Taylor Bradley grew up in Louisville, Kentucky shooting hoops at her grandmother’s driveway hoop.
“I love basketball,” Bradley said. “I played basketball all the way up to high school senior year.”
While basketball was Bradley’s passion, it was another skill she possessed on the court that led to her college scholarship: her speed. She began running track during her freshman year of high school and excelled.
She went on to her hometown University of Louisville and starred on their track and field team for four years, but she was more than an athlete, she was also an active member of the community regularly taking part in the annual read-a-thon and going to talk to schools.
“I had to do 20 hours of community service [as a part of my requirement as a student-athlete] every year and I would surpass that every year,” Bradley said.
Bradley was the President of Student-Athletes of Color Combining Opportunity and Responsibility for Excellence (S.C.O.R.E) and was community outreach chair for the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She won two ACC Top Community Service Awards and it was during her time at the university that Bradley had a life changing experience in Vietnam.
“To see the impact I had with these kids, I had their respect and they gained mine.”
During the summer of 2015, she was part of a program called Coach for College where student-athletes go overseas to teach sport through a translator.
“What happened there, when I was there for that month, was a very eye opening experience,” Bradley said. “They [the students] commuted on bicycle just to get taught to play a sport. The amount of love and admiration [we saw from the students]… to see how much more tangible it is to make an impact on someone than to compete to win a medal… it goes a very long way.”
Bradley found this feeling was far more special to her than competing and it made her want to do more.
“My athletic advisor, I always told her I wanted to do what she did. She told me ‘why wait?’” Bradley said.
She became a substitute teacher in 2018 after graduating from Louisville and has made a tremendous influence on the students she has met. She completed her first year as a substitute teacher during the 2021-2022 school year and she hasn’t ruled out getting her teaching license yet.
“To see the impact I had with these kids, I had their respect and they gained mine. They would come to me for real life situations and if I didn’t know the answer, I would try my best. They felt more comfortable coming to me because I was someone who looked the part to them. That is what drove me.”
Bradley ended up serving as an Up2Us Sports AmeriCorps VISTA after stumbling upon a Twitter post promoting the DELTA Foundation.
“The DELTA Foundation is a mentorship program that specializes in helping at-risk young athletes in Louisville obtain the tools necessary to be successful academically, socially and athletically,” she shared.
“I don’t even have to do much. Just my presence there and [the students] feel good. I may not be the best athlete in the world, but me coming back is something to them.”
This aligned with the work Bradley would like to do and it reminded her of her experience in Vietnam, so she signed up for the opportunity to serve last year and again this summer. For Bradley, this experience is very much preparing her for her future career, as she would one day like to run her own non-profit organization that gives back to young people in schools.
“I want to go directly into schools, I don’t want to have my own building,” she said, because she doesn’t want to limit children’s ability to be impacted. “I want to have relationships with all the schools. It might be an after-school program [that I want to build], but for now I’m soaking up a lot of knowledge [whether through my time teaching or as a VISTA].”
Bradley understands how important it is for the young students at her school or at DELTA to see people who remind them of themselves, so she understands how important it is for them to see someone like her at camp.
“If someone comes upset and you are from a different demographic, then you can’t understand why they are having a bad day,” Bradley said. “All you can do is send them to the counselor and that’s kind of dismissing them. I want to get to the bottom of it. If I don’t have the power, then I’ll send you to the next person, but I’m going to address everything right here.”
The passion she has for impacting the lives of young people makes her so proud when they just remember her name and that is why she keeps coming back.
“I don’t even have to do much,” Bradley said. “Just my presence there and [the students] feel good. I may not be the best athlete in the world, but me coming back is something to them.”
