The Taia That Binds

By: Patrick Walsh

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – The love between a father and a daughter can be felt a world away.  It is a bond unmatched by any other. Text messages and Skype calls help with the distance but still aren’t the same. A return home is usually a joyous occasion but Ashley Taia’s recent trip home brought about vastly different emotions.  

Ashley Taia (pronounced: TIE-ah) has always been close to her family, literally and figuratively. Her two older brothers, both in their late 20s and with children, live less than five minutes from her family home. So, it is a cruel twist of fate that one of the greatest opportunities in her life to date – a scholarship to play Division I basketball in the United States – left her as far from her family as could be when they faced their greatest challenge and her father, who volunteered as a youth basketball coach, faced his greatest opponent – cancer.

How can you focus on basketball, on school, on your upcoming graduation or on anything at all when you hear those fateful words from a loved one: I have cancer. Or even more gut-wrenching than that – the cancer has returned. That was the news Ashley had to deal with in the middle of her senior season.

Happy and Humble

John Taia, a factory worker in Brisbane, Australia, was a humble, funny and honest man. In a family rooted in athletics, he coached youth basketball for years. His four children, Taylor (29), Tony (28), Ashley (22) and Lacey (18) played almost every sport imaginable growing up but the family seemingly always came back to basketball.

The Taia family had a basketball hoop in their backyard as Ashley grew up and family games were hardly uncommon. Friends and neighborhood children would often come over to get in on the games. In those moments, John was in his element. Perhaps that is where he developed his love of coaching youth basketball.

Ask about the name John Taia around the basketball community in Brisbane and you will undoubtedly get an incredible response. That was the impact that he left on others. That same impact, on a much greater level, was imparted to his children.

A Key Player

Ashley had a goal to play collegiate basketball in the United States. She initially had an opportunity to play for Saint Leo, a Division II program, but a coaching change left that opportunity in limbo after she redshirted her freshman season. Enter Indiana State’s Josh Keister, hot on the recruiting trail.

Ashley needed to do some work to qualify for Division I basketball and with a hopeful promise from Keister of an opportunity to play, she enrolled at Odessa (Texas) Community College. A year later she signed her National Letter of Intent with Indiana State having never visited Terre Haute.

“She put a lot of trust in me at the start of our relationship from just recruiting her,” said Keister, the then assistant and now interim head coach. “I spent a lot of time recruiting her and talking to her mom back in Australia through email. She (Ashley) is just someone I have a great relationship with and I know that we trust each other.”

The trust in that relationship continued to grow over the next two-and-a-half years.

Home for Summer/Winter Break

The Southern Hemisphere has opposite seasons to the Northern Hemisphere so when Ashley returned home for summer break, it was winter in Australia. That summer (winter) was full of excitement as she prepared to enter her senior year at Indiana State.

But a persistent pain in John’s jaw refused to go away. Several visits to doctors resulted in a diagnosis: cancer. Ashley was told her father was sick but did not know the true extent as she returned to the United States.

“I remember being really scared and felt kind of helpless,” Ashley recalled. “I was sad because I didn’t want to leave but my parents didn’t want me around because they knew I had to get back to school.”

Meanwhile, John prepped for surgery, the first of three. First, doctors removed the cancerous tissue from his jaw. Then they had to go back in on two more occasions, taking tissue from his leg to help rebuild his jaw followed by a skin graft from his shoulder for his face.

Ashley’s mother, Maria, kept Ashley informed as each procedure took place. John was in the hospital for two months beginning with his initial surgery and for most of that time relied on a tracheotomy – a surgically created hole through the front of your neck and into your windpipe – to breathe. But as long as he was awake, John was talking to his little girl.

A Message Away

Every day it was possible, Ashley was talking to her father from a world away. Back in Indiana, 15 time zones away and across the International Date Line, she would communicate over text messages, Skype calls and emails as often as possible to her father. And when he couldn’t physically speak, the text messages allowed John to communicate with his daughter on a daily basis.

“He had a lisp and struggled to talk for about two months,” Ashley said of her father’s ability to speak following his surgeries. “When I went back in July, I remember he took me to the hospital where he had an appointment with a speech pathologist. He had all these exercises he was doing to try and help widen the range of motion with his jaw.”

Ashley would send a message to her father every day. On days where he was not able to respond, her mother would provide updates.

Mostly, Ashley and John would converse through those messages during breaks in Ashley’s schedule as she balanced a full course load and being a Division I student-athlete. His exercises limited his lisp and he began to overcome his jaw issue. John Taia looked forward to a return to a normal life.

A Premature Celebration

Following his jaw surgery, and sessions of chemotherapy and radiation, scans showed no sign of cancer in John’s jaw. It seemed like a return to normalcy awaited him, and for a brief time it did. John returned to his job at the factory and resumed his coaching duties for the youth of Brisbane.

As he settled back into his routine, he began experiencing back pain. After initially shrugging it off as a pulled muscle and the pain refusing to go away, he sought a doctor’s opinion. The diagnosis was not favorable.

It was the middle of a sunny November day in Indiana and Ashley was in a break between classes and basketball practice. Her father, awake at around 2 a.m. in Australia, was talking to his daughter in a normal conversation when he decided it was the right time to share the news: the cancer had returned.

The back pain John had been experiencing wasn’t from a pulled muscle but from a return of the cancer and this time it was embedded into his spine. The news was tragic and the prognosis did not provide any comfort.

“I was just sad,” Ashley recalled as tears began to stream down her face. “It was then that I realized there was nothing they could do.”

A world away, Ashley never felt so far from family.

Changing Travel Plans

John and Maria Taia had every intention on joining the Sycamores in Cancun when the team made its Thanksgiving trip this season. It was an opportunity to see their daughter play basketball and also celebrate her birthday (Nov. 22) with her in person. But John’s recent diagnosis changed all of that.

He was originally given just weeks to live and his body was rapidly starting to decline. A trip around the globe was now no longer possible. But a chance at a shorter trip and an opportunity to check something off his bucket list arose. A week before Indiana State headed to Cancun, John and Maria traveled to Fiji.

“When they told me they were going to Fiji instead, I felt better about it,” Ashley said. “Mom and Dad deserved that trip. I was happy for them.”

As enjoyable as that trip was, it was still physically demanding. John, weakened from the travel, returned home after that trip never to leave his bedroom again.

Meanwhile, Ashley was off to Cancun with Indiana State and tried to keep the focus on all the positives in her life. She was off to a Caribbean resort, with an opportunity to play basketball and she was able to celebrate her birthday – and Sycamore guard Maeva Kitantou’s birthday (Nov. 23) – surrounded by her friends and teammates. Focusing on the positives, Ashley Taia refused to wallow in self-pity that week.

“I tried to avoid thinking about it really because it would just make me too sad,” Ashley said of her week in Cancun. “It wouldn’t have helped anybody. I just tried to avoid feeling sad about it the whole time we were there. I was still expressing myself with my emotions, but I just felt like crying would only do so much.”

Her teammates knew her father was sick and would often ask her how he was doing. She would keep them updated as she found out what was transpiring in Australia.

“I would tell them what my mom would tell me, that he was doing good,” Ashley explained. “He was still eating and talking and functioning. But at that time, I didn’t really know he wasn’t doing so good.”

Hiding the Hurt

Parents never want to break bad news to their children and the Taias were no different. It was important to them that Ashley focus on having a great time in Cancun and enjoying the experiences that came with traveling to the resort.

“The whole time Dad kept telling me, ‘Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t feel sad about it,’” Ashley said.

And having to tell a child to come home because one of their parents is dying is a heartbreaking experience. Already losing her husband, Maria turned to a trusted friend and extension of the family, Coach Keister. As the Sycamores, having returned to the United States, were preparing for a trip north to Chicago to play UIC, she emailed the Indiana State coach and told him it was time for Ashley to return home to say goodbye.

“It is devastating,” Keister says of receiving that message. “I am a father. I can’t even imagine what Ashley is going through before then and even now. There are no words that can really make anyone feel better. When that happens you just knew she needed to get home. Family always comes first, more than anything else in life.”

The Indiana State coaching staff and athletic department officials then began the process of making preparations for Taia. A flight home to Australia was booked, her professors were notified and the University set it up so she could take all of her final exams early and have her semester completed before she left.

“I was and am definitely grateful to Indiana State, to the team, to the athletic department,” Ashley said. “It was so spur of the moment but everything got organized so quickly. It just shows the support I have here. Everyone in the athletic department, even the athletic director, came up and gave me a hug and told me that he was thinking of my family and thinking of me.”

Forgive her performance at UIC on Nov. 30, 2017, where she was 0-for-3 from the field and was called for four fouls with just one point scored; other things weighed on her mind.

She returned to Terre Haute following that game and within five days she was on a plane homeward bound, a 16-hour flight that yielded no happy feelings of returning home.

“I had just taken all of my exams and I felt like I had rushed the end of the semester,” Ashley recalls. “Then it was not knowing what to expect when I arrived home. Mom was sad and if she was telling me to come home then I figured it was bad.”

A Smile Gives Way to Tears

Every single time Ashley steps off the plane in Australia, she can’t help but smile. There’s no place like home and for Ashley, it just feels good to know a continent and an ocean no longer separated her from her family.

Even in this tragic circumstance, she couldn’t help but smile. But the long wait in the line at Customs brought her back to the tragedy of her situation.

She returned home and for the first time in her life did not see the strong man she always knew as her father.

“I was shocked,” Ashley said, crying as she pictured her father in that moment. “He was really skinny and sick. I didn’t realize how bad it was. I walked in, said hello and gave him a hug and a kiss. My mom and sister were there and they were both crying. Dad was just lying there, sad, but I don’t think his body could produce tears at that point.”

For the next two days, Ashley took advantage of her father’s ability to talk and enjoyed his conversation. But as the week went on, his health started to rapidly decline. By Monday, Dec. 11, John was unable to speak.

As Monday turned into Tuesday, subdued celebrations began in the Taia household. Ashley’s mother, Maria, had summoned everyone to the house thinking John wouldn’t last the night while her oldest brother, Taylor, celebrated his 29th birthday. But it was a bittersweet day as John’s breathing began to become very shallow.

A Quiet Goodbye

As twilight approached on Dec. 12 and the birthday celebrations were a long afterthought, members of the Taia family began to go to bed. Someone would always be in the room with John and in this instance, it was his wife, Maria. Ashley and her sister, Lacey, turned in for the night. Maria remained with John and tried in vain to stay awake. But despite her efforts, she fell asleep as the emotional exhaustion of the previous few weeks began to catch with her.

She would drift off to sleep and the house was quiet and at peace. That is when John ended his fight with cancer and quietly slipped into the afterlife.

“Mom thinks he waited until everyone was asleep,” Ashley said. “When she woke up, he had gone. She thinks that he waited for everyone to be asleep and then just left quietly.”

A Lasting Impact

In Ashley’s native Australia, it is custom for the females to wear all black until the funeral and sit with the body of the deceased in their home as friends, family and neighbors come to pay their last respects. Mattresses are set up next to the coffin for the women to sleep on so the body is protected and never alone.

That is when the impact of John’s life began to truly show. Word spread around that he had passed away and hundreds of people came to pay homage to his life.

“A lot of the girls that he coached over the years came up to the house just because they loved him so much,” Ashley said. “One of them got up at his funeral and gave a speech talking about how he was so encouraging, so great with everyone and how he knew how to communicate with the youth. I think that is why he was such a great youth coach, he knew how to talk to kids, how to handle kids and how to make them better. He always believed in everyone.”

The grievers continued to pour in, including hundreds of former youth basketball players John had coached.

“A lot of people that came to the funeral or came by the house were telling us how they owed so much to my dad,” Ashley recalled. “So many told us how he got them to do something or motivated them or how he encouraged them to keep going. He was always a positive guy.”

Continuing Christmas Traditions

Ashley returned to Indiana State following Christmas celebrations with her family. December being a summer month in Australia, a Taia family tradition was to go to the beach on Christmas and Maria made sure that year was no different.

“Tradition for us would be the beach on Christmas,” Ashley said. “Mom wanted to go to the beach so we went up the coast with the whole family. My brothers, my cousins, my grandad, all of us were there at the beach. We brought his picture in a frame so he was there with us.”

While sadness could have easily overcome the family on the holiday, the Taias refused to allow its inclusion into the festivities.

“He didn’t want anyone to feel sad or sorry for him,” Ashley explained. “We obviously miss him but we had a good day. Christmas day was nice, just being with the family was good.”

The Warmth from the Trees

As Ashley returned to the United States and rejoined her teammates, it was as if she was returning to her other family.

While she was away the team held a Christmas party complete with a white elephant gift exchange among the players. Ashli O’Neal sought out Keister, recently appointed as the interim head coach, and reminded him that Ashley hadn’t received a Christmas present from the team as part of the gift exchange.

So O’Neal gathered contributions from her teammates and made sure Ashley had her Christmas present ready when she returned to the team. And as a team, they presented Ashley with her gift following a team practice.

Practice had just ended so it was hard to tell if there were tears coming down Ashley’s face or if it was just sweat from the recent workout but surely even the most stoic of people would have had to catch their breath as the Sycamores presented Ashley with a custom-made blanket prominently featuring the face of John Taia.

“I think that speaks for itself on how her teammates feel about Ashley Taia,” Keister said, matter-of-factly.

Kia Kaha

John will always be a part of Ashley’s life, no matter where she goes. The indelible mark left by a parent’s love and guidance may never be fully seen but is always there. After he passed, she made sure to have a visible reminder of his love and encouragement.

Now tattooed on the inside of her wrist reads “Kia Kaha,” a phrase that means “Stay Strong” in Māori, New Zealand’s native language.

“Dad would always say this to me,” Ashley explained. “I remember when I was leaving for the airport for my senior year, I took a picture with him and headed to the airport. He sent me a text message saying, “Go hard. Kia Kaha. I love you.”

Now Ashley strives to live every day to that motto, always using her father’s memory as strength. 

For the latest information on the Sycamore Women's Basketball team, make sure to check out GoSycamores.com. You can also find the team on social media including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.