The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Ty Tiggs playing with purpose for his father
From sideline to sideline and from end line to end line, Ty Tiggs has been a wrecking ball this season for the Mayfield football team. That’s because the senior defender for the Wildcats is on a mission.
He has a promise to keep, and a vision etched in his mind that keeps him on point.
The promise was one made to his father a week before his senior year of football at Mayfield kicked off.
The vision? A smile his father flashed him — the last time their eyes met before Tyrone Tiggs died in a drowning accident in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in early August.
“My last moment with my dad, he was smiling at me,” Tiggs said after a recent practice at Mayfield. “I’ll always see that smile. That’s my memory, not the CPR they were doing on him at the beach.”
The trip to Myrtle Beach was somewhat of a spur-of-the-moment vacation plan for the Tiggs family. With Ty, the youngest of the Tiggs children entering his senior year, family vacations would be harder to come by with all the youngsters on to their own lives.
At first, Ty didn’t want to go. He’d miss some practice time and probably also a scrimmage with his Wildcats teammates. After the family relocated to Mayfield from Huber Heights prior to Tiggs’ junior year, this senior year was something Ty was really looking forward to. And a trip to Myrtle Beach, as much as a beach in the sultry month of August sounds good, wasn’t in Ty’s plans.
“Dad’s such a family guy,” Ty said with a faint smile. “He wanted us there. He kept asking me about it until finally he said I had to go.”
It was supposed to be a weekend full of laughter, smiles and family time.
It turned to heartbreak on the second day.
Ty, his brother Hadith and his brother-in-law had all walked out to a sandbar of sorts.
“The water was shallow, then it dipped deeper, then was shallow again. That’s where we were,” Ty said.
Tyrone Tiggs came out to the boys — simply walking in the water because it wasn’t that deep — but then said he was going to go back to the shore to his wife and Ty’s mother, Rheaba.
One last time, he looked back at the boys and smiled.
That’s the last time their eyes met.
“We went up to the beach and couldn’t find him,” Ty said, his voice trailing off. “Then I heard someone scream ‘Is anyone looking for a black man in white shorts?’
“I knew right then it was my dad. I was so shaken, I couldn’t move.”
Tyrone Tiggs had been pulled out to deeper waters by what experts said was a strong current. He was pulled from the waters facedown.
“They said he had a cardiac arrest,” Ty said. “Once the wave hit him, he went into a panic and inhaled water. It was a mixture of things — panic and cardiac arrest.” Ty was numb. “When you’re a kid, your dad is invincible. That’s what you feel. That’s what you believe,” he said.
The hours, the days, the weeks ever since have been a roller coaster for Ty Tiggs. He’s somewhere between the high school teenager that he is to being the man of the household with his dad’s passing.
“I’ll take care of my mom,” he said. “That’s my job now.”
But his job is also to make good on a promise he made, one he will never forget. It came in his last deep, sit-down conversation with his father before they left for vacation.
“He told me he wanted me to play Division I college football,” Ty said. “That’s literally the last conversation we had. We were sitting down and he said he wanted me to play on TV. We had a nice dinner, a nice talk, and he was telling me what he wanted for me.
“That was our last big conversation, and I’ll never forget it.”
Nor will he give up on that dream.
As his senior year progresses, he has some nice D-II offers, such as ones from Ohio Dominican, Notre Dame College, Davenport (Iowa) University and Urbana. But with every sprint he takes part in during practice, every piece of iron he hoists in the weight room and every hit he delivers on Friday nights, he does so with a purpose.
And with his father, Tyrone, watching from above in the best seat in the house.
“I don’t care what I have to do — stay overtime, work, play any position,” he said, giving his sales pitch to whichever D-I program gives him the opportunity. “I’m going to be that person you can change your program with.”
That’s the only mindset he knows.
To be sure, when Ty Tiggs stood on that beach and watched rescue workers try to save his father, there was a tragic crossroads he faced — he could have crumbled (which would have been understandable) or he could have picked his head up and forged ahead.
“My dad,” he said, “would never have stood for me moping.”
So instead, Ty Tiggs bludgeons everything and everyone in his path on Friday nights between those white lines — motivated by the promise he made his father and inspired by the last vision he has chiseled in his mind.
The smile his dad flashed to him as he looked over his shoulder and headed back to shore.
“That smile,” he said, smiling himself and shaking his head. “That’s the one thing I’ll always take with me.”
Kampf can be reached via email at JKampf@NewsHerald.com; On Twitter @NHPreps and @JKBuckeyes