Madison coach Taylor makes difficult move to UVa

When legendary Madison County football coach and athletic director Eddie Dean approached a young Tim Taylor about becoming a coach almost 20 years ago, Taylor was hesitant to accept because he didn’t think there was a stable future in it. Dean saw an up-and-coming mentor that had the potential to be successful for a long time.

Luckily for many, the JMU grad gave it a shot in 1989, kind of a trial run.

“Coach Dean called and asked me if I’d be interested in possibly trying to coach at Madison for one year, he thought I’d be good at it,” Taylor said.. “He said to try it for one year and see what happens, and I guess the rest of the story has been history.”

The most recent success for the Madison native, now 43, included leading his alma mater to a near-perfect season and a run in the Group A playoffs. As a result of his hard work and tutelage this past season, which turned out to be his final as Madison’s coach, Taylor was chosen as the The Daily Progress’ All-Central Virginia boys basketball coach of the year for the second time in four years.

“Really, truly, this award is for our community and our kids, they are the ones who earned it,” said Taylor. “You’ve got to win to get that award in most cases, and they were the reason for it.”

Taylor became the Madison head coach before the 2007-08 season, leading the team to a 15-10 record. A year later, Taylor and the Mountaineers doubled that win total, finishing 28-1, with the only loss coming in the state semifinals.

David Falk, Logan Terrell, and Bull Run District player of the year Jerel Carter led the way for the Mountaineers, but as Taylor will tell you, everyone in the gym had a hand in the team’s success.

“The kids worked really hard in the offseason, in the weight room, and getting prepared with their agilities and doing a lot of different things,” Taylor said. “What we really tried to do was to get better every single day, and our kids bought into it. They worked as hard as anybody in the entire state, and they deserved to win a state championship.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t get it, but I think the one thing about this team was that the last person on the bench — from the managers to the coaches to the players to the scorekeepers — was just as important as the stars, and I think that’s why we were so successful. There was no jealousy.”

Prior to taking the Madison job, Taylor spent two seasons at the helm as head coach at Orange County, leading the Hornets to two Jefferson District tournament titles and their first-ever state playoff appearance in 2006.

Earlier this month, Taylor accepted the associate head coach position under Debbie Ryan for the University of Virginia’s women’s basketball team, but will never forget how his brief stint at his hometown school, as well as his time at Orange County, paved the way for his future. He posted an impressive 83-23 record in those four seasons.

“It definitely prepared me, sitting that extra 16 inches down on the bench, knowing you’ve got to make all of the decisions when it comes down to discipline to decisions in close games,” Taylor said.

Taylor admitted that it was one of the toughest decisions he’d ever made to leave behind a team that will have a great chance to return to the state championship, as well as everyone involved in the school and community. He said that UVa was the only place for which he could leave Madison — and that Madison was the only place that would make him consider turning down an associate head coach position at Virginia.

“It was extremely hard, because that’s my family, that’s the place where I grew up,” he said. “I had tugging both ways, and I am a basketball coach. In Madison I was a mortgage broker that had to be a basketball coach by night. So at Virginia, I get to do what I truly love and I love the university. I think it’s a great place to be and I didn’t have to move my family. If I did, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job.”

In 1989, Taylor began his career as an assistant on the Mountaineers’ girls basketball staff, and also served as an assistant on the boys team two years later before wearing yet another hat. Taylor took over as the head coach of the school’s softball team and realized his dream of winning a state championship in his third and final season in 1995.

After that, Taylor became the softball and girls basketball coach at Woodbridge High School in Northern Virginia, where he produced four NCAA Division I basketball players, and then decided to himself step up to the college ranks in 1998. He took an assistant position at Furman, where he helped lead the Paladins to a Southern Conference tournament championship and NCAA tournament appearance.

“Once I got to Furman, being there I realized that I could be successful on the collegiate level,” Taylor admitted.

That’s about the time that Ryan offered Taylor a spot on her staff at Virginia. From 2000-05, Taylor further developed his skills and gained valuable experience at a major school, and was named recruiting coordinator in 2004. In his last season, he brought in Monica Wright, a two-time Street and Smith’s All-American, McDonald’s All-American and USA Today first-team member, who went on to win ACC rookie of the year honors.

However, Taylor’s wife, Tonya, was diagnosed with cancer shortly thereafter, and Taylor made the decision to leave UVa to be by her side. After beating the dreaded disease and living cancer-free for four years, Tonya is her husband’s biggest supporter.

“That was one of the biggest things when I left Virginia, was that I thought that I’d never get to coach [Wright],” he said.

Now that he’s back on the Cavaliers’ sideline, he’s thrilled to get a second chance, and Wright is equally excited.

“When I called her and we were talking about the job, she said, ‘Coach, if you come back, that would be the icing on the cake for my senior year,’ so that made me feel pretty good, too.”

It was also important to have the support of the Madison players, who had a feeling Taylor would pursue his dream of being a head coach of a college team, but didn’t realize it would be so soon.

“They were looking at the big picture for me and my family. They cared enough about their coach that they could do that,” said Taylor. “Every one of them for the most part has said, ‘Coach, you have to do this, we understand.’ I remember Terrell just said, ‘I’m still going to love you, but I would go,’ and that’s important to me because I care about these kids so much.

Taylor explained that he will still be living in Madison and will keep a close eye on the process of hiring a new coach. His three assistants — Jeff Early, Ben Breeden and Mike Styles — all played for the Mountaineers in state tournaments, and Taylor hopes that the torch will be passed to one of them.

“There will be a new legacy there, and you don’t ever want to get in the way of somebody else, but I definitely promise that they’re going to have a very big fan sitting up here at Virginia,” he said. “We’re still going to bleed blue, and now we’ve just got to add a little orange to it.”