Even after his death, Kayson Toliver is still part of the team
Even after his death, Kayson Toliver is still part of the team in Beggs
Dexter Wolf was first to see the light.
“Hey, look,” he said to fellow linebacker Dax McElroy, “there’s a shooting star.”
Sure enough, there in the expansive eastern sky beyond the football stadium at Beggs High School was a streak. It seemed brighter somehow than a normal shooting star. Maybe even longer. Still, it was amazing the players saw it in the middle of a game.
More amazing, teammate T.J. Austin made a huge interception the very next play.
That’s when the boys from Beggs realized what they’d seen.
“It just clicks in your head — that was Kayson,” McElroy said of the shooting star. “He’s with us.”
As the teams and the
intrigue in the high school football playoffs get better, none can top Beggs. Only three weeks ago, the tiny community half an hour south of Tulsa awoke to the news that Kayson Toliver and his two younger sisters had been shot. Their mother pulled the trigger.
Kayson died that day. Kloee died five days later.
Neither the name nor the condition of the youngest sister has been released.
As in small towns everywhere, everyone in this Okmulgee County community is connected. Kayson and Kloee weren’t just names being whispered in the store or at church. They were your neighbor’s classmate. Or your granddaughter’s friend. Or your son’s teammate. Anguish runs deep. Nowhere has it burrowed down more than on the football team. Kayson was a senior running back, a starter and a leader. He played with most of the guys since elementary school and knew some of them since kindergarten. They had no idea when he walked out of the locker room on Halloween that they’d never see him again.
But even as his teammates grieve, they play.
Heading into the quarterfinals, Beggs is 11-1 and the top-ranked team remaining in Class 2A. Many believe it is the favorite not only to return to the championship game where it lost an epic battle against John Marshall last season but also to win the title this time around.
“We used to break on ‘Gold ball!’ because that’s what we’re playing for,” senior receiver and cornerback Shaidan Jordan said. “But now, we break on ‘KT!’ every time.”
The goal hasn’t changed.
The motivation has.
••• Kayson Toliver was killed early in the morning on Nov. 1, a Thursday.
Beggs had its final regular-season game the next night. Should it play? Forfeit? Delay?
There was no right answer, but after the other teams in District 2A-3 graciously allowed Beggs to choose what it would do, David Tenison met with his team. They talked. They cried. They eventually decided to play.
It’s what Kayson would’ve wanted.
“I know you want to play for Kayson,” the Beggs coach told his players. “But don’t play with emotion; emotion will let you down. Go play for Kayson with your energy and your effort.”
Then he said something he says all the time but something that rang truer in those moments.
“All it takes is all you got.”
It has taken that and then some these past few weeks. That game the next night against Sperry was a slog — Beggs trailed by two touchdowns before steadying itself, getting a lead, then sealing the deal with that shooting-starguided interception — and then the win-or-else games started. An opening playoff game against Wyandotte. A secondround game against Oklahoma Christian School.
In between were valleys of death.
Kloee, rushed to the hospital after the shootings, was declared braindead four days after. The next day, she died.
A week later, the funerals for Kayson and Kloee were held simultaneously inside the high school gym. The football players wrote letters to Kayson that were placed inside his casket, and they were joined at the memorial by football teams from nearby towns, including Mounds, Morris and Kiefer.
In all, more than a hundred teams have done something for Beggs. Made posters. Written letters. Offered prayers.
“As heartbreaking as it is,” Tenison said, “it’s also been so comforting.”
McElroy said, “That’s the biggest part — not going through it alone.”
But as important as outside support has been, the teenagers in the shoulder pads have helped others cope, too. They have been an example of unity, a portrait of courage.
They have adopted an analogy Tenison once heard from a psychologist. Grief is like a Rubik’s Cube. You are consumed by it at first. You can’t put it down. You can’t stop thinking about figuring out how to solve it. Then there comes a time when you put it on a shelf. It is still part of your life, you’ll still pick it up, but eventually, you’ll fixate on it less and less.
“He was a big part of us,” McElroy said of Kayson. “We’re always going to have him with us in our hearts. We’re never going to forget about him, but … you can go out and do your thing.”
They have remembered while moving forward, grieved while living.
They have displayed uncommon strength amid unimaginable grief.
••• Reminders of Kayson Toliver are everywhere in Beggs. His jersey number has been affixed to helmets and car windows and shirts and chain-link fences.
No. 27 is also being retired by the school.
His teammates have left his locker as it was, adding only their favorite pictures of him along with his favorite snack, a bag of Funyuns.
They feel he’s still a part of what they are doing. They want it that way, and they feel as though a higher power does, too.
It started with that shooting star.
Then last week, Beggs won 49-22.
“We beat OCS by 27 points,” tailback and linebacker Jared Sutter said. “Kayson’s number.” He smiled. “Kayson, he wanted to get back to the state championship. When we get there, he’ll be there with us.”
Kayson Toliver is gone. Gone unnecessarily. Gone way too soon.
Rest assured, his spirit remains.