Auburn picked up another gold medal as Robb Taylor helped lead Team USA’s wheelchair basketball team to victory.
The U.S. wheelchair basketball team beat Japan by a score of 64-60 Sunday night to take home the gold.
Robb Taylor is the assistant coach of Team USA and the head coach of Auburn’s wheelchair basketball team. Taylor has been coaching at Auburn since 2016, which is the same year the team was established. However, his involvement with wheelchair basketball dates back to 1999.
Taylor’s passion for wheelchair basketball came at a young age. His uncle has polio and always played wheelchair basketball. He played at the University of Illinois where the game was founded. This led Taylor to pursue a degree at Illinois so he could be part of the team.
Taylor was brought onto the team his freshman year as a waterboy, but his presence gave the team enough players to scrimmage.
Taylor is not wheelchair-bound, but he would frequently play in a chair so that the team could scrimmage with two full teams. Taylor says this is how he truly learned the game of wheelchair basketball.
Auburn’s team is looking to continue where it left off at No. 3 nationally. The team’s goal is to meet that ranking or precede it. Taylor says he’s confident in his team and plans to work to get them there.
“I’m really excited about this season,” Taylor told Andy Burcham on the Talking Tigers podcast. “We did graduate three, but the core group that we have returning is a strong core group. We had a handful of them staying here over the summer and they’ve gotten bigger, they’ve gotten stronger. They’ve gotten more consistent with their shot.”
This is also not Taylor’s first gold medal win. He has been the assistant coach for the U.S. men’s Paralympic team since 2013 and helped push the team to gold in the 2016 Summer Games in Rio, Brazil. He was also an assistant coach for the U.S. women’s Paralympic team in 2008 when its won gold in Beijing, China.
It’s known that coaches don’t receive physical medals when their team wins. It’s only reserved for the athletes. However, Taylor has found a way to get his own medal that he can carry with him every day.
“So my way of having medal is, I have a great tattoo artist here in town...,” Taylor told Burcham. “He does a great job. He’s tattooed my medals on my back and he’s done it in a way that as I continue to coach I can add medals.”
Taylor is expected to make a tattoo appointment as he travels back to the Plains with a new gold medal under his belt and soon to be on his back.
Auburn’s wheelchair basketball team will begin its first tournament in mid-October in Tuscaloosa with its first home tournament coming to the Beard Eaves Memorial Coliseum in late October.
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Mattison is a senior majoring in Public Relations from Springville, Alabama. She has been part of The Auburn Plainsman since 2019.
Twitter: @mattcurtlynn
