Her freshman year the Marauders went 17-7. The next season they were 29-2.
“I can’t remember all the records, but I know we put the first three women’s banners in the gym here,” she said proudly as she directed my gaze upward to all that championship bunting that now hangs in the CSU gym.
As they get ready to bury Trona on Thursday, I’m thinking about that trip to center court and especially her legacy.
She gave Central State more than just banners. She gave it leadership and love and some enduring lessons by which everyone can live.
She gave us all something to look up to.
When Theresa Check became the women’s basketball coach at CSU in the mid-1980s, the program was struggling. She brought in seven freshmen with her first recruiting class and one of the centerpieces was Trona, who has grown up in the Madden Hills area of West Dayton, the eldest daughter of a Dayton police officer (Oliver) and a Kroger store manager (Emmerlene or Emmer, as she is known).
Trona had been a good player for Tom Montgomery at Dunbar High School, but she knew little about CSU. She never even visited the school before committing.
“It was all Miss Check,” she once told me. “She came to my last game and everything was built on conversations and relationships. And she lived up to everything she said. She just always pushed you in the right direction.”
The other day Check spoke about Trona: “She was my first recruit and she kind of led the way. She set the standard for our program and we built on it.”
And build the Marauders did: In Check’s 17 years as coach, CSU won 387 games and went to a record 13 NAIA national tournaments.
“Trona was one of the strongest players for her size that I have ever seen,” Check said of the 5-foot-8 guard. “She could rebound with all the big girls. She set the standard for toughness.
“Trona was just really tough.”
That toughness showed again later when Trona returned to CSU a few years after graduation, first as an assistant coach to Check, then an academic adviser and finally as the school’s compliance director.
Back then, some of the CSU football coaches and players had a nickname for her when they’d see her come marching out onto the practice field with the rules and regulations in her back pocket and a take-no-guff toughness — coating an inner sense of fairness — in her manner. They knew there would be no debate if a player fell short on certain school or NCAA requirements.
“They didn’t want to see me out there,” a grinning Trona once admitted. “It was like, ‘Uh-oh guys. Here comes The Repo Lady!’ ”
Check, who was the athletics director at the time, remembered how Trona handled the job: “She was like the moral compass of the program. She kept everybody going the right way and doing the right things.”
Some six years ago that toughness showed itself again when Trona experienced cramps and weakness in one of her hands, the first symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease), the deadly malady in which the body’s nervous system breaks down, muscles weaken and there is paralysis and respiratory failure.
There is no cure for ALS and no real treatment.
After finally being diagnosed at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center, she kept working for a couple of years and continued coaching the CSU volleyball team as long as she could. In the process, that meant she continued to give her players someone to look up to.
“I don’t know if people realize the impact she had on the athletes there,” Angela Small, one of Trona’s CSU teammates and later a school administrator in Tampa and the president of A Second Wish by Demetrius, a non-profit that grants second wishes to children with illnesses, once told me.
“I’ve been friends with Trona for all these years and the one thing that stands out is how she truly tries to help people. When she got back to the university, she did everything she could to help the girls and mold them into better women.”
As the illness progressed Trona’s family took over her care while also launching a communal outreach. Team Trona participated in ALS walks and there were annual charity basketball games, the proceeds going to ALS research in the hopes that someone down the way would be helped by their efforts.
In the end, the ravages of the disease left Trona only able to communicate by blinking her eyes.
“Her mother helped her communicate,” said Check, who spent a lot of time with Trona and her family in the final days. “Her mom … what a saint that woman is! She did everything she could to help Trona stay comfortable.
“Really the whole family got behind Trona and supported her and did everything it could. I have such a great regard for that family, the way they surrounded her with care and effort and love. Trona was always at home, she never went into a facility when things got tough. Her mother and father, her sister and her nephew took care of her. It was remarkable to watch that family mobilize around her.”
Trona’s brother even moved back from the East Coast for a while to help out.
Check said the ALS became “a family battle” and at the forefront was Trona.
“She battled the whole way,” Check said. “And through it all, Trona was still Trona. I never heard her complain about her situation.”
Trona was 48 when she died May 4. Her funeral service is today at The Inspiration Church, 2900 Philadelphia Drive in Dayton. The family will receive friends at 10 a.m. The service will be at 11 and interment at West Memory Gardens follows.
“Even though her family knew this was going to happen, it is still very hard for them,” Check said quietly. “It’s hard for all of us.
“Trona always was just such a presence. We lost a great one in her.”
She gave us all something to look up to.
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