Perfect Call --Princeton's Bryant commits to UMO

By Justin Hayes
Published in Sports on November 18, 2017 1:29 PM

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PRINCETON -- On the fringe of a partisan assemblage in the still-splashy confines of Deacon Jones Gymnasium on Tuesday afternoon, Randy Bryant watched the construction of his daughter's signing day set.

Piece by piece, it became tangible.

There was the table, folded out and snapped together at the legs, then draped in the school's eye-popping maize and blue skirt.

On its top, angled at opposite ends, the University of Mount Olive was prominently featured -- on one side by a grab-bag and on the other by a jersey that Megan Bryant will don next fall.

And then there was the story, which perhaps ol' Pops had forgotten, but was quick to recall once a few of its details got kicked around.

February 15,  2017.

At mid-court during the opening half of Princeton's first-round matchup with Spring Creek in the Carolina 1A conference basketball tournament, his daughter -- a grind-it-out competitor if there ever was one -- arrived at a loose ball in conjunction with Gator point guard Ashley Marriner.  

A tussle ensued, as it often does between players of those two schools, until the junior point guard heard three distinct words  -- just let go.

So she did, and with her release, Marriner crashed to the floor.

Head first.  

The contact was clean and jarring and swift and felt in every corner that night at Ten Mile Farm. Its immediate aftermath --  part collective gasp, part deafening pall -- cast a moment of hesitation, it seemed, on everyone present.

Everyone save Megan Bryant.

Without thinking, No. 11 took a knee by her competitor's side, unsure of what to do, but intent on doing whatever she could to make a horrible moment bearable.

 "That's her," the proud father recalled with a shake of his head. "She's very competitive, but she doesn't want to see anybody hurt... when she saw her go down, she wasn't going to leave until she knew that she was okay. "

And the moment, a lifetime ago in teenage years, still jars UMO's newest signee.

"Oh God," she said of the incident. "When I heard it (the fall), I'd never heard something so loud in my life... I was scared to turn around, because I didn't know what I was going to see."

What she saw, whether she realized it or not, was a chance to help someone that truly needed it --  with not so much as a question asked or a thought as to what anyone might think.

Good people of the world often take up such work.

Perhaps that's why the senior chose to matriculate to UMO, a place renowned for its due share of salt-of-the-earth folks.

"It makes you feel like home," Bryant said. "Whenever I first went to the camp, she (Coach Mandy Sansbury) told me, I'm not going to change anything or try to fix anything that isn't broken... she wasn't going to try and make me something I wasn't."

And if character counts, that's probably a good idea.