Monessen’s Taylor provides passionate leadership

By: Charles Curti
Saturday, August 16, 2025 | 5:13 PM

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The clunking of dumbbells and iron plates in the Monessen weight room at 4 a.m. likely went unnoticed. Of course it did. Who is awake at that hour?

The source of the clatter was rising senior football player T.J. Taylor. Throughout the school year, he was in the weight room in the wee hours, getting in his reps before classes.

This is a season Taylor has been waiting for since he was a freshman. The two-way lineman is one of the leaders of the Greyhounds, and he is taking it on his broad shoulders — Taylor is 5-foot-11, 230 pounds — to point the way to success.

As a junior a year ago, Taylor earned All-Black Hills Conference honors as an offensive lineman, no mean feat in a conference that includes two-time reigning WPIAL Class A champion Fort Cherry.

But the respect Taylor has earned from his teammates and coach Wade Brown is more than a product of his accolades. It stems from his passion for the program and the effort he puts in away from the field to make it go.

After the weight room, Taylor would scan the hallways at school, always looking for students he thought could help the team. After all, there’s no such thing as too much talent, and, in Monessen’s case, numbers are crucial.

“I’m always asking them to come to practice,” Taylor said. “At least come try it out.”

To players already in the football fold, he preaches the mental side of the game, urging teammates to study the playbook and break down film.

“That’s how you become a better player,” he said.

As the Greyhounds prepared to begin camp, Taylor took on yet another job: helping to mentor junior quarterback Kaier Payne. Payne is a converted offensive lineman who hasn’t played quarterback since youth football, so Taylor has helped to get him up to speed.

He said the two talk every day and go over the playbook and watch film together.

“I know he’s going to be able to lead us to wins week after week,” Taylor said. “I know he knows the playbook in and out, and he’s a very smart kid on the football field.”

What has Taylor most juiced up is a chance to co-lead with his brother. Tavian Taylor, also a senior, will shoulder a much larger load on offense with 1,600-yard rusher TyVaughn Kershaw no longer on the team.

Like his brother, Tavian has been hitting the weights hard in anticipation of a big finish.

“My brother is ready, and I trust him with everything in me,” T.J. said. “He’s got a different type of intensity in practices. … My brother is a beast. I know he can handle it.”

Taylor, perhaps, gets additional fuel from knowing how close Monessen came to being a great team last year. The Greyhounds led Fort Cherry in the fourth quarter when the teams met in Week 4, but the Rangers pulled away to win 35-14.

Monessen responded the following week with a comeback win over South Side, a playoff team, but then faded with three consecutive losses to end the year, including in the first round of the playoffs to Greensburg Central Catholic.

Taylor called the experience “humbling” but then allowed that it might have been what the team needed. He said the players needed the right mindset to go with the physical grit.

This team, he said, has both, and he is confident all of the work — on and off the field — will pay off.

“I look to my left, and I look to my right, and I see those boys sweating just how I’m sweating,” he said. “I see them working as hard as I am, and I know I can trust them on the football field.

“We are going to surprise a lot of people. … They’re not expecting what they’re going to see this year. I promise you that.”

Tags: Monessen