One of the joys of covering high school sports is getting to know incredible student athletes, parents and coaches. Brianna and Brice Taylor represented more than incredible student athlete’s, they were happy, well adjusted kids who loved their family, faith and community. I am blessed to have known them and had the opportunity to interview them on The Sporting Times Radio Show. Brianna was on the show May 31st and shared an introspective of the joy in her life and her excitement of new adventures.
mates. Her love of her brother Brice and her Parents was something she celebrated and shared with all. Her smile was infectious and sincere with genuine warmth. When you were around Brianna, there was always energy of positivity, hope and purpose.
Brice Taylor knew the importance of family and friends. As a role-model and big brother to his Brianna, he was protective and loving at the same time. Brice had a wonderful personality with a sense of humor that kept team-mates loose and made the simplest moments memorable. He knew how to keep things in perspective and proved his strength as the family glue when Brianna was tragically lost. As he stood, a soldier for Brianna and the Taylor family during Brianna’s visitation, he celebrated her life with all who came to pay their respects.
Little did anyone know or could have ever imagined that God would call Brice home a few days later, after a freak accident returning from a gathering to honor Brianna. The best big brother in the world, once again was by Brianna’s side to make the journey home, together.
We extend our prayers to the Taylor family and we thank them for bringing two amazing kids into this world and sharing them with all of us.
Steve Thompson/Sporting Times
Saying Goodbye
Chuck Feist, Editor 5th Region
I remember the first and only time I interviewed Brianna Taylor. The Elizabethtown softball team had just lost a three inning (22-0) game to Central Hardin and I was not looking forward to interviewing their lone senior afterwards. Trying to find something positive out of that might have been really difficult, but the senior outfielder somehow managed to do that and even more.
Although she sometimes struggled to find the words, Taylor talked about the past, the present and the future during a conversation that lasted nearly thirty minutes. She once told me that she had known me for quite a long time, but I couldn’t place her until a summer league softball game in 2010 at John Hardin, where I was working in the Lady Panther dugout. She introduced herself and told me how she and her family would visit me where I happen to work another job and that I didn’t usually talk to her. After that, she was always easy to remember. She had a smile and charm that always lit up whatever room she happen to be in.
I was there in 2011 when she smacked an RBI single off Andrea Whelan, which Elizabethtown would eventually lose and when she took first base high fived her coach.
I remember doing a photo shoot with both Brianna and her brother Brice just before a Panther baseball game. Both siblings played the same position (second base) and Brianna would sometimes ask and get a personal critique from her older brother afterwards.
I also remember when he graduated and moved on for a short time and Brianna lost her confidence during a trying 2013 season. I was there when the Lady Panthers beat those same Lady Trojans the following season in 2012 and would make a surprise trip to the 5th Region Tournament. Brianna was on Cloud Nine, but the win could have caused somewhat of a problem with the Taylor family. Brianna’s older brother Brice was a senior second baseman on the Panther baseball team and because both the baseball and softball team would be playing the same day, one in Marion County and Elizabethtown for Regional play. If they were scheduled at the same time it would cause a travel problem for the parents. Brianna knew this was Brice’s last year and she was a sophomore so if it came to that she told her parents to attend his game. Still, everything worked out as the baseball team played the 11:00 am game and her softball team wouldn’t play until much later.
I remember when her father David told me that she might be playing catcher next year and was working hard to perfect that position until they got a surprise just before the season started and she was moved to shortstop. I was there during the nightmarish 2013 season in which everything went wrong, still Brianna was always smiling afterwards. I was there when she did her first radio interview with me and Steve Thompson on The Sporting Times radio show and talked nonstop the entire 30 minute segment when the other two scheduled teammates didn’t show. Without a doubt, her first ESPN experience was quite memorable. I remember when she was moved from infield to centerfield and she always remarked that I took some of the most interesting action shots of her diving for the ball. Some of her belly flops were creative and although, she struggled a bit learning a new position she was always complimentary of my work even if it caught her in some embarrassing situations sometimes.
Elizabethtown struggled through the early part of the 2014 season which came to a head when the Lady Bruins firebombed them by 22. Afterwards, she hoped things would get better and she really felt they would, but was really disappointed and sometimes confided in her dad after losses in what looked like the beginning of a long senior season. But for her and the Lady Panthers, the best was yet to come as the softball team rebounded behind their young pitcher and an airtight defense that spring boarded the Lady Panthers to a runner up District trophy and another trip in the 5th Region Tournament.
I was there when she and her teammates posed for the second place 17th District Softball picture and Taylor smiled the biggest as a year which looked like it would come to a premature end would continue for at least another week. I was also there when they fought tooth and nail against the eventual Region Champions, the Green County Lady Dragons and finally fell in the seventh inning thus ending her high school softball career.
I was there when she did her second radio gig on ESPN and this time handled the twenty minute interview with a calm relaxed attitude that even my host Thompson remarked later “She was really amazing today.” I remember she told me that she was a Boston Red Sox fan and really enjoyed following the University of Louisville in all sports (which was interesting because Brice was a UK and Yankees fan) and was really looking forward to the move to the ACC.
I, also remember when she told me that I had an interesting job covering sports and how cool it would be for her to go to a UK-UL football game. I remember the last time I saw her which was on Wednesday June the 18, 2014th and she and her family came to visit. Both Brianna and her lovely mother Tanya greeted me and I chatted with her father David and Brice and when I went back to see them for a final time, they were already gone.
So I, like so many of us never got a chance to say good bye to her. Several days later on a Sunday night, Brianna was involved in a car accident and several hours later passed away on an operating table at University Hospital in Louisville, KY. She was only 17 years old and had just recently celebrated her high school graduation. Her friend and passenger Mickayla Harig had been in critical condition and at this writing was still recovering. When I first heard about the tragic news, it was about 10 pm Monday night on a Facebook post by one of her longtime friends, former Central Hardin shortstop Jordan Lasley. The posts and reaction came in record numbers. I always knew that she was a special young lady and that was obviously not lost on everyone she touched whether it be friends, family, her fifteen or more sisters (she had on the Elizabethtown Softball team) or people like myself, who were lucky enough to have her become a part of their our lives even if not for just a few moments out of our day.
So many of those people who attended the visitation for her at Valley Creek Baptist to say their good-byes and the funeral the following day. For many including myself, saying good-bye wasn’t easy.
One of the marvelous things about doing this job has been the people that I have the pleasure of meeting and Brice Taylor was one of them. Although we rarely chatted much during his junior year as a second baseman for the Elizabethtown baseball team, I was always aware of his presence on the diamond during games. He played the same position as then New York Yankee Robinson Cano and did a credible job as a starter. By the time he was in his senior season at Elizabethtown, we talked quite often after games and I would often ask his opinion about game situations and he was always polite as you could imagine as the older brother of Brianna Taylor.
On a warm June afternoon after Brice’s Panthers had been eliminated by LaRue County in the 2012 5th Region Baseball Tournament, he and I sat down right before he and his family were to have lunch. I interviewed him for the first and last time. Although we had talked quite often before, I was surprised to find out that he had been playing second base pretty much all his life, the he idolized Derek Jeter, and was very superstitious that he didn’t like anyone touching his (second baseman’s) glove. That he also played basketball early in life, but because he felt college baseball was in his future that he chose baseball fulltime.
We talked at length about the deterioration of the American Baseball player and how more and more athletes in this country seemed to be choosing other sports over the one that he loved. I remember discovering an interesting fact about both Brice and Brianna in that they both were very skilled at shooting guns (for target practice obviously) as was the whole family. I still remember the last time I saw him which was at his sister’s visitation and how I struggled to find something positive to say yet he stopped me and said “I’m glad to see you.” I still remember thinking how young he looked as I walked away and how cruel reality can be sometimes. Three days after Brianna was laid to rest, Brice Taylor was leaving a ceremony on Monday morning around 12:00 for his departed sister from Valley Creek Baptist Church. On his way home while riding in his ATV, he collided with a deer which was crossing the road and was thrown from his vehicle were he suffered serious head injuries and was immediately airlifted to University Hospital in Louisville where he was still in critical condition after two surgeries to relive pressure on his brain. Five days later, he passed away. Because we are human beings, we are answer creatures, so when something happens that makes no sense to us we ask the question “WHY? “ Most often we don’t get an answer and anytime someone is taken young like Cameron Irvin, Ben Napier, Jeff Richards or Brianna and Brice Taylor it always seems cruel. I always think how sad it is that there were so many (good and bad) things that he or she would never get an opportunity to experience, but most of all how we no longer experience their company, share memories and how they enriched our lives. It’s safe to say that both of David and Tonya’s children, for such a short time on this earth most definitely made a lasting impression and while we will always have our memories. I have to believe that they are up there right now doing something more important just as they did for the last 19-years on this earth and although they will miss being with us, we will miss both of them even more.
We invite family, friends to comment and share memories or thoughts about Brice and Brianna.
