Rejection shouldn’t have hit so hard. David Arsenault Sr. was prepared for it. He was used to it. He was a Division III basketball coach, tasked with selling non-scholarship student-athletes on the appeal of central Iowa.
Jack Taylor hit different. The standout shooting guard from Wisconsin had spurned him twice. Only after Taylor — who attracted interest from multiple Division I programs — suffered a devastating knee injury and then spent two unfulfilling years at a D-III school (Wisconsin-La Crosse) near his home did Grinnell College — and its unorthodox, fast-paced, high-scoring system — attract his attention again.
“I said to my son [then-assistant David Jr.], ‘You can recruit him if you want, but I’m done. I already got him admitted two times,’” Arsenault said. “He broke my heart a couple times. I didn’t want to go down that path a third time.”
This time, Taylor committed. The coaches were thrilled. The players were not. The senior-laden group went 18-5 the previous season, and didn’t see the benefit of adding a ball-dominant guard who would steal shots and minutes.
