HAMPTON, VA (WTKR)- It's a good week for Sportsplug Elite 7U flag football. It's been awhile, but beloved coach Chris Taylor is back on the sidelines.
"I feel like I'm back home," Taylor said. "You really get that sense of feeling being out here with the kids. They're laughing, they're learning, everybody's working hard, they're putting the commitment in to playing football. It's like a way of life for us so I love it."
But before returning to the sights and sounds of football, Taylor's way of life was the sights and sounds of the sea. He's fresh off an 11-month deployment aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford, the third deployment of his career, where he served on the flight deck guiding fighter jets, among other responsibilities. He was away from family, football and home for nearly a year.
"I'd say those stretches where you think that you're going home, but then it ends up being a little bit longer, little bit longer, little bit longer, you just don't know when the finish line is going to be," he noted. "You can't really focus on that, you've just got to stay within the mission, so those are tough times."
"He even called me and my mom to say 'how are you doing? How was practice?,'" said Chris's son, Amir.
Amir is a player on his dad's Sportsplug Elite 7U squad. He was one of a handful of young athletes and their coaches who would send clips of practices and games to Taylor, which the 13-year Navy veteran said helped to get him through the stretch.
"It's definitely a part of who I am as a whole, as a man, just loving football and giving back to the kids," Chris said. "It was just an indescribable feeling of how I missed it."
Now he doesn't have to miss it anymore. For the first time since June of 2025, Chris was on the field for practice Monday. He and the crew of the USS Ford returned to Norfolk this past weekend and are now back in their communities.
"He came to us and then I hugged him," recalled Amir. "Then we started throwing the ball together."
"Everybody was all smiles, hugs, dapping me up, just saying 'welcome home, we missed you Coach Chris,'"Taylor smiled. "It was good to hear that, good to see the smiles on the kids' faces."
Chris pointed out that there are plenty of things he can take from his job in the Navy to coaching the kids. Many of his military values, including integrity, courage and commitment, transcend far beyond sports.
"Even if they don't go onto play football for the rest of their careers growing up, in college or the pros, they learn the foundation of just becoming young men in the community and, at the end of the day, that's all we want," he pointed out.
Taylor is going the extra yard to make a difference, whether it's serving on the ship or guiding on the gridiron. The coach is using America's game to help get America's youth in Hampton Roads ready to change the world.
"Believe in themselves and they can do anything," Taylor said of what he hopes his players take away from his coaching. "If they can do it out here on the field and learn something new, whether it's a play or drill, then in any aspect of life they can instill that within themselves and overcome any adversity that they face in life."
"I love my dad a lot," Amir added. "I missed him a lot and I even play with him a lot. I love him a lot."
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