Reason, Season and Lifetime:

DePrice Taylor

By Heidi Johnson

It is said that people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Whichever it is, a lifetime of lessons can be learned from those people that pass through our lives. People pass through each one of our lives to teach us something and help make us better people, though we may not realize their true impact until much later.

In the life of women's basketball senior DePrice Taylor, there are people in each one of those groups that have brought her to where she is today and will continue to affect and shape her life when she moves on from Pittsburg State. It is hard to tell at this point, where each person who has touched her life fits in, but others are very clear. This story is about D.P. and some of her reason, season and lifetime people.

"When someone is in your life for a REASON. It is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are!

They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrongdoing on your part, or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered. And now it is time to move on."

D.P. grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Her family, including her extended family was very close. That is a very important detail in D.P's story. She also grew up with an attitude, and not a good one. By the time she headed to Bowling Green to college, she had a chip on her shoulder, I don't care what anyone else thinks,  I'm doing things my way kind of attitude. That attitude, and a general clash between the women's basketball coach, prompted D.P. to go back to Detroit at Thanksgiving, without ever having stepped on the court at Bowling Green.

She was at home taking classes at a junior college and playing pickup when she could. That's when two people entered D.P.'s life for a reason ... Coach Eric Lindsey and one of his players, Tiffany Haggen. Haggen was planning on playing at Barton County Community College starting in the fall. D.P. talked to her some, and also talked to Coach Lindsey, who after seeing her play, told her she didn't need to stay in Detroit, she needed to go to Kansas. OF course D.P. had a lot of skepticism about that.

Later she got a phone call, that would change the direction she was heading.

"So this guy called," D.P. said. "I swear he sounded like he was black. 'What's up? This is Coach Lord. I'm trying to get you down here. Are you going to come down here for a visit?'"

Coach Lindsey and Tiffany Haggen ... a reason ... to get D.P. Taylor to Barton County Community College and playing for Head Coach Lane Lord.

So D.P. whet to visit Barton, located in Great Bend, Kansas.

"It was shock-ing," Taylor said. "I'd never been to Kansas ... cows, dry land ... everywhere. I flew into Wichita and we had to drive to Great Bend. It's just nothing ... land.

"But Coach Lord was cool. He was down to earth, everything I wanted in a coach. My high school coach was the same way. I liked the facility, the people and the players. Everybody was real nice. So I ended up signing with Coach Lord."

D.P. went to Barton in the summer began taking classes and getting acquainted with her new coach and teammates. They had a great season that year (2006-07), going 27-3, but were not eligible for post-season play because the entire athletic department was on probation. D.P. was looking forward to the next season. Her parents had been to the last game of the year and were impressed by the coach she was playing for who had drug her out of the city to the middle-of-nowhere Kansas. Then she got a call that would change everything again.

"Then people come into your life for a SEASON. Because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They bring you an experience of peace, or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season."

Barton County was there for D.P. for a season, not just a season of basketball, but a season of her life. And the call she got from the 2007 NCAA Women's Final Four made her think Coach Lord was just a seasonal passerby as well.

Coach Lord called D.P. to tell her he was taking the job as the head coach at Pittsburg State University. To say she was angry is a severe understatement. She had another year left at Barton. She played for this guy for a season when they were under probation and couldn't get any recognition for their hard work.  She had offers to go other places, to four year schools, but was going to play another year for Coach Lord. She hung up on him, crying and angry.

"I felt like I put my trust in him, and if I could play through the probation and wait another year, he could to. He would still have offers after another year, just like I would. He would try to call and I wouldn't answer. I was [mad]."

Coach Lord confirms D.P.'s story.

"I went back to tell the team that I was leaving and going to Pittsburg State," Lord said. "They all already knew, but I wanted to tell them all myself. I walked up to D.P. and she turned her back on me and walked away. She didn't talk to me for two months, until she called me in August wanting to come to Pitt State."

"I was at home and I had signed to play at Southeastern Illinois, another junior college," D.P. said. "I was going to go there for a year, then transfer to a four year. I decided that I didn't want that many schools on her transcript. Also the coach I had signed with there got an assistant coaching position at Mississippi State, so I felt I was in a compromising position. So three weeks before school was supposed to start, I called Coach Lord and asked if he had another scholarship. I want to come."

So she did. Her family was supportive of her going far away, but not necessarily of her decision to go to Division II Pittsburg State over Michigan or Georgetown, who had shown interest in her.

"I explained to them I trust Coach Lord. I know he'll take care of me and I'll be fine. If I go to Georgetown or somewhere else, who is to say that I will like it there. I am a family oriented person, I knew I would get that playing for Coach Lord, but who knew if that would be there at another school. It was an easy decision."

And so Pittsburg State entered into D.P.'s life for a season. Three seasons of basketball full of downs and ups, a degree and a season of change, growth and maturity for D.P.

"LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons: things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person, and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant."

It is clear to hear in D.P's words that she and Coach Lord have a lifetime bond. They talk of each other with mutual respect. The kind of respect that a player has for a coach who has become more like family than a coach, and the kind of respect that a coach has for a player who he has seen develop into a leader and the strength of a team who is working to build a winning tradition.

"Coach Lord really molded me into a better person," D.P. said. "I wouldn't say we butt heads, but if there is a problem, he addresses it. We'd have meetings once a week, twice a week, once every two weeks to discuss things going on. I don't do well when people call me out in public, and he knows that and doesn't do that. I am a totally different person and Coach Lord had a huge part in that."

Of course D.P.'s parents have also played an important role in her becoming who she is today. She was always encouraged to continue her education. Whether or not she would go to college was never a question, it was only a matter of where she would go to college. Her parents were also very supportive of her basketball career. They paid for and shuttled her around to her AAU games and supported her decisions to continue her career all along the way, even when those decisions took her from one end of Kansas to the other. They still are always supporting her now as well and not always from far away. They were some of the loudest fans in the stands when the Gorillas made a return to the MIAA Tournament last season.

There have been some things that have happened in D.P.'s personal life since arriving at Pitt State that have also allowed Coach Lord to be a support in D.P.'s life and solidify that bond. Of course, family is lifetime bonds as well, and in the last two years, D.P. has lost some of those closest to her. The support she received from Coach Lord and her teammates during that time helped make progress toward more lifetime bonds as well.

In her sophomore season, the team traveled to Warrensburg to play Central Missouri. The night before, Feb. 1, 2008, D.P. was sick, so she went back to the hotel while the team practiced. She was alone in her hotel room when she got a call from home that her uncle had passed away. Both her uncles, Doug and Ernie had been hanging out together and got into a scuffle out in the snow. Ernie went out for awhile and when he came back, Doug was passed out behind the couch. By the time any medical help got there he had passed away.

Then on Feb. 23, as the team was getting ready to leave for Southwest Baptist, D.P. called home only to hear more bad news. D.P.'s dad, Gary Edison, and her cousin found Ernie hanging in his closet. He was wracked with guilt thinking he had something to do with his brother's death. Just weeks later, Doug's autopsy revealed he had had a heart attack.

D.P. was very close to both of her uncles. Though she is not one to show a lot of emotion, she cried a lot during that time and missed a lot of basketball to be a home with her family. Coach Lord and her teammates were there through it all, proving to her she had a second family in Kansas that cared for her too.

She also had a great aunt, whom she was named after, that died in the hospital after suffering with brain and lung cancer for many years, and a great uncle was removed from life support on October 13, D.P.'s birthday after battling lung cancer as well.

This fall D.P. suffered what she says has been her biggest loss. She got home from the second practice of the season only to find her phone was filled with missed calls and messages from home.  Her cousin, D.J., was an up-and-coming rapper in Detroit. He was booking several shows every weekend and was starting to earn some good money. He was buying a few flashy things because he could. In the neighborhood they are from, people didn't look favorably on someone trying to make something more of themselves. There was a knock on the door. He opened the door to a gun in his face. He knocked the gun out of the perpatrator's hand and ran off, only to be shot in the back by another person. It was a set up, and in those few short moments, D.P. lost one of the most important people in her life.

Despite the fact that D.J. was only in D.P.'s life for a relatively short time, his presence made a lifetime impact on her. D.J. was the one who taught her about basketball and instilled a great love of the game in her.

"I had two cousins, Dwayne and D.J., that took me under their wings," D.P. said. "Where ever they were, th at's where I was. They took me to the park with a basketball. They didn't take it easy on me. They are the reason I play basketball. If they hadn't taught me, I don't know where I'd be ... Probably getting in trouble."

D.P. recently got a tattoo honoring D.J.'s influence on her life. She has also dedicated this season to him. 

"It's hard to even pick up a basketball," D.P. said. "I remember the first day that I got back to practice, I just felt weak when I picked up a ball. I was going hard before that, but now, I don't want to let him down. I know that he is up there watching. I don't want him thinking that I am slacking one bit. It is motivation, its inspiration. He is the one that always told me not to care what anyone else thought. Basically, just go out there and do you. The rest will fall into place. I can tell that I am playing harder. I can tell that I am playing smarter. Every possession I am thinking of him. Every free throw, I am thinking of him. Every shot, every dribble, he taught me everything. He was a good basketball player."

The influence of her family, as well as seeing D.J. trying to make something better of himself and overcome his surroundings has inspired D.P. to take her life somewhere away from Detroit. After graduating from Pitt State, D.P. hopes to use her social work degree working in social services in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. She has had family lost in the foster care system. But she has also seen how one person can change the path of another's life for the better. She also wants to be a good example to her brothers, Garrett and Jerry.

"I want to make my brothers proud of me," D.P. said. "I want them to look up to me. I want to be a role model to them. I want to make my whole family proud, really, but I want my brothers to aspire to be like me."

There is still a lot to be written in the story of D.P. Taylor. She came to Pitt State for a reason, stayed for a season and earned an education and made friends that will last a lifetime. Hopefully D.P.'s story, the lessons she's learned and her future career will help make the difference of a lifetime for someone else as well.