“We were best friends. He was the boy version of me. We literally were the same person, just different genders. He was me with a couple extra inches. Well, more like a whole foot!”
After she had put together a double-double — 13 points, 12 rebounds — to help lead her Dayton Flyers to a 65-59 overtime victory against Saint Joseph’s at UD Arena on Saturday, the 5-foot-11 junior guard was talking about the one person she wished had been there to see it.
That would be Steve McElvene, Big Steve, the popular 6-foot-11 center of the UD men’s team last season who died suddenly last May 12 of an enlarged heart. He was 20.
McElvene wasn’t just the most beloved player on last year’s NCAA Tournament team, but he was, his teammates insisted, the best known student on the entire UD campus.
Some of it had to do with his size, but mostly it was his personality — which was bigger.
And chances are, if you saw Big Steve, you saw JaVonna at his side. They hung out together all the time.
“Naah, we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend,” she said when asked. “We were like brother and sister.”
Then she dropped her voice and grinned: “He did have a little crush on me though. But I wouldn’t give him the time of day.”
That brought an unmuffled laugh: “I mean, we did go on little movie dates, but nothing big. I’d thought of it, but truth is, he was a little college boy. And college boys, you know how they are.”
If she sounds a little sassy, she is.
“With me he found somebody who could throw the heat right back at him,” she smiled.
The pair had classes together. They hung out in each other’s room and they made plenty of excursions in Layfield’s car.
“We’d go to the mall,” she said. “I took him to get his hair cut, to get a tattoo, to go to his coach’s house. We’d go to Walmart or drive out on the road across the river that comes down that big hill (Germantown Pike) where you can see the city.
“And we’d dance. He’d be stylin’ with his dance moves. We’d hold up traffic. We’d be in the middle of the street, dancin’ and taking videos.
“Oh yeah, and we’d go to Popeye’s Chicken, even though Popeye’s, we’re not supposed to be eatin’ that, for real.”
Didn’t believe it
Layfield said she was back home in Louisville last May — she’s the niece of former University of Louisville standout Larry O’Bannon and Kodak All-American and Cincinnati Bearcat Sharonda O’Bannon — when she got a call from a UD volleyball player that “something happened to Big Steve.”
She said she didn’t believe it:
“I said, ‘That can’t be, we talked all night.’ We had been Snapchattin’, FaceTiming and on Twitter.
“So then I got on a Twitter — a place I probably shouldn’t oughta went — and I kept seeing ‘R.I.P.’ and ‘We’re gonna miss ya!’
“So I started texting him: ‘Steve!….Steve!….Answer!!!’
“But the last thing I had from him was ‘I miss you.’ ”
Her mom remembers that day: “She grieved hard. She went to her room and just grieved.”
Soon after, Layfield came back to Dayton, and before heading to Fort Wayne for the funeral, she decided on her own remembrance.
She rolled her left arm and then flexed so you could see the tattoo she had gotten.
“At first I couldn’t decide what to put. I thought of ‘I gotcha, Baby Girl!’ That was the favorite saying he always used to say.
“But then I listened to this song by Mariah Carey and there was a line I thought was perfect.”
She pointed to her biceps, which was inked with “You and I will always be.”
The line was flanked by McElvene’s initials — SJM for Steven Jermaine McElvene. Below the line was a heart and his birthdate (9/26/95) and the day he died (5/12/16)
She shook her head: “I miss him, but I do see this tattoo every morning when I wake up. And in my locker here I have his sticker with a picture of him and ‘R.I.P.’
“I’ve got a couple of his jerseys — one his grandpa handed down to him and then his mom gave to me — and in my car I’ve got a flower from his funeral.
“Steve is still everywhere in my life.”
‘Made him proud’
Except UD Area on Saturday for a game where the Flyer women, now 12-7, came back from a 10-point deficit to win the ninth game in their last 10.
UD had several stars:
Point guard Jenna Burdette gave a gritty performance and finished with a game-high 18 points in 45 minutes. Center Saicha Grant-Allen played all 45 minutes, as well, and added 13 points to her 16 rebounds. Kelly Austria, another 45-minute performer, had 10 points.
Layfield — who has started all 19 games and is averaging 8.6 points and 7.8 rebounds — is really starting to come into her own, thanks in a big way to her passionate play. She believes her emergence would have been mirrored by McElvene’s blossoming this season.
Last season, his first in a Flyers uniform after redshirting a year to get his grades up and his weight down by over 50 pounds, McElvene set the all-time single season record for blocked shots at UD with 56.
“It seems so strange to say ‘he would have,’ ” she said quietly.
“I struggled with losing him all summer. I was down. But then I started to think what would Steve have wanted me to do? Would he want me to sit out? To go into a shell?
“No! He’d want me to continue to dance, to continue to play. To continue to beat the odds just like he did.”
She felt she had done that Saturday.
“Yeah, this was one of my better games,” she said. “This one today would have made him proud.
“I can hear him now:
“ ‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Baby Girl! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!’ ”
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