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Family Ties - A Tribute to One We Lost

Feb. 12, 2008 - My football team…the DC Divas. I could fill the next 17 paragraphs with words that would barely even scrape the surface of the bonds that define our Diva family. I have never encountered as amazing a group of women who are so diverse, yet share SO much. Everything we do together is colored in love–the “Oklahoma drills,” the sprints, weddings, new births, 9 holes of golf on lazy Sunday afternoons and the Miller Lites that inevitably ensue. Our family is strong, and is woven together through our sweat, our trials, our laughter…and a few hundred rolls of athletic tape.

To say he was a trainer does about as much justice as calling the Mona Lisa a sketch or last week’s Giants’ victory a pretty good show. Nate Randolph was a great man. He had one natural daughter on the team–Natalie–and some would think we called him “Daddy Nat” to differentiate between the two of them. Those, however, are the same people who would assume that his Diva family tree stopped with Natalie. Since 2004, Daddy Nat has adopted hundreds of daughters, and looked after them as if we were his own…because we WERE his own.

I met Daddy Nat last year, shortly before pre-season practices started. I went to his physical therapy office so that he could evaluate me and look at my back. He led me to the back, past the Diva poster that featured “[his] baby” Natalie, into the exam room. “Let me have a look at you,” he said. So I stood with my arms up, pirouetted, and he cocked his head and said, “Hmm. Well, I know what the problem is. You’re shaped funny.” In the middle of our mutual laugh, I asked, “How so?” He responded, “Oh, I’ll tell you some other time.” After just a few moments with Daddy Nat, the ice was broken and my Diva adoption papers had been signed.

On our way back to the table for my stim and traction, Daddy Nat stopped and introduced me to another Diva, Tara, who was there, working for him. She had moved to the DC area, like me, with the specific desire to play for the Divas, but had not been successful in her job search. After confiding this to Daddy Nat one day while he was taping her up, he suggested she come work for him. I went on to befriend Monica, a Diva who in 2005 landed wrong and managed to rotate her foot a whole 180 degrees. She enlarged and framed the picture of her, on the field writhing in pain, with Daddy Nat holding the leg with the backwards pointing toes. There’s the teammate who’s arm he mended after she was stabbed in a brutal non-football attack; the ones he helped hop off the field with broken ankles and torn ACLs; those with sprains, strains, twists, pulls, and dislocations, all of whom he managed to see at his office with no appointment needed.

We were on our way from our flag football tournament (what else would a Diva do in the off-season? Another way for us to stay together) in Key West to the Fort Lauderdale airport yesterday morning, around 9:45, when the call came through to Monica, who was in the front passenger’s (thankfully not driver’s) seat. “I can’t even say that to them, out loud,” were the words she said back to the person on the phone–words we knew meant something was VERY wrong. When she said that Daddy Nat had been killed that morning in a car accident, our worlds stopped. Our jaws dropped. We couldn’t…it wasn’t…it didn’t make sense. But reality set in as we begrudgingly picked up our own phones to spread the news to our sisters, who were forced to leave their offices or pull their cars over because their tears were coming too quickly. We stopped and bought Kleenex, and continued comforting each other and inquiring about Natalie as the details trickled in: Early in the morning. Full speed. Off the road and into the back of a parked tractor trailer. Our Daddy, gone. We’ll find a way to go on–we have to, because we know it is what he would want–but our family will never be the same. A very important rock has been pulled from our foundation, and nothing will ever fill that space on our team and in our hearts the way Daddy Nat did.

I’m not writing this for you to be sad for us. I’m writing to celebrate the life of an awesome man, and to thank him for his continual sacrifices to the Diva organization. I’m writing because I hope your team has a “Daddy Nat”–someone who puts your welfare above all else, and enwraps you with more love and compassion than you know what to do with. Please let that person know how much you appreciate everything they do for you, and for your FAMILY. And lastly, I’m writing in hopes that I have awoken the “Daddy Nat” inside of you. Love one another. It’s how you live well, and live on.

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

www.dcdivas.com