Photo by: Brian Westerholt / Sports On Film
Culture Setter: Sykes Helped Set Foundation for 2006 ACC Championship
5/25/2022 8:00:00 AM | Football
Napoleon Sykes remembers his time as a Demon Deacon fondly.
When Napoleon Sykes took his official visit to Wake Forest, then head coach Jim Grobe told him to feel free to stop by his office anytime. Little did Sykes know that first office visit would come in his first week on campus.
Sykes was on campus for freshmen camp, a four-to-five day period in which they were essentially the only football players around the practice facility, and he just happened to be walking past Grobe's office when he was asked to come in for a chat.
"Anytime the coach calls you in the office, you get nervous," Sykes recalls. "We just sat there and talked. It's one of those things where I was nervous the entire time, but he just wanted to see how the first couple days had gone.
"When you get there and they don't have to put on a show, for Grobe to spend time like that with me just felt right. It felt like somebody who actually did care. For me that was huge as a freshman, realizing that the feeling you got from recruiting was still the same now that I was there. It validates your decision."
A 2006 Wake Forest graduate who played linebacker and special teams for the Demon Deacons, Sykes came to Winston-Salem over a slew of offers. He attended a small all-boys high school in the Baltimore area, Gilman School.
"Right when you pull into campus, it feels different," Sykes said. "There's just something different about campus itself. Coach Grobe was such a big deal for me, because he was very much in line with the coaching philosophy I was used to and the way my father raised me. It felt like Coach Grobe cared about you more than just for football. And he legitimately did. He cared about Napoleon the person, not just Napoleon the football player."
Arriving at Wake Forest for Grobe's second season at the helm of the football program, Sykes cites the 38-17 Seattle Bowl victory in 2002 as a harbinger of great things to come as the energy around the Seattle Bowl fueled the Wake Forest program as they started to build that talent that eventually made a run all the way to the ACC Championship just four seasons later.
"We didn't win a ton of games, but we were so close," Sykes said. "We had the right guys, but we just didn't have enough of them yet. They built on it. I got to be back there as a coach when we started getting more guys. You saw the gradual climb."
Sykes didn't get the opportunity to play on the ACC Championship team, not playing a fifth season due to injuries. He did come back to Winston-Salem that summer and started coaching lacrosse.
"That summer I really enjoyed that opportunity to coach," he said. "I ran my own lacrosse team. I realized I could do this, and I really enjoyed it. Then going back to my high school and coaching solidified that.
"I never really thought about college coaching, but then Coach Grobe called me. There's a purity of the game at the high school level and it's a little bit different in college. But being about to be on the staff with Coach Grobe felt really good."
He's now been in coaching more than 14 years with stints at Charlotte, Navy and the XFL's DC Defenders. He's currently serving as head football coach at The Lawrenceville School in Lawrence Township, New Jersey.
Sykes was on campus for freshmen camp, a four-to-five day period in which they were essentially the only football players around the practice facility, and he just happened to be walking past Grobe's office when he was asked to come in for a chat.
"Anytime the coach calls you in the office, you get nervous," Sykes recalls. "We just sat there and talked. It's one of those things where I was nervous the entire time, but he just wanted to see how the first couple days had gone.
"When you get there and they don't have to put on a show, for Grobe to spend time like that with me just felt right. It felt like somebody who actually did care. For me that was huge as a freshman, realizing that the feeling you got from recruiting was still the same now that I was there. It validates your decision."
A 2006 Wake Forest graduate who played linebacker and special teams for the Demon Deacons, Sykes came to Winston-Salem over a slew of offers. He attended a small all-boys high school in the Baltimore area, Gilman School.
"Right when you pull into campus, it feels different," Sykes said. "There's just something different about campus itself. Coach Grobe was such a big deal for me, because he was very much in line with the coaching philosophy I was used to and the way my father raised me. It felt like Coach Grobe cared about you more than just for football. And he legitimately did. He cared about Napoleon the person, not just Napoleon the football player."
Arriving at Wake Forest for Grobe's second season at the helm of the football program, Sykes cites the 38-17 Seattle Bowl victory in 2002 as a harbinger of great things to come as the energy around the Seattle Bowl fueled the Wake Forest program as they started to build that talent that eventually made a run all the way to the ACC Championship just four seasons later.
"We didn't win a ton of games, but we were so close," Sykes said. "We had the right guys, but we just didn't have enough of them yet. They built on it. I got to be back there as a coach when we started getting more guys. You saw the gradual climb."
Sykes didn't get the opportunity to play on the ACC Championship team, not playing a fifth season due to injuries. He did come back to Winston-Salem that summer and started coaching lacrosse.
"That summer I really enjoyed that opportunity to coach," he said. "I ran my own lacrosse team. I realized I could do this, and I really enjoyed it. Then going back to my high school and coaching solidified that.
"I never really thought about college coaching, but then Coach Grobe called me. There's a purity of the game at the high school level and it's a little bit different in college. But being about to be on the staff with Coach Grobe felt really good."
He's now been in coaching more than 14 years with stints at Charlotte, Navy and the XFL's DC Defenders. He's currently serving as head football coach at The Lawrenceville School in Lawrence Township, New Jersey.
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