When David Bedwell took the L.C. Bird athletic director’s seat last year, longtime assistant Tony Nicely was named interim coach for the 2017 season. Now, it appears that Skyhawks have found their replacement in a familiar face, former Meadowbrook coach Troy Taylor.
“I’m excited to be going back to the school that I graduated from and played at,” Taylor said.
Taylor began his career as an assistant under Bedwell back in 2000. From there, he was an assistant at Meadowbrook for seven years, winning a state title under then head coach Bill Bowles in 2004. When Bowles retired in 2008, Taylor got the top position and won the Central District championship in 2012. In the last three seasons, he served as Virginia Union’s quarterback coach and the Panthers defensive end coach.
Taylor will go into the 2018 season with one of the top football recruits in the nation manning his offensive and defensive lines. Hakeem Beamon, a junior, is verbally committed to the University of North Carolina, but in the past week, has picked up offers from the defending national champions, Alabama, in addition to Florida International, Maryland, South Carolina and West Virginia over the past week.
“I found out about Hakeem when he was a freshman,” said Taylor. “A coach told me that he was going to be the highest-recruited guy since Morgan Moses.”
Moses, of course, plays on Sundays in the NFL for the Washington Redskins. He graduated from the University of Virginia after playing in high school for Taylor at Meadowbrook.
It certainly looks like that coach’s prediction could hold true. The talent level of athletes in the Richmond area continues to rise, as Dinwiddie’s K’Vaughan Pope committed to Ohio State this year, with approximately three dozen others recently fielding Division I offers of their own.
