'Knock some heads'
This is the final in a series of five articles profiling the Seneca Valley Sports Hall of Fame's Class of 2018.ROANOKE, Va. — Football gave Seneca Valley High graduate Mike Adamczyk a heavy dose of camaraderie and a chance to, as he put it, “Knock some heads.”Both attracted the 1969 graduate to the sport and he responded with a lengthy career. Adamczyk played five years on scholarship at North Carolina State after lettering his entire varsity career at SV. He also played basketball and was a star on the track and field team for the Raiders for four years.Adamczyk will be one of five people inducted into the Seneca Valley Sports Hall of Fame Sept. 15.“My dad was a physical education teacher at Evans City High School and he coached football,” said Adamczyk. “My older brother David played and I got into it after him.”Adamczyk starred on both sides of the ball for the Raiders under the school's first football head coach, Tom Heckendorn.“I don't recall any stats, either individually or for the team, but I remember Tom being a good coach. He was enthusiastic.”Adamczyk was one of the fastest players on the roster. He earned All-Midwestern Conference honors as an offensive end his junior year and played flanker/running back on offense and safety on defense his senior season.Seneca Valley's enrollment in the late 1960s was much smaller than it is today.“There were only so many athletes in the school,” said Adamczyk. “I had some inherited athletic ability and it was just natural for me to go from one sport to another.“Basketball was my in between sport,” he said. “I played to keep in shape for football and track. I was a forward and was not a star, but I was good on defense. I usually guarded one of the other team's best players. Either he didn't get to the hoop or he got whacked when he got there.”Adamczyk was a top point scorer for head coach Dick Lane with SV's track squad. His events included the low hurdles, high hurdles and high jump.“I once broke the school record in the high hurdles at the Butler Invite and also had the high jump record for a while. The high jump was probably my best event, the one I was most consistent in. I enjoyed track because it gave me a chance to get out and run.”But it was football, Adamczyk's best and favorite sport, that led him to Raleigh, N.C., for his college education ... and some more time on the gridiron.“There were three Seneca football players before me — Denny Britt, my brother David and Van Walker — who went on to play football at North Carolina State University. I was offered a scholarship and that's where I went.”The Wolfpack recruited Mike Adamczyk as a safety, but he was eventually moved to defensive end. He rose to second team and earned a letter in his final two seasons with the program, which coincided with the arrival of a new coach in Lou Holtz.Holtz would go on to achieve glory as head coach at Notre Dame, where he won a national championship in 1988. But Adamczyk recalls seeing a true leader in Holtz, long before his days with the Fighting Irish.“He wasn't afraid to get in the face of some of our best players and basically tell them, “Shape up or go home,'” he said. “He was a motivator of men and he gave us confidence.”The impact of Holtz's attitude was immediate. NC State went from a 3-8 record the year before he arrived to an 8-3-1 mark and No. 17 ranking in the national polls in his first season in 1972.The next year, Adamczyk's last with the team, the Wolfpack finished 9-3 and ranked 16th in the country. Holtz led the program to postseason wins over West Virginia (Peach Bowl) and Kansas (Liberty Bowl) in his first two years.“You look at his career, everywhere he coached, he got folks' morale up,” Adamczyk said. “The players started playing at a higher level and they won more games.”Mike Adamczyk and his wife, Sharon, live in western Virginia. It is the second marriage for both. Between the two of them, they have six children — Kelly, Leslie, Elizabeth, Charles, Meghan — and a deceased son, Christopher.
