{"id":7940,"date":"2015-09-22T19:25:03","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T00:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/?p=7940"},"modified":"2015-09-22T19:25:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T00:25:03","slug":"athlete-overcomes-tragedy-to-get-exceptional-college-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/athlete-overcomes-tragedy-to-get-exceptional-college-offer\/","title":{"rendered":"Athlete overcomes tragedy to get exceptional college offer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Taryn<\/a>
Taryn Allen today lives in Florida and is a personal trainer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Laura Allen was a single parent of three and a school teacher when I met her as an NSR scout.\u00a0 It’s an experience I’ll never forget.\u00a0 Having seen me at several of her middle daughter’s basketball games, Laura had asked around about me and had discovered what I did for a living.\u00a0 Someone told her that I was a college\u00a0scout and helped high school kids get college scholarships.<\/p>\n

The oldest Allen child had already earned a soccer scholarship to play at West Point and was about to complete her first year there.\u00a0\u00a0She was the quintessential oldest child, excelling at everything she did and setting a very high bar for her younger siblings.\u00a0 Taryn, second of the three, was about to finish her junior year at T.C. Roberson High School in Asheville, N.C.\u00a0 A stellar soccer player like her sister, Taryn nonetheless loved hoops and wanted to pursue a college offer,\u00a0if one was possible.\u00a0 But there was a major problem facing Taryn and her dream.\u00a0 Up until that point, no colleges had contacted her although she had already made 3A All-Conference twice and played travel basketball for one of North Carolina’s premier organizations, the Lady Royals.\u00a0\u00a0She\u00a0and her mother had, in fact, fallen into\u00a0the Twilight Zone of high school recruiting – she was good enough to play in college, but\u00a0coaches didn’t know she existed.<\/p>\n

When Laura approached me at halftime of one of Taryn’s final regular season\u00a0basketball games, she was serious from the get-go.<\/p>\n

“Are you Alan Parham?”\u00a0She asked.<\/p>\n

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”<\/p>\n

“My name is Laura Allen.\u00a0 I understand that you help high school kids get college scholarships,” she continued.<\/p>\n

“Yes, ma’am, I do.”<\/p>\n

“And do you know my daughter, Taryn Allen?”<\/p>\n

“Why, yes ma’am, I do,” I replied.<\/p>\n

“And what do you think?\u00a0 Is she good enough to play college basketball?”\u00a0 Laura pressed.<\/p>\n

“Yes, I’m sure of it,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Okay,” she said, “then\u00a0we need to talk with\u00a0you as soon as possible.”<\/p>\n

I enrolled Taryn with NSR the next night.\u00a0 Working with Laura and Taryn was one of the most rewarding experiences of my NSR career.\u00a0 See, Taryn suffered a terrible boating\u00a0injury the day before her senior year started.\u00a0 Her jaw was wired shut for six weeks.\u00a0 This put her woefully behind in conditioning and practice.\u00a0 A three-point specialist, Taryn had to work very hard to get her mojo back, not to mention her shooting stroke.\u00a0 I should note that two days prior to her accident, I had taped her making 18 of 20 three-point shots during her skill video for college coaches.\u00a0 The girl could shoot.\u00a0 And that video paid off in the end.<\/p>\n

Basketball season ended with Taryn, now a senior, having once again being named All-Conference, despite what she had gone through.\u00a0 Still, only DIII schools seemed interested and Taryn was determined to play at the DII level.\u00a0 I had a\u00a0good relationship with the\u00a0women’s head coach at Division II Catawba College and during a trip through that area in March, I stopped by her\u00a0office to show her\u00a0Taryn’s video and to tell\u00a0her\u00a0Taryn’s story.\u00a0 She was impressed and\u00a0reached out to Taryn that evening.<\/p>\n

A week later, while scouting a softball game, I got a call from\u00a0Laura.\u00a0 This is how it went:<\/p>\n

“Alan, this is Laura.\u00a0 I have a question for you,” she said.\u00a0 I knew that something was different because her voice was subdued.\u00a0 It was not the assertive Laura I was accustomed to speaking with.<\/p>\n

“Okay, shoot,” I said.<\/p>\n

“I have a letter here from the Catawba Coach.\u00a0 In it she lists\u00a0all the\u00a0different types of money she wants to offer Taryn,” she said.\u00a0 Laura went on to list about five or six various scholarships,\u00a0grants and loans in the\u00a0packaged offer.\u00a0\u00a0She continued, “And at the end of the letter it says that\u00a0if Taryn accepts the offer that we will only have\u00a0to pay a total of $1,500.00 next year for\u00a0Tayrn’s to go to school there.\u00a0 Can that be right?\u00a0 I mean, can this be real?”<\/p>\n

“Laura,” I said, “this coach\u00a0does not joke around.\u00a0 What you have in your hand is one of the best offers I’ve ever heard from a\u00a0DII coach.\u00a0 Yes,\u00a0it’s real.”<\/p>\n

The silence at the other end of the\u00a0call was palpable.\u00a0 I could hear Laura crying.\u00a0 After about 30 seconds or so, she started to speak again.<\/p>\n

“Alan,\u00a0for a good\u00a0long time I doubted that this could happen, but I want\u00a0you to know that I know this would\u00a0not have been possible without you and NSR.\u00a0\u00a0Taryn, my whole family and I will always be grateful for what you’ve done for us.”<\/p>\n

That’s changing lives and that’s why I\u00a0love this work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Allen was a single parent of three and a school teacher when I met her as an NSR scout.\u00a0 It’s an experience I’ll never forget.\u00a0 Having seen me at several of her middle daughter’s basketball games, Laura had asked around about me and had discovered what I did for a living.\u00a0 Someone told her … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[25,228,224,57,227,226],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7940"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7960,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7940\/revisions\/7960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}