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If not for attending The Out-of-Door Academy in Lakewood Ranch, Austin Brinling thinks he probably wouldn’t have graduated high school. When he was 4 years old, his mother dropped him off at her parents’ house and never came back. His grandparents raised him. He never knew his father. Austin also had a severe case of ADHD. In his view, a public school’s lack of structure and resources to provide him special help would have led to failure.
If not for being awarded the Taylor Emmons Scholarship, Brinling would have never gotten to attend ODA and graduate in 2019 with a first-rate education. “Credit to my grandparents for raising me well,” he says. “But they didn’t have the financial means to send me there.”
The Taylor Emmons Scholarship is named after a former student and baseball player at ODA who, in 2010, died after being hit by a car while a sophomore at University of Miami. Shortly after his death, Taylor Emmons’ parents — Mike and Katie — founded a charity to award a full four-year scholarship to one ODA student each year.
That amounted to $100,000 in the early stages, $120,000 these days, says Mike Emmons. “Our No. 1 criterion is we’re looking for someone who would not be able to attend ODA without the scholarship,” he adds. “And they have to be able to handle the academic rigors of the school.”
Thus far, the Taylor Emmons Scholarship has put 10 students through ODA’s high school, with four currently attending. “We’ve had a 100% success rate,” Emmons says. “Some have struggled, but they’re great kids and they’ve all stepped up.”
Brinling was one of them. “Man, I struggled,” he says. “I was not the best of students, but what I will say is that I tried. I gave it my best effort.”
Brinling had an easier time of it on the baseball diamond, where, a strong hitter, he excelled as a center fielder. His four-year batting average was over .400. He went on to study and play baseball at four colleges, graduating from University of South Carolina last spring. He turned 24 in early January and now lives in Brunswick, Georgia, where he coaches youth baseball.
Brinling never met Taylor Emmons. But he’s well aware that his golden opportunity arose from a horrific tragedy.
Taylor was a good-looking, charismatic young man, a talented ballplayer. His father describes him as “real happy-go-lucky. He was just nice to everybody and everybody liked him.”
After his passing, the Emmonses “wanted to do something instead of having a house full of flowers,” Mike says. The scholarship, founded in 2010, got off to an auspicious start. Friends and family, as well as the Lakewood Ranch and ODA communities, quickly donated $165,000.
The Emmonses had the financial means to hire someone to run the nonprofit. “If we had to do it all ourselves, it was just too emotional, too raw, especially in the beginning,” Mike says. They brought in a family friend, Sandy Albano, who ran the charity’s day-to-day for eight years.
The Emmonses did a few small fundraisers, then hit on a winner: a golf and poker tournament, held at Lakewood Ranch Country Club. “We used to get 288 golfers, 125 people playing poker, 450 at the party at night,” Mike says. “Over a 10-year period, we were able to raise close to $3 million doing that event.”
They closed down the tournament after the one in 2022, partly because the scholarship had built a large enough endowment to be self-sustaining. If they don’t raise another dime, the scholarships will continue. Samantha Emmons, 28, Taylor’s younger sister, now runs the nonprofit as a volunteer.
Two years ago, the Emmonses handed over the scholarship money, about $2 million, to ODA. “The stock market has done well in the last couple years, so there’s close to $2.4 million in there presently,” Mike says. The school handles the investments and appropriates the funds. Mike and Katie select the scholarship beneficiaries. “The admissions office narrows it down to two or three applicants and we interview them and make the final decision,” Mike says.
The Emmonses are not done with their charitable pursuits at ODA. They’re starting a business school in Taylor’s name. Mike says he and his wife donated $1 million to get it off the ground. “We’re in the process of designing the school,” he says. “It’ll be in one building. We’ve hired an architect, we’ve hired a builder. [ODA] started business classes a couple of years ago and they’ve been a huge success.”
He hopes to see a groundbreaking within a year.
Meanwhile, Taylor Emmons is still very much a presence within his family. “[The grief] never goes away,” Mike says. “Does it get better? I’m not sure ‘better’ is the right word, but it gets more tolerable.”
A turning point came when “Katie and I just sat down and said to each other, ‘Look, this is a tragedy and what’s going to be an even worse tragedy is if we let it ruin our lives,’” Mike recalls. “We just made a conscious decision to move forward.”
Granting scholarships and building a business school have been a vital part of that process.
As for Austin Brinling, coaching kids baseball is a stopover, he says. He remains uncertain about his career path. Of one thing he is certain, though. “The scholarship changed the course of my life,” he says. “I’m blessed to say that I’m a Taylor Emmons scholar.”
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