Auburn picked up one other gold medal as Robb Taylor helped lead Workforce USA’s wheelchair basketball group to victory.
The U.S. wheelchair basketball group beat Japan by a rating of 64-60 Sunday night time to take dwelling the gold.
Robb Taylor is the assistant coach of Workforce USA and the pinnacle coach of Auburn’s wheelchair basketball group. Taylor has been teaching at Auburn since 2016, which is similar 12 months the group was established. Nonetheless, his involvement with wheelchair basketball dates again to 1999.
Taylor’s ardour for wheelchair basketball got here at a younger age. His uncle has polio and at all times performed wheelchair basketball. He performed on the College of Illinois the place the sport was based. This led Taylor to pursue a level at Illinois so he could possibly be a part of the group.
Taylor was introduced onto the group his freshman 12 months as a waterboy, however his presence gave the group sufficient gamers to scrimmage.
Taylor will not be wheelchair-bound, however he would regularly play in a chair in order that the group might scrimmage with two full groups. Taylor says that is how he actually discovered the sport of wheelchair basketball.
Auburn’s group is seeking to proceed the place it left off at No. 3 nationally. The group’s aim is to fulfill that rating or precede it. Taylor says he’s assured in his group and plans to work to get them there.
“I’m actually enthusiastic about this season,” Taylor informed Andy Burcham on the Speaking Tigers podcast. “We did graduate three, however the core group that we have now returning is a powerful core group. We had a handful of them staying right here over the summer season they usually’ve gotten greater, they’ve gotten stronger. They’ve gotten extra per their shot.”
That is additionally not Taylor’s first gold medal win. He has been the assistant coach for the U.S. males’s Paralympic group since 2013 and helped push the group to gold within the 2016 Summer time Video games in Rio, Brazil. He was additionally an assistant coach for the U.S. girls’s Paralympic group in 2008 when its gained gold in Beijing, China.
It’s recognized that coaches don’t obtain bodily medals when their group wins. It’s solely reserved for the athletes. Nonetheless, Taylor has discovered a option to get his personal medal that he can carry with him on daily basis.
“So my manner of getting medal is, I’ve an excellent tattoo artist right here on the town…,” Taylor informed Burcham. “He does an excellent job. He’s tattooed my medals on my again and he’s finished it in a manner that as I proceed to teach I can add medals.”
Taylor is predicted to make a tattoo appointment as he travels again to the Plains with a brand new gold medal underneath his belt and shortly to be on his again.
Auburn’s wheelchair basketball group will start its first event in mid-October in Tuscaloosa with its first dwelling event coming to the Beard Eaves Memorial Coliseum in late October.
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