eventually tired of hearing about it, so he reached out to a personal friend who also happened to be a Utah senator. Senator Orrin Hatch wrote Barack Obama a letter in January, detailing the team's plight.
Obama obliged, and the men will finally get to celebrate their title run in grand fashion, with a visit to the nation's capital on May 9.
"As definitive as a National Championship sounds, as an athlete there always seems to be unfinished business," Bailey said.
"You're always looking for the next challenge, the next opportunity. This was it for me. If I could get this done, it would be yet another story for me and the other members of that team to be able to pass along to our kids, grandkids and generations after that.
"Contacting President Obama was one piece of our incredible journey that had eluded us for far too long."