The unique dynamic of a collegiate team changes every year. Players graduate and the next school year replacements show up ready to make their mark. Today, with the NCAA’s controversial transfer portal, the once tedious process of transferring schools—something accompanied by a year of sitting out—has been made all too easy for student-athletes to come and go as they please.
A few of these cases are certainly justified, especially in the case of an abusive coach, but the majority seem to play into the “cult of me” that pervades our society. As a result, players don’t plant their flags for four years and instead opt out once things don’t go how they want them to.
In the end, those players miss out on the life-long bonds that can be formed between the school that gave them the chance to play collegiately and the men or women they called teammates. The more you wear that uniform with the same name on the front the less you think about the name on the back. And, if you are lucky to play with someone who rises to attain greatness within the framework of your team, his or her successes will bring you as much joy and pride as if they were your own.
Today at noon, my teammate, and fellow member of the St. Francis College/University Men’s Basketball Team from 1994-1998, will take his rightful place in the Red Flash Athletics Hall of Fame. It’s a proud moment for those of us honored to have played alongside him during his stellar four-year career.
Eric Taylor played the game of basketball with more passion and heart than anyone I have ever known. Standing at six feet, eight inches and built like Michelangelo’s David, he was a first team all Northeast Conference selection twice and finished second in the country in rebounding his senior year. Following his time in Loretto, Pennsylvania he went on to play fourteen years of professional basketball overseas before returning to join the staff of our teammate, Rob Krimmel.
The Cincinnati native’s work ethic and motor was unmatched and his leadership never in doubt. I was fortunate to benefit from three years of practice beatdowns at the hands of number thirty-two that certainly made me the player I was my last two years. He made everyone around him better and continues to do so to this day as both a coach and, more importantly, as a man.
You can’t help but smile when such deserving people finally get their due. Today, the members of the Red Flash Men’s Basketball Brotherhood will be doing just that as one of our own receives an honor he most certainly deserves.
It’s the culmination of four years of hard work and dedication that is becoming more and more rare as players hop from school to school. I’m just glad the transfer portal didn’t exist when we played, but even if it had, Eric Eugene Taylor’s loyalty to the tiny college among the pines never would have wavered.
-Tommy O’Sionnach
Tailored for the tongue, unmatched beauty of the Jeti. Like your style...
Ain’t no place like the mountain. Congrats ET!! Great article per usual my brother