Something tells me a Lubbock kid has seen that before, but there’s no way the Berkeley guys knew what the heck was going on.

“Those Louisianimals down there are something else, Mom,” said one of the Cal players when they got back home, maybe. Probably not. But also very possible. The players also had access to the enhanced hospitality rooms and lounges this year.

The crew from Draft Picks Barbershop in Baton Rouge made an appearance, giving all the players fresh cuts.

However, when the game does roll around, Missy Setters is rocking and rolling. In go-mode.

“I think my watch said I walked nine miles during the game last year,” says Setters. “I’m running around, putting out fires. I’ll be down on the field some or up in the box.” “You prepare yourself as much as possible the entire year,” Setters says. “Gameday is much the same.” “It is this culmination of everything,” she says.  “It’s this beautiful, exciting point we reach. This is what we work for. But once kickoff happens, now it’s about the game.”

This past year was also the first pre-Christmas game since Setters has been at the helm.

“I believe this was the first year since I’ve been here that the game was before Christmas, so Ross and I got to go to the Natchitoches Christmas Festival,” Setters said. She also said she liked having the game before Christmas this year because it allowed the fans to get back home for the holidays.

The 47th edition of the Independence Bowl kicked off in primetime this year for all of us in CST at 8:15 pm. The Red Raiders beat the Golden Bears, 34-14, on December 16th. It was shown on ESPN, as it has been for over 30 consecutive years.

“ESPN always tells us when the bowl is going to be,” she says. “Ideal kickoff time is late afternoon or early evening.”

A natural-born leader, Setters has also picked up a thing or two along the way from some idols of hers.

That team approach can be hard to let go after 11 years of teaching math, physical science, and chemistry. In that time, experimentation was the center of his approach.
“It’s magic when you see a science experiment happen,” he said. “Experiments intrigue the kids.”
Wrobel would scour the internet looking for ideas for his daily classroom experiments. It meant “a lot of late night going to Walmart or Hobby Lobby, looking for supplies,” he said. It was worth it to him to draw his students into the lessons.
“I would come in with something pretty cool to do every day,” he said. “It would intrigue the kids and get them interested. It does a lot of things. It does intrigue them. They remember it, so it impacts them. Also, it helps them think about the world as a pretty unbelievable place.”
Getting his students to think that way was his mission.
“It’s hard to fathom all the different things that occur in the natural world,” he said. “It opens up their minds a little bit to think about things they just don’t normally think about. You’ve got running water in your house. You can turn on the switch and lights come on. They never really think about how that occurs. That’s what I try to make them think about, how things actually happen.”
“That’s what science is. It’s the understanding of the principals of science that allows us to manipulate the world to make it do things we want it to do.”
The more Wrobel worked with Advanced Placement and more advanced sciences classes, the more he knew he had to move beyond those homemade experiments. He set his sights on the high-tech laboratories Byrd students use today for a variety of high-level research initiatives.
He looked back to his time in marketing with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to begin to explore how to make it happen through building a coalition beyond the walls of Byrd.
“So I am at a public high school,” he said. “We sit around and wait for them to give us pencils and pens and erasers. You’re never going to get much more than that because they have a restricted budget, right? Not a knock on the educational system.

“We have had AP research students do some very original research projects that don’t even take the bio-technology class, they just use the lab for its capabilities. I was able to guide them in their projects.”
Wrobel said he has spoken with several alumni who have plans of becoming doctors who are “acing their classes” at the next level because of their experience in the Byrd labs.
“The worst thing that can happen is the students go to college, unprepared, get blown out of the water freshman year, fail or have to drop their biology classes because they had their lunch handed to them and lose their dreams,” he said. “That can happen for a lot of reasons, but the one reason I don’t want to have happen is because of academics — that they weren’t prepared.”
In addition to the bio-tech lab, Byrd also has an organic bio-chemistry lab that is up and running, and there is talk about adding a third lab for anatomy and physiology, Wrobel said.

Wrobel also collaborated with Shreveport’s medical community to further benefit the students through guest speakers, research projects and more. That is a win-win for the students and the community.

“Start them at Byrd High School to get some of those prerequisites done, so they are better prepared to go to college, hopefully locally, and then get funneled right into one of the programs so we can fill jobs locally with people who are form the community.”

“They put that system together and made it work,” Wrobel said. “He taught them that if you get stuck or it doesn’t come functional, how to make things happen. There was a lot of hands-on Mack did with those students that was just phenomenal.”

How to collaborate effectively was something Wrobel brought from his service in the Navy.

“My military experience taught me to let everybody do their own thing,” he said. “Let them take total charge of that section, and when they are done hand it off. That worked really well.”

Wrobel said he did not set out to teach. After graduating from The Citadel and serving in the Navy, he went to work for Pfizer. He left the company when it downsized after Hurricane Katrina. He didn’t think about teaching until he was working on his masters degree at LSU Shreveport.

“I found out in my first couple of classes that they needed teachers desperately,” he said. “I thought I could do that. My classes were at night, so I could teach during the day. So I did that. That’s how I ended up at Byrd.”

He left Byrd last August as Gnome Hollow, the company he launched with his wife, Tisha, grew. They hand pour scented candles and make loofa soaps. The Wrobels sell their products locally at the Red River Revel and Les Boutiques de Noel and similar events. Now, he spends a great deal of time traveling to shows across the country. 

Some people can tell you almost exactly when they knew, just knew, what it was they were supposed to do with their life. That moment for Sarah Harris was in the 5th grade at South Highlands when she was chosen to design the cover for the 5th grade play playbill. That meant going to her art teacher’s house and working together to create her vision. 

That is a big deal for an 11-year-old. The teacher, Judy Ball Johnson, played a big role in motivating and encouraging Sarah’s efforts. Fast forward to high school at Magnet and the legendary art teacher, Edward Allen. Sarah learned even more through CMH’s numerous art options that spanned the fine arts mediums – painting, mixed media, pottery, photography, drawing and more – under his tutelage. Sarah was also a member of an after-school art program led by Shirlene Alexander and Marabella Dunn. 

By the time Sarah entered Centenary College, she had already studied art with Shreveport-Bossier’s art luminaries. She continued her work, earned an art degree with a minor in business, met Leif Sherry, the man she would marry, and armed with her faith in God and her love of art, she stepped out into the real world. 

And then it hit her. If she wanted to earn a living, she would need more than a degree in art. She had always been intrigued with architecture, so the next step in her journey was to enroll in graduate school and pursue a degree in that field. While Sarah worked on her masters at Washington University in St. Louis, Leif was earning his advanced degree at Northwestern in Chicago. 

The next stop on her journey would be an internship at the prestigious OKA Architect firm. Sarah professes that she learned so much more on the job (she was hired full time after that first year) than in the classroom. “I found it intriguing because it’s a lot like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. I’ve always thought I’d make a good detective because I like to figure things out,” said Sarah. Because she thought she and Leif would remain in the Chicago area, she moved to Grunsfeld Shafer Architects, a firm that specialized in high-end residential buildings. Then, wouldn’t you know, the couple’s path would land them in the Washington D.C. area where Leif was offered a job once he graduated. Sarah found her place in the Rippeteau Architecture Firm, known for residential, office spaces and historic restoration. In fact, Rippeteau did the work on a historic church’s steeple that was designed by the same architect that designed the nation’s Capital Dome. 

BY SCOTT ANDERSON

Norman Taylor has learned one important life lesson that has taught him to “go with the flow.”

“Life’s not going to stop,” he said. “You’re not going to get a certain time back, so try to do as much as you can with your time.”

Taylor does a lot with his time. In August 2020, the 29-year-old artist sold his first painting. Elizabeth Eldridge, the mother of one of Taylor’s former teammates at C.E. Byrd High School, had seen a video of Taylor sketching.

“She was like, ‘If you ever wanted to get back to doing it for real, let me know. I would really like one,’” he said. “I’ve been rolling ever since.”

The Eldridge family not only bought a painting from Taylor. They helped him set up his business, too. He takes commissions for original paintings and sells prints of his work at notbyhand.us.

Art has been a longtime interest for Taylor. In second grade he entered the Talented Arts Program. But he didn’t fancy himself a painter.

“I never liked painting,” he said. “I just liked to sketch.”

He got serious about his art at Broadmoor Middle School. But he wasn’t thinking about becoming a professional artist. He had other dreams he was chasing on the football field.

“At 9 years old, I knew I was going to go to high school, get recruited and play at USC for Pete Carroll and then get drafted by the Chicago Bears,” Taylor said. “I knew what cars I was going to have — all of that.”

Life does not stop, but sometimes it changes directions without warning.

Taylor remembers Sept. 16, 2008, like it was yesterday. It was just two days after his 15th birthday. He was on the practice field, preparing for Byrd’s Week 3 matchup against West Monroe, when the unimaginable happened.

“We call it a sweep drill,” Taylor said. “It’s a form-tackling drill. “When I went down to tackle my teammate, whiplash — a freak accident.”

The doctor diagnosed it as a C7 incomplete spinal cord injury, meaning his spinal cord was still intact. It was better than a C7 complete, Taylor said.

“That means the spinal cord is completely severed,” he said of a C7 complete. “For them, it’s always that 0.000001… whatever percent chance. For me, the percentage for regaining movement was higher.”

Taylor was wheelchair bound when he returned to Shreveport. He began homeschooling that December to keep up with his classmates. That’s when the gravity of the situation began to settle on him.

“You drop into a certain depression,” he said. “From the time I got home, I didn’t really leave my room unless it was for a doctor’s appointment or to eat, or to be homeschooled. I didn’t feel like I needed to be social. I was afraid to go back because I was in a different physical state than I was at first.”

In April 2009, he returned to the Byrd campus. The plan was to be on campus for a few classes, up to half a day.

“I ended up the next day just going back full time,” Taylor said. “I realized when I got back, they were just so happy to see me it didn’t really matter.”

Taylor said he spent his junior year readjusting to being among a lot of people again. But that wasn’t his biggest challenge.

“I was having to deal with going to PT rather than going to practice,” he said. “It was a different type of working out, regaining my mobility.”

In his senior year, Taylor was discharged from rehab because his progress had plateaued, he said. “Like everybody else, you have fun your senior year,” he added.

He started college at LSUS the next fall. That was a wake-up call for him.

“Anybody can draw,” he said. “A lot of people think it’s something you’re born with. It’s really something you develop. They call it neuroplasticity. Those transmitters in the brain. You wonder why Floyd Mayweather is such a good boxer. It’s because he does the same thing over and over.”

In addition to being competitive, Taylor also is a perfectionist. So much so that in the early days of his art career, Taylor wouldn’t accept down payments for his work.

“I treasure quality over quantity,” Taylor said. “If it’s not up to what I like, I will have them throw it away and start over.”

Thomas Williams has been assisting Taylor since 2013 and has seen that perfectionism in action.

“People don’t know how many masterpieces he’s done that only the trash can has seen,” Williams said.

Williams admits to rescuing one of those works Taylor discarded. It hangs in the Williams house today. It’s a symbol of the respect Williams has for Taylor, his artwork, and his process.

“Me being with him all the time, assisting him and watching him, people don’t understand the process he goes through,” Williams said. “Seeing him go from a blank canvas to a finished painting, it’s amazing. I’m blessed every day to see him go through the process.”

Taylor has a job at General Dynamics. He continues to paint and anticipates having his first art show in February. He also is designing T-shirts and hoodies that feature his artwork.