Minium: Taylor Edwards Turned Down Scholarship Offers to Come to ODU; Her Life Story of Perseverance Should be Celebrated

By Harry Minium

The Holy Grail that has eluded the Old Dominion women's basketball team since 2008 is almost within sight. 

ODU (16-3, 6-1 Conference USA) has won five games in a row and is ranked 31st in the NCAA RPI. And if NCAA bids went out today, respected ESPN women's basketball expert Charlie Crème says ODU would be among the last four teams to claim at-large bids.

At present, ODU would be an 11th-seed, Crème wrote this week.

Yes, there's a long way to go. ODU has 11 games remaining, beginning Thursday night when the Monarchs host Southern Miss, and then there's the Conference USA tournament in Frisco, Texas.

It's too early for the Monarchs to think very much about the post season, as delicious as it is to contemplate. 

"One game at a time," said Taylor Edwards, the senior guard from Portsmouth.

That's a cliché, but there's a universal truth to that saying that permeates athletics at all levels.

"You have to focus on what's in front of you and not what's ahead," she said. "We know what's to come, but if you don't focus on your next practice, your next game, it may not happen."

Getting back into contention for the NCAA tournament has been a major priority for ODU. 

The University was a pioneer in women's basketball. The first school in Virginia to offers women athletic scholarships, ODU won three national titles and at one point had won 17 CAA championships in a row.
In 2007-2008, ODU won 31 games and defeated Liberty and Virginia before losing to eventual national champion UConn in the Sweet 16.

Ever since, ODU has struggled to regain its national mojo.

In year three of a massive rebuilding effort, coach Nikki McCray-Penson is on the cusp of bringing the Monarchs back into the national spotlight.

Edwards was 12 the last time the Monarchs went dancing, and the ODU senior acknowledges that it's tempting to contemplate how joyful that would be.

It's difficult to think of someone who would appreciate it more than Edwards. She was a Monarch at heart years before she came to ODU.

Her parents, Andrea Edwards and Marvin Hines, began taking her to ODU games when she was a freshman at Churchland High School.

She gleefully points to the seats at Chartway Arena where she sat for nearly every ODU game. And when she became a star at Wilson High, where she played her last three seasons, colleges began to recruit her. She was a two-time All-Tidewater and all-state choice and ranked among the top 50 swing guards in the nation by ESPNW.

Some schools offered scholarships, but ODU was not among them. Coach Karen Barefoot recruited her intensely, but asked her to walk-on without a scholarship.

"I had a lot of offers, but I didn't pay them any mind," she said. "I knew where I wanted to go. I wanted to go to ODU. I wasn't going anyplace else."

Let me repeat that: she turned down scholarship offers from other schools to walk-on at ODU.

And she did so knowing her blue-collar family could not afford to pay four years of tuition.

"I knew what I had to do to earn a scholarship," she said. "I had to earn a scholarship to stay here. There was no other way I could stay."

She has worked, tirelessly, and at times under difficult circumstances.

In her first season she hardly played – a total of 20 minutes in seven games. An aside here: she wishes, in hindsight, that she had redshirted. If so, she would have another season left. Regardless, she didn't languish on the bench.

"I didn't let a lack of playing time dictate how I worked in practice," she said. "I didn't let that dictate who I am.

"I worked hard. I knew what I could do."

The Monarchs struggled to a 17-14 finish her freshman year.  Barefoot left soon afterwards for UNC Wilmington, but before leaving, put Edwards on scholarship, saying she'd earned it with her hard work.

Yet Edwards says she didn't truly know what hard work meant until McCray was hired in 2017.

"Coach McCray was very different, and it was very tough to adjust," Edwards said. "She told us up front what was expected of us. She's so disciplined. You have to play defense in order to play for her. Defense comes first. She's so passionate."

By the time McCray came to ODU, so many players had defected that it was a wonder ODU won any games. ODU went 8-23 that season, and Edwards says there just weren't enough players to win any more.

Following an influx of players in the offseason, ODU finished 21-11 last season, when Edwards contributed 11.4 points and 4.4 assists per game. She also helped prepare the newcomers for college basketball and McCray's high standards.

"It was an adjustment for all of them," she said. 

Edwards is far more than just a good basketball player – her life story, and the way her parents raised her, should be celebrated. They didn't allow her to make excuses. Work, they said, is the only way you're going to succeed in life.

"All I want to do is make my Mom and Dad proud and my little brother because he looks up to me," she said. 

Her family and friends, sometimes two dozen in all, come to every game, just as Edwards dreamed would happen when she was a teenager in high school.

"She plays for her parents, for her family," McCray said. "They are so close."

She is majoring in leadership with a minor in human services and says she wants to be an at-risk counselor for kids.

"I want to be a mentor to someone in need," she said. "When I was growing up, I was down at times, in a very low place. I needed somebody to be there for me and I had people who stepped up."

Edwards has a wonderful smile and when I asked her to tell me something most ODU fans don't know about her, her smile was a part of her reply.

"I just like to spread joy," she said. "I like to see everybody happy. It hurts me to see someone who's sad or not like themselves. I try to uplift everyone around me."

McCray says she does just that.

"She's got an amazing heart. She's such a good person," McCray said.

"She's grown on and off the court and it's really been amazing to see. She loves her family. She loves her teammates and staff.

"And she loves Old Dominion."

Edwards has some advice for people who haven't succeeded in whatever they are pursuing.

"If you put your mind to it, anything is possible," she said. "You've just got to work for it.

"Nothing is given to you. It's not like some people think, that you don't have to work to succeed.

"You've got to earn it. You have to go out and get it."

As Edwards has done at ODU.

Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu