BLACK HISTOR MONTH: RANDY TAYLOR

February 5, 2019
In honor of Black History Month, Falcon Athletics will be honoring our alumni. Throughout February, UWRFSports.com will share short interviews with African-American alumni. In these interviews, former student-athletes reflect on their time at the UW-River Falls, provide advice to current Falcons and share what Black History Month means to them.
 
Class of 1977 – Randy Taylor
Sport: Football
Years: 1972-1976
Grad Year: 1977
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Major:  Business Administration and Marketing       
Occupation: Retired Marketing Manager, 3M
 
What do you miss most about UW-River Falls?
I miss playing football with my brothers.
 
What occupies your time now?
I was a Marketing Manager at 3M for 35 years and coached football at Tartan High school as a volunteer until I retired. Now, I coach full time and I am the Assistant Head Coach at Tartan.

How did your time as a student-athlete prepare you for life after college and athletics? 
As a student-athlete you must be disciplined with your schoolwork and preparation in your sport. Being a student-athlete gives you the competitive juices that fuel you in life after college. It also teaches you life lessons on how to deal with people, work towards a common goal, and how to tackle adversity.

What's one piece of advice you would share with current student-athletes?
To be a successful student-athlete you must buy-in to the process. When things don't go the way you think they should, buckle up and work harder. Being successful is a process and if you love the process, the process will love you back.
 
What is your favorite memory from your time at UW-River Falls?  
My favorite memory is the bus ride home after beating Stevens Point. Farley told the bus driver to pull over at a radio station, he went in then came out of the station running. He jumped over some hedges got on the bus and told us that Lacrosse had lost to Whitewater! That loss gave us the conference championship.
 
What are you grateful for?  
I am grateful that Coach Farley recruited me out of Chicago. He gave me a chance to play the game that I love, be part of a championship team, earn a degree, meet my wife and provided an opportunity for an inner-city kid to meet guys from all parts of Wisconsin, that probably had only seen black guys on television. We went through the grinds of college life together and found that we all had the same dreams and goals. Now, we are now bonded for life. I love those guys.
River Falls will always be a part of me because it gave me so much. I loved my time there. It is time for us to become relevant in the conference again and it will happen if they TRUST THE PROCESS.

What does Black History Month mean to you? 
Black History Month is a year-round thing for me, but for younger people and those that don't know the history of African Americans or where we as a people have come from, Black History Month gives them a snap shot of what Black people have accomplished. The world is complex, and racism is very much still around us. If Black History Month can turn only one person around, we can continue to work toward progress. I am proud of our history and I hope that people learn, so that we could begin to have dialogues and understand that we are all not that different from one another. 
 
Be sure to check back during the month of February for more interviews.