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Elizabeth Merrill
THE PHOTO IS blurry and the faces are indiscernible, but this screengrab, Emilio Rodriguez says, captures the moment that Jackie Taylor’s life turned. It’s from a workout in the summer of 2021.
Rodriguez had just taken the volleyball coaching job at Gulliver Prep, a private school known for its academics, athletics and being a hub for children of famous people in Miami. Gulliver was not, however, famous for volleyball, winning just one game the previous year.
Taylor was a 15-year-old who had been playing volleyball for two years, mostly just «for fun,» and was coming off a nondescript season on Gulliver’s junior varsity team. At the time, there wasn’t a hint that she would become a middle blocker for a North Carolina team that is heading to the NCAA tournament this week.
«She was super, super raw,» Rodriguez says. «Like when Bambi first walks.»
She hit the court that day among a bunch of seasoned 15-to-17-year-olds in South Florida. Rodriguez hit record.
«She had no real acknowledgement of the space she needed, so she was all up in the net,» Rodriguez says. «She could barely swing.»
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Sean Taylor played 57 games in the NFL. He intercepted 12 passes and forced eight fumbles, and fans, announcers and teammates spoke of him with reverence, even proclaiming that he was something more than mortal. On Nov. 11, 2007, he left the game against the Philadelphia Eagles early with a knee injury. Later, he went home to Miami to recuperate with his family.
Taylor had changed over the past two seasons. The young man who flouted the NFL’s dress-code rules, and once was ejected for spitting on an opponent during a playoff game, moved his locker away from the rowdy youngsters and to the middle of the veterans. When asked about it, he said he simply needed a change. But something else happened in 2006. Jackie was born, and it changed his perspective on life.
In one of his last conversations with Ryan Clark, a friend and former teammate, Taylor talked about his faith, his health and his baby.
«He talked about how light she made him,» Clark says, «about how he saw love differently now.»
On Nov. 26, 2007, Taylor was home in Miami asleep in his bedroom with Garcia Haley and 18-month-old Jackie. Taylor, who missed Washington’s game the day before, heard noises in the house and grabbed a machete he kept under the bed for protection. He confronted the intruders at his bedroom door. He was shot in the thigh while Garcia Haley and Jackie hid under the covers. Neither were harmed. The bullet severed Taylor’s femoral artery. He died the next day.
Five men were later convicted on charges connected to Taylor’s murder. Eric Rivera Jr., the alleged gunman who was 17 at the time, said they didn’t expect Taylor to be home.
«You only get one dad and hers is gone,» Jackie Garcia Haley said in a statement that was read at Rivera’s 2014 sentencing. «It breaks my heart to pieces to go through each day and each milestone without him.»
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Taylor was hesitant — middle blockers are generally taller. But they couldn’t jump like she did.
He told Taylor that if they were going to do this, they’d need to have a «violent push» into ultra-competitive play at the club travel scene. Rodriguez would raise the net two to three inches every practice so she’d have to work harder to find success. Taylor would pile on extra workouts throughout her high school, then club seasons. When Taylor went on a family vacation, she’d take a trainer with her.
«She has been at the net, come off a block and landed on a kid and rolled her ankle,» Rodriguez says. «And before she can even complain about her ankle, I’m like, ‘Jackie, get up and walk it off.’ And she’ll get up. You can only do that with a certain type of kid because a lot of kids are not strong enough.
«Then she would pop right up and bite her lip and kind of walk around the gym, and then she was right back in.»
Gulliver won 11 games in Taylor’s initial season on varsity. She wore No. 1 — the same number her dad wore when he played football there decades earlier. She went through the expected bumps when club competition rolled around, but by the end of the season, it was clear that her game had evolved. Her quickness and explosiveness, Rodriguez says, allowed her to catch up quickly. After one intense year, Taylor belonged.
Her high school team won 26 games her junior year, and with the success came attention. People wanted to know the story of Sean Taylor’s daughter. She understood the natural curiosity but preferred to shift the attention to her teammates who had banded together for Gulliver’s turnaround.
Ryan Clark, who has gotten to know Jackie better over the past few years, said it’s tough to be the memory of someone who died in the middle of greatness.
«I think that’s difficult for a young lady who actually doesn’t know that person, hasn’t grown up with that person,» says Clark, who played with Sean Taylor in Washington. «And obviously this person was superhuman in certain ways … But as she grew into herself — you could see her at Gulliver Prep and start to understand what his legacy meant.
«So you got that height from him, you know? You got some of that athleticism from him. You got that smile from him. And I think once she started to come into her own it was easier to also embrace his legacy.»
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Schall sought her out when he went to his first club tournament as head coach, and he says he immediately felt as if she was somebody who could help the Tar Heels succeed. Her athleticism was obvious, but the thing that stuck with him was her interactions with her teammates and coaches.
«You could tell there was more depth to her than just being good,» he says. «There are plenty of good athletes playing volleyball. But we spend a lot of time evaluating what those interactions look like. Are they going to be a great teammate? Are they going to respond to mistakes in a positive way? Are they going to compete really hard when the game is on the line? Everything we saw in Jackie sort of checked the boxes for us.»
Taylor narrowed her choices to Tennessee and North Carolina. Her mom — whom she considers one of her best friends — encouraged her to go away to school, away from the University of Miami.
«[My mom] went to Miami, and she knew how much she depended on her parents,» Taylor says. «She was in the same state that she grew up in, the same city. She was like, ‘It’s so important to leave and to meet new people and be outside of your comfort zone.'»
In Jackie Taylor’s senior year at Gulliver, she led her team to its first state championship — just like her dad did in football in his senior year at Gulliver in 2000.
WEARING THE NO. 21 on her Carolina blue jersey, Jackie Taylor approaches from the middle for a quick set and hammers a kill.
She is no longer the lost, fast-tracked girl who quickly rotates out of a game. Schall says her role has been enhanced in the past year, and Taylor has become a reliable server. He thinks about her vast ceiling, because she’s only 60 matches into her college career and is still learning.
Her first college season was a whirlwind — the Tar Heels made it to the NCAA tournament for the first time in three years, and Taylor played in all 31 matches. She finished with 145 kills and 111 blocks, along with 11 aces and 40 digs.
UNC libero/defensive specialist Julia Bohlinger, who is Taylor’s roommate, says the 2024 season was like «drinking from a fire hose» for the freshmen. But Taylor made it easier. They both value their families. Taylor calls herself a homebody, and Bohlinger also considers herself somewhat «low-key» socially, sometimes preferring to stay in and watch a movie over going out. Bohlinger’s dad played in the NFL, too. Rob Bohlinger was a left tackle for the Carolina Panthers in 1998.
But it’s different. Julia Bohlinger is not recognized or associated with what her dad once did. Some matches, Taylor will see people in the stands wearing her dad’s No. 21 jersey. They’ll occasionally approach her for autographs, and she signs with more precision than her old «JT.»
«She handles it really well,» Bohlinger says. «She’s very kind and loving. If people come up to her, she’s not like, ‘Oh no, don’t talk to me.’ She’s very like, ‘Oh, hi, how are you?’ She’s just warm and welcoming. So I think it makes it easier for people to come and talk to her.
«I think she wants to carry some of the stuff of her dad, like his great qualities. She wants them to see that through her too.»
Taylor, who has grown to 6-foot-1, said she no longer feels the pressure to live up to his legacy. And it makes her feel good that people haven’t forgotten about him.
«There’s a deeper meaning in all this for her,» Schall says. «It’s like how she was raised by her mom, by her stepdad. But her father’s legacy is really important to her. So this attention for her is not something that she’s like, ‘Look at me, look at me.’ She wants to be able to say, ‘This is what I do.’
«And there’s a genuine humility about it. And our players adore her. I mean, they love the kid … I understand it could go sideways really quickly, but the way she is with the team, there is no animosity about the attention that she gets through her story.»
This season, the Tar Heels went 21-8 and earned their second straight trip to the NCAA tournament. They play their first-round game Thursday against UTEP. Taylor has tallied 152 blocks, fourth-most in the ACC. In a program that isn’t as much of a household name as Texas or Nebraska, Taylor garners a lot of attention because of her father. She knows a lot of people look at her and, much like Rodriguez did, see Sean Taylor.
But now they see Jackie Taylor, too.
«There’s a purpose behind carrying out his legacy,» she says. «But also finding my own name and finding my own path.»
ESPN producer Blake Foeman contributed to this story.
