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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > June > 15
Monday, June 15, 2009
Tamika (Williams) Raymond Wins Prestigious WNBA Award
In New York today, former Chaminade Julienne basketball star and popular WNBA player Tamika Williams — now Tamika Raymond — was named the recipient of the 2008 Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award for her outstanding community work in Connecticut.
The award honors a player who both is a leader in the community and reflects Staley’s leadership, spirit, charitable efforts, and love for the game.
The Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award is presented annually. Each WNBA team nominated one player and a designated committee selected the 29 year old Raymond — currently as assistant coach at Kansas University — as the winner. The WNBA will make a $10,000 donation to a charity of her choosing.
“Dawn is a role model to me both as a player and as a coach,” Raymond said in a WNBA release. “She’s an even bigger figure to me as a leader, mentor and woman who’s making a difference.”
Before marrying Ben Raymond in 2007, Tamika Williams was named Ohio’s Miss Basketball while at CJ. Playing at UConn, she helped lead the Huskies to two national titles. She played seven seasons in the WNBA, six with Minnesota and last year with the Connecticut Sun. During her WNBA career, she played in 219 games, scored 1,330 points and grabbed 1,127 rebounds.
She has worked regularly with the Thames River Family Programs (TRFP), a transitional home for women and their children. She has been involved in classes, given motivational speeches to the adults and spent time reading, painting and playing basketball with the children.
She also treated the women, their families and the TRFP staff — paying for dinner, tickets and transportation — to a Connecticut Sun’s game
“Tamika’s work in her community speaks volumes — she is affecting lives in a way that will change generations within a family and community.” said Staley, currently the University of South Carolina coach (after eight seasons at Temple) and a longtime pro player, who always has been deeply-committed to bettering the communities she’s been involved in. “We need more Tamikas in this world to secure the success of our youth. I am so proud to somehow be connected to her.”
Raymond also has been an avid supporter of WNBA Cares events and causes, including both Nothing But Nets — a grassroots campaign with the United Nations Foundation that provides education on proper use to prevent malaria — and Fast Break to Reading, the League’s initiative with Pitney Bowes that focuses on the importance of reading and literacy.
” It is an honor to have Tamika associated with the WNBA. Not only has she proven herself to be a leader on the court and in the locker room, but she has also brought that same dedication and passion to her fans and the community,” WNBA President Donna Orender said in as league release.”Through her actions, she has touched the lives of thousands of young fans in Connecticut and across the nation, and we congratulate her for all her efforts and good work.”
TweetCOLUMN: Jesse Richardson - kicking through boards and limitations
He licked his suddenly-dry lips, blinked a few times as he tried to focus, paused several seconds before positioning his body and …then… with another blink and a slump of the shoulders, he slipped back out of sync.
After a few more lengthy resets, he finally shot his right leg up and out and brought his bare foot crashing down — an axe kick — onto the wooden board held up by white-robed fellow student.
And — for the 12th time in a row — the board did not break causing many in the small crowd to let out a barely-audible, but fully-embracing sigh.
Jesse Richardson — who had prepared seven years for this moment — was testing for his black belt in front of Master George Bleil, head of the Dayton Area Taekwondo Center, last Sunday, June 7, at the Boonshoft Center for Jewish Culture and Education.
Jesse — who is 29 and has spent a lifetime kicking right through the limitations that come with Down syndrome — had worked his way up through 10 different belts and just a few nights earlier, in front of another crowd, had slowly read his written report on what taekwondo meant to him.
It had taken him a half an hour to get through the 250 words, but his sincerity and determined effort had brought many to tears.
Sunday he had begun his test, first by showing off various kicking, blocking and punching skills, then splintering a few boards using different blows.
But he was struggling with the axe kick.
His mom, Cathy “Kat” Welde, sat there trying to catch his eye to tell him he was fine, even though on the ride to Centerville, she’d been so nervous she nearly asked her husband, Joe Daniel, to pull over because she was going to be sick.
And Joe — Jesse’s loving stepdad — was in worse shape. Cathy wouldn’t let him sit next to her because she feared he’d break into tears — as he’d done at Jesse’s oration — and then they’d both “be bawling like babies.”
So Joe sat several chairs away, near other family members and friends and right next to Jesse’s best pal, Andy Horstman — they go to movies, the mall, the Air Force Museum and especially monster truck shows together — who had a camera around his neck.
He planned to capture the moment though he did have another duty, as well.
“I made Andy sit next to me,” Joe said with a grin. “I told him, ‘If I get emotional slap me. Don’t let me sit here blubbering.’”
But as Jesse labored in the center of the big room, everyone’s tears were replaced by strident urgings
“Your heel, Jesse,” cried one student. “Use your heel.”
“You can do it, Jesse,” urged another. “You know you can.”
And as he reset one more time, Jesse nodded and said haltingly:
“Ummm…yes….yes…yes, I can.”
MOM’S HIS CHAMPION
When Jesse was born, his mom wasn’t sure she could do it.
“I found out in the recovery room that he was Down’s and it took me a long time to deal with it,” Cathy said. “I was like, ‘Maybe I’m not right for him. Maybe I won’t be able to take care of him.’
“I thought about adoption. Your mind goes through so many things. I was at such a loss, I came home from the hospital without a name for him yet.”
As she thought about those long-past times — and now looked at her son who sat next to her in their Bellbrook home — she smiled:
“Thank God, I got it straight. Jesse has brought so much love — so much life — to me. To all of us.”
In the early years she pretty much raised Jesse and his sister Nicole by herself — they were living outside Bowling Green, Ky. — and then she endured a tough divorce.
Through it all, one thing was constant. She had become her son’s biggest champion: “You want the best for your kids, but as a special needs parent, you learn you have to fight for different situations.
“Like at the end of every school year, we’d have a meeting to set the next year’s goals and I always put down reading. But I was told, ‘That will never happen.’ So finally I took one summer and taught Jesse to read a couple of books and we went in and changed those goals.”
She got him involved in various sports, as well as the Special Olympics, and once they moved back to this area several years ago, they took a taekwondo class together at the Kettering Rec Center.
One of the best things that happened to Jesse was Cathy’s marriage seven years ago — after their 10 years of dating — to Daniel, the sommelier at Jay’s Seafood Restaurant.
“The first time I met Jesse we really hit it off — he’s a great kid.”” Daniel said. “I wouldn’t want any other person in the world to be my son.”
Jesse also was Joe’s best man, who, in turn, serves as his son’s father figure and sidekick.
When Jay’s has had karaoke at staff Christmas parties, Joe and Jesse have belted out everything from West Side Story’s “I Feel Pretty,” — “he’s not as pretty as Natalie Wood,” Joe teased — to R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.”
Joe grinned: “Jesse brought the house down with that.”
At Halloween, the two go to great lengths to decorate their yard with life-sized monsters — Freddy Kruger to Michael Myers — that are enhanced by strobe lights and a fog machine.
During the summer they work together as counselors at a special needs camp and on Christmas Day they are side by side feeding some 500 homeless and needy people at Jay’s charity dinner.
Jesse works daily at the Kroger store in Bellbrook and in his spare time, when not with Andy and some other buddies, he likes going to the theater, opera, the ballet and La Comedia.
“Now he needs to find a girlfriend to take along to some of that,” Cathy smiled.
Jesse beamed and nodded: “Aaaah…I…I like….hot girls.”
THRILL TO WATCH
When Jess graduated from Bellbrook High in 2002, Cathy wanted him to have other involvements besides work. He suggested taekwondo.
When they came to Bleil, they found an instructor who Cathy describes as “just wonderful.” A former school teacher who had worked with special needs kids, he has an open mind and plenty of patience.
Although he had standards he wanted Jesse to meet, Bleil let him progress at his own pace.
“With Jesse, if you push him, you’ll just block the processor and not get anywhere,” Bleil said. “I’m comfortable with just sitting and waiting until he gets in gear.
“And it’s pretty amazing when he does. He’s so diligent and earnest, he’s become a real inspiration. With his limited ability, to accomplish all that he has, it’s been a thrill to watch.”
Each of the belts that Jessie has earned is displayed on a special rack — beneath his collection of elaborate horror masks — in his meticulously-kept bedroom.
Yet with each promotion, the one thing he kept longing for was a black belt and finally Bleil thought he was ready.
Jesse practiced for weeks so he could read the taekwondo paper his mom helped him with. And then came last Sunday’s test and that troublesome axe kick.
Bleil patiently waited through some 20 failed attempts, but would not give Jesse a pass. “This isn’t a gift,” he said. “A piece of wood is not going to defeat him.”
And then with one sharp blow, Jesse sent his heel crashing through the board. The crowd applauded and he closed his eyes tightly and shook his hands in sheer delight.
Soon after, Joe said he looked over at Andy, who had snapped the photo as a tear spilled from his eye: “He said, ‘Joe, that made me emotional, too.’”
Later, Joe and Cathy took Andy and Jesse to Sharkey’s Lounge, where a party was in full swing. Their friend, blues rocker Eric Jerardi, announced from the bandstand that Jesse had gotten his black belt and the place erupted in cheers.
“Jesse and Andy were drinking virgin daiquiris, eating burgers and dancing with all the pretty girls,” Joe laughed. “Jesse even showed people a few of his (taekwondo) moves. It sounds like a pretty good day to me.”
Jesse’s face crinkled again. He shook his head and finally said:
“Uuummm… yes….Yes, it was….it…waaaas…great.”
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