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Basketball helped Burney deal with grief
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Warren JFK basketball player James Burney Jr., center, poses with his 13-year-old brother Quintin Burney, left, and sister Taejah Burney, 15, in the gymnasium at Warren JFK High School on Tuesday. Basketball has become an outlet for grief for the siblings after the unexpected death of their mother Timika Burney, last month.
Basketball an outlet for Burneys' grief
“We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
James Burney Jr. sat down on a couch inside his coach’s office at John F. Kennedy Catholic School in Warren last Monday after finishing up a practice session on a day off from school.
He was laughing and smiling with his teammates as he walked into the locker room and then into Eagles coach Shawn Pompelia’s office. It was like Burney had been a member of the Kennedy basketball program from the beginning and his teammates were childhood friends.
In reality, over the last month, the teenager’s life had been turned upsidedown.
Burney grew up on the west side of Dayton with his mother, Timika, and two younger siblings, Taejah and Quintin. He was attending public school at Meadowdale High School and excelling in both the classroom, with a 3.8 GPA, and in the gymnasium as a member of the varsity basketball team.
He was in the midst of his junior year at Meadowdale, but had lived in Dayton for the last 11 years.
Burney’s father, James Sr., drove a truck and was always on the road. When he was stationary, he resided in Warren with his girlfriend — and where the majority of Burney’s extended family lived — so the communication between James and his father consisted of phone calls that were few and far between.
Last March, James, along with his mother and siblings, came to town to celebrate his birthday with family. James attended a shootaround at Kennedy High School and it was then that Pompelia was first introduced to Timika.
“In her thought process, with the family, she was thinking of moving back to Warren and wanted to know about the education at Kennedy,” Pompelia said. “Ultimately she decided to stay in Dayton and not move back to Warren.”
Then, on Tuesday, Jan. 21, Pompelia received a phone call from James Sr. with tragic news that pulled at the heart of the Kennedy coach.
“He told me that Timika had passed and he needed to find a school for his three children because they’re going to be moving back to Warren with him,” Pompelia said.
The immediate situation for James, 16, his sister Taejah, 15, and brother Quintin, 13, was one of grief and sorrow. It also left many things in question, including where the three were going to stay for the time being. Suddenly they were left without a mother who meant so much to them and were bouncing around from one relative’s house to another.
“It was kind of rough because we weren’t in a stable home, or even our own home, and then having to go back and start packing stuff up, it was weird,” James said. “Seeing all my mom’s stuff ... it was hard.”
Timika passed the Friday before James Sr. reached out to Pompelia, but Meadowdale had a basketball game the next day. James, who understandably wasn’t getting much sleep, decided to go ahead and play in the game anyway.
The basketball court suddenly became a place of comfort, but it was missing a sense of familiarity. Timika played the role of team mom, according to James, and her duties included everything from cooking food for the team to keeping the score book during their games.
“I was just trying to get my mind off everything, but I was playing on like two hours of sleep,” he said. “It was weird looking over there and not seeing her or hearing her yelling, ‘James, get the rebound, get your hands up.’
“It felt good being in the gym, my mind was off everything and I was just playing ball — that’s all it was — but then after the game it kind of got bad again.”
James had a choice: let tragedy define who he would become, or accept what happened and become stronger because of it. There was no doubt in his mind which route he would choose.
“I think the only time I really grieved was that day [his mom passed],” James said. “Even though it was right to do it, at the same time I had to stay strong for them [his younger siblings], because if they saw me break down they wouldn’t be able to be strong either.”
One week after losing their mother, James and his siblings packed up their belongings, said their good-byes, and headed for what could be considered a new beginning. For James, the move to Warren provided both a change of scenery as well as a second chance at building a bond that, now more than ever, needed to be in the young man’s life.
“It’s cool now seeing him more on a daily basis because we can work on our father-son relationship,” James said of his father. “Before we moved [to Dayton], he was basically the one who molded me. That’s where I get a lot of my spirit and personality from, so it’s kind of like a re-birth, I guess.”
The one constant that remained in all three younger Burney children’s lives was the game of basketball. Whether it was with the seventh grade team, the ninth grade team, or the varsity, Quintin, Taejah, and James all got back on the court — this time as Kennedy Eagles.
“When I first walked into practice I saw one of my teammates dunk on someone, so I was kind of scared,” James said as his eyes lit up. “I was like, ‘Uh-oh, I don’t think I’m ready to come into something so intense,’ but at the same time I was ready to work.”
Pompelia said he had already reached out to the OHSAA before James arrived and they immediately granted him approval to play right away. As it turned out, that wasn’t even the easiest part of the transition process.
James not only provided the Eagles with more height — he stands about 6-foot-4 — but his new coach describes him as a natural leader.
“I’ve never seen our kids dancing until James got here,” Pompelia said. “He’s given us re-birth as a team. He’s turned into what I’ll say is the heartbeat of the team.”
Pompelia also said when he looks in the locker room now, just two weeks after joining the team, it’s as if James is one of the guys. He said he sat down with the kids on the team before James arrived and posed a simple question to them.
“I asked my players to put themselves in James’ shoes,” said Pompelia. “How would you respond? How would you want to be treated? And not one of them said to me, this isn’t right.
“They all said we’ll treat him how we do all the other players — he’ll have to earn his spot. Once he did they welcomed him with open arms.”
James, on the other hand, wasn’t sure what to expect. As it turned out, he was pleasantly surprised.
“I thought everybody was gonna be like, ‘Oh, who’s this new kid on the block, we don’t want him here,’” James said. “The way they welcomed me took a big load off my shoulders and I could calm down, chill and just be myself.”
The story of James Burney Jr. is far from complete. As he sat there on the couch in Pompelia’s office, with a white Gatorade towel wrapped around his neck, it was clear that James was not immune to the emotions of what he was going through. Instead he showed maturity beyond his years and used everything that happened to become a stronger individual.
“It feels weird knowing that everything happened so fast,” he reflected. “I still go through my mother’s phone and look at all these old pictures of when we were in Dayton and it’s like it was just yesterday.
“Sometimes I wish I could’ve cherished those moments stronger knowing that this happened, but at the same time, life throws you things,” James said, his voice cracking. “It depends on what you do with it. I didn’t wanna go through this and quit or give up, and then knowing that my mother would want me to be strong. She’s a very strong woman and would never let anything keep her down, so why should I?”