Font Size

content body

The Olympic and Paralympic Games are among the most celebrated and decorated events in sports, and for a trio of Auburn Tigers, memories from their summer experiences will last a lifetime.

Robb Taylor — head coach of Auburn’s wheelchair basketball team and general manager for the university’s adaptive sports program — led Team USA’s men’s wheelchair squad to a record third consecutive gold medal in Paris. It was Taylor’s fourth gold medal with the team, but his first as the unit’s head coach.

Taylor, who has more than a dozen international golds with Team USA, was overcome with emotion after his team defeated Great Britain 73-69 in the gold medal game on Sept. 7.

“I don’t know if someone was cutting onions behind me, but the tears were definitely in my eyes as they were playing the anthem,” Taylor said. “Hearing it at the end of the tournament is an incredible and really indescribable feeling.

“I’ve been fortunate to be a part of a lot of U.S. teams, and we’ve been very successful. This one meant a little more to me just because it was my first Paralympic gold medal as head coach. It’s such an incredible feeling watching the flag rise up to the ceiling, knowing that all the work you and the team have put in paid off.”

Taylor guided the U.S. team through a tough Paralympic tournament that included wins over Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, France and Canada before the victorious finale against the British squad. He said the atmosphere in and around the Games was second to none.

“The arena we played in was sold out every single game, the Parisian people were great and it was very loud,” Taylor said. “One of my biggest memories — not just from these Games, but from all of the Games I’ve been to — was the quarterfinal game when we played against France and just how loud the crowd was, from the national anthem to the end.

“It was an incredible environment. The Games were put on so well by Paris 2024, and it was just a great experience from start to finish.”

Taylor’s squad became the first Paralympic hoops team to achieve a three-peat. After gold-medal wins at Tokyo 2020 and Rio 2016, Taylor and the U.S. players knew they would be targets as the odds-on favorite in Paris.

“Winning a gold medal was a great way to cap it off, and being the first Paralympic basketball team to win three in a row was incredible,” he said. “We knew going in the pressure we would be under and the bull’s eye we’d have on our backs, and it wasn’t something we shied away from.

“We knew we were trying to make history, and to be able to do that was just an incredible experience. We were starting to play our best games as we got to the gold medal game, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind when we took the court for the gold medal game that we were going to win that one.”

Another of Taylor’s favorite memories came when he was able to interact with part of the Auburn Family in Paris.

“After the game with France, I was waiting to talk to media, and a couple came running down and said, ‘War Eagle,’ and that made me emotional, too, because there was a little bit of home over there in France,” he said. “To be able to say ‘War Eagle’ back to them was awesome. It was great to be recognized by the Auburn Family 4,000 or 5,000 miles away.”

Taylor has been working hard in recent years to grow Auburn’s adaptive sports program, and he is confident the publicity from another gold medal will help recruiting and add cache to an evolving enterprise on the Plains.

“Being able to have wheelchair basketball on NBC, Peacock and the USA Network really introduced the sport to a lot of people, and I’m hoping we can leverage everything good that came out of the Paralympics to help the program here and help grow the recognition for our team, the fan base and donor support,” Taylor said. “It’s great to see the Paralympic movement has really started to gain ground here in the U.S., and hopefully that will lead to more exposure for our program here at Auburn.”

Diving for home country a thrill for Hallifax

When most Auburn students were worrying about moving into their dorms and apartments in and around campus heading into fall semester, one particular first-year student-athlete was more concerned about the rigors of competing on the world’s grandest stage.

Emily Hallifax, an environmental design major in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction, had the unique pleasure of representing her home country of France at the Paris 2024 Games, teaming with Jade Gillet to finish eighth in the women’s synchronized 10m platform diving competition. The 18-year-old from Nice qualified for Team France despite only being in her third year of competitive diving.

It was an experience she will treasure forever.

“I really thought it was incredible,” said Hallifax, the silver medalist at the 2024 European Championships. “First of all, being able to do the Olympics at home was insane. I know many athletes dream of that but don’t have the chance to do it.

“When I knew I was going to [be able to] do it and it was at home, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is incredible.’ I don’t think I could’ve dreamed of it better.”

Hallifax enjoyed every minute of her time in Paris, from the beginning festivities to the end of the Games on Aug. 11.

“The Opening Ceremony was insane,” she said. “It was raining, but we didn’t care. Everything was incredible.

“In the Olympic Village, there were so many athletes. We were able to speak to so many famous people I would’ve never met in real life. Being an Olympic athlete, you were able to go see other sports, so I went to so many venues that were incredible.”

When she wasn’t competing, Hallifax attended a slew of other Olympic events, including beach volleyball, skateboarding, swimming and gymnastics. She met Olympic superstars Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky, as well as French swimming sensation Leon Marchand and Emmanuel Macron, France’s president.

She was taken aback by the massive crowds that filed into the competition venues each day to see her and Gillet dive in unison from more than 30 feet above the pool.

“There were around 3,000 people and so many French people, and usually in diving we don’t have that many people cheering for us,” Hallifax said. “I remember being on the top of the 10-meter [platform] and hearing everyone screaming, and I just stopped for a few seconds and was like, ‘Wow.’

“I enjoyed the moment, then I heard the whistle [to dive] and then I was focused. So, I had time to realize what was happening.”

Hallifax also enjoyed some Southern flavor when she heard some Auburn fans yell “War Eagle” from the crowd.

“I had goosebumps,” Hallifax said. “If you see the video of my last dive, you can see I turned my head a little, and I was like, ‘Oh wow.’ I didn’t expect that. I loved it.”

She also is loving her time on the Plains. Hallifax had a quick turnaround to return to the U.S. and dive into fall semester classes, but she is enjoying her collegiate experience.

“It was a big change coming from France, and I was so overwhelmed because I didn’t have a long break after coming back from the Olympics,” she said. “I just love it here though, so the adjustment is going great.”

The Auburn diver hopes to achieve great things in the coming years, both on and off the platform.

“The [environmental design] program is one of the reasons I wanted to come here,” she said of Auburn. “They’re so organized and really want to help you. I love it because I don’t want to be only an athlete. I want to study because I love studying, and I want to do something big later in life.

“I’m going to compete probably until 2032, hopefully, and that will be my last Olympics. After that, I want to start a new life, so studying is very important. At Auburn, they really care about us, and I like that.”

An internship like no other

Kai Jones, a 2023 psychology graduate, also has fond memories from her summer Olympic experience. While she did not make the trek overseas, the Auburn alum traveled to Stamford, Connecticut, to serve as an intern for NBC Sports Universal during its broadcast of the 2024 Games.

Jones — who is working on her MBA in sports business at the University of Oregon — witnessed the Olympics from behind the scenes, working as a video footage logger for several track and field events for three weeks during the Games.

“That was one of the best working environments I’ve ever been in as an intern,” said Jones, who still holds her high school’s discus record. “We were a very diverse group, and they were very intentional about the way they meshed all of us together. They flew us [to Stamford] and put us in a hotel and everything. We did team bonding outside of work, too. It was just a really good experience.”

Jones had knowledge of Olympic events based on her track and field prowess in high school and from working the U.S. Track and Field Trials in Oregon and the U.S. Gymnastics Trials in Minnesota. She applied for the NBC Sports internship and was selected as one of roughly 150 interns from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants. Because of her knowledge of the sport, Jones was assigned to track and field, writing and time-stamping details for producers to utilize clips when putting together highlight packages for events like the javelin, pole vault, shot-put, long jump and triple jump.

The work, she said, was tiring and challenging, but immensely fulfilling.

“Paris was six hours ahead, so sometimes I’d have to get up at 3 a.m. to log an early morning event,” Jones said. “As soon as we finished logging everything, you had to upload it and get it to the producers as soon as possible. We would watch the actual events and put a time stamp on it every time something happened. It was very seamless.”

Jones was hard at work on Aug. 5 when Armand “Mondo” Duplantis broke the pole vault world record by clearing 6.25 meters (20 feet, 5½ inches). He has since eclipsed that mark by clearing 6.26m, but Jones remembers the record-setting night vividly.

“By the time [Duplantis] finished, I had half a page full of notes logged,” she said. “It was very fast-paced, but it was really fun.”

At Auburn, Jones was immersed in countless aspects of student life, from serving as president of the Black Student Union (BSU) and being a student football recruiter, to working as a resident assistant in the athletics dorm and finishing among the top five vote-earners for Miss Homecoming during her senior year.

In Eugene, Oregon, she works as a graduate assistant for player development and hopes to work in that field for an NFL team after finishing her MBA. The NBC Sports internship was a new and exciting experience for Jones, one she will take with her as she embarks on a promising career.

“I had never been a part of anything on that level before,” she said of the Olympics broadcast. “At the end of our exit survey, they asked if we wanted to be considered for future service like that, and everybody said yes. It was eye-opening to see how the TV production was such a well-oiled machine.

“I had experience with almost all other areas of sport except for media, and that’s the reason why I applied in the first place. Everybody was so nice, and all the little things, the networking and working with great people are what made the experience even better.”

RELATED CONTENT: A LOOK BACK AT PARIS 2024

Auburn's Olympic roundup