By BY STEVE FRANKLIN, Sports Writer
GREENVILLE — East Carolina’s football team got back into competition mode Thursday.
Ever since a severe thuderstorm ripped through Greenville in April and forced the university to cancel the second half of the annual Purple-Gold Spring game, the more than 90 men who make up the 2008 Pirates’ football roster have been itching to show what they can do.
For the last three months, they’ve hit the weight room hard, run countless sprints, and drunk pound-after-pound of whey protein shakes.
Thursday was their chance to see if all their hard work had paid off.
With the scorching summer sun beating down on the practice field outside Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium and with temperatures hovering near the century mark, the Pirates took part in the fourth annual ECU Strongman competition.
And the results couldn’t have been better.
In the closest competition in event history, the Doug Palmer led Diablos eclipsed J.J. Millbrook’s Ocean’s Crime team by two points for the team championship.
Members of the winning team included Brandon Simmons, Quentin Cotton, Darryl Freeney, J.R. Kraemer, Austin Haynes, Wes Pittman and J.R. Kraemer.