Deep belief in himself helped Davion Taylor make up for lost time

Stephanie Taylor’s North Clark Avenue address leads GPS technology directly to Magnolia Court, a small, dilapidated storefront building with what appears to be just one functioning business. It used to be called the Wash Board, but that sign has come down, revealing an actual antique washboard nailed above the doorway, and replaced by a hand-painted, sign reading Washateria, a 1950’s term for laundromat. The building used to be an old motel, she says, and sure enough, a few rooms overlooking a second-floor balcony appear as though they might still be for rent. The Taylor residence, however, is in an annexed building hidden behind the storefront, accessible by car only around the right side thanks to a massive mud puddle on the left side that looks borderline impassable.

This is where Stephanie Taylor’s own hometown tried to break her.

They wore a path straight to her door — coaches, neighbors, teachers — mud puddles be damned, and asked her to bend her faith just enough to let her boys play ball on a day of rest for Adventists. Most dipped the awkwardness of asking such a thing in as much Southern politeness as possible, but a few didn’t always bother with niceties. A former South Pike coach once tested Stephanie with the shiniest of lures, audaciously offering cash to a single mother of modest means if she would allow her oldest son, LaDarris, to break the Sabbath by playing football on a Friday night.

The offer was as futile as it was inartful.

LaDarris, according to one South Pike coach, could fling a 65-yard spiral as an eighth-grader and was destined to be the Eagles’ varsity quarterback as a freshman until word got around town that his mother would not allow Friday night football to clash with the Adventist Sabbath. So, the school’s best athlete was only allowed to play junior varsity ball in ninth and 10th grade — JV games didn’t violate the Sabbath because they were played on Thursdays — until a state rule barring JV participation beyond the 10th grade effectively ended LaDarris’ football career. He blocked his favorite sport out of his mind and joined the Marines out of high school, so by the time his brother, Davion, reached high school two years later, South Pike coaches and fans knew he, too, would be finished as a JV sophomore.

In a two-hour conversation about the spiritual decisions that suppressed not one but two promising football careers, Stephanie comes to tears just once. Flanked by photos of her sons — Davion in a Colorado uniform on her right, and a proud, smiling Marine corporal pictured in full dress uniform on her left — she stops talking about their pain just long enough to talk about her own.

“I prayed, ‘Lord, why did you give me boys who play football so good, and they can’t play? Why give me two athletes like this?’ ” she asked, suppressing tears. “What hurt me at times was to see them go through this, and people just not wanting to respect it. That was hard for me. And they came to me and begged to play — Momma, please! — and I loved them so much. But I could not do it.”

It would be easy enough to assume the strength of Stephanie Taylor’s faith is rooted in a strict upbringing, but you would have her all wrong. She found a home in the Seventh Day Adventist Church on her own, in her early 20s, after her previous church left her unfulfilled.

“I wasn’t getting fed spiritually,” she said.

Her new faith required she wean herself off certain foods, and pork — she’d always had a taste for bacon — was most difficult to give up. But with help from a pastor she grew to trust implicitly, she wholly bought in. And that meant keeping the Sabbath without exception. According to Adventist.org, recreation or “intensive physical exertion and various forms of tourism are out of harmony with true Sabbath observance.”

No matter what anyone thought of the hard stance she took with LaDarris and Davion, there was nothing hypocritical about it; Stephanie observed the Sabbath herself with every bit the intensity she demanded from them. This is a woman who missed her oldest son’s wedding last August in order to keep the Sabbath. Wedding plans intended to time the ceremony after a Saturday sunset were a bit off, so she could only make it to the reception.

“I missed the first dance,” she said.

When Davion played day games at Colorado the last two years, Stephanie couldn’t watch, because that would be a recreational activity on a Sabbath Saturday. For night games, however, once the sun had set in Magnolia, she would watch him on television at a friend’s house.

With that level of devotion, it’s no wonder she could stand firm against all the pleas from her sons and neighbors to make an exception for a ballgame. Stephanie had a level of respect, however, for those who would at least confront her directly, wielding cash or otherwise, and less for those who undermined her parental authority by pressuring LaDarris and Davion outside her presence.

“They wanted to play badly enough without hearing about it all the time,” she said. “And when people would lay it on them at school or wherever, they would then bring everyone else’s frustration into my home.”

When LaDarris turned 18 during his senior year, just a couple months after football season had ended, Stephanie told him he was old enough to make his own decisions regarding Adventist faith, and no longer had to observe the Sabbath if he chose not to. Davion, 16 at the time, did the math: his 18th birthday would also fall too late to play with the varsity.

LaDarris says he holds neither regret nor anger about it.

He arrives at Stephanie’s apartment and sits with his mom to discuss how Adventist faith veered his life away from football. Four years in the Marines have given him the body of an NFL linebacker just like his brother’s, but even bigger, with a flashing bright smile and a bone-crushing handshake. In a town as small as Magnolia, he’s constantly reminded by those who saw him play JV football that his brother’s impossible path to the NFL could have, should have, been his. Asked how long it’s been since he last heard such a comment, he sighs and points toward the Family Dollar store just a short walk up North Clark Street.

“Yesterday,” he says. “Some guys I played with were up there and told me I ought to be getting drafted, too. I don’t mind it. It’s good to know people still remember what I could do.”