Toya Chester
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
But the Chesters, I'm a Chester, we were known for something different. We were athletes. And as stereotypical as that sounds, it's true. I myself played softball, soccer, and basketball. I couldn't go anywhere with my grandfather without someone coming up and yelling, hey Chet! Shooting stories about back in the day and asking me, do you know how great he was? Of course I know how great he was.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
I heard the story of him running the track meet and then hopping the fence to go and hit a home run in the baseball game before the track meet was even over. I was proud and I knew that I had a legacy to uphold. Basketball was my sport and my grandfather knew that. He bought me a basketball hoop, he set it up at his house. He didn't play with me, it's my grandfather.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
But he tried to show me a few moves here and there, the hook shot, I never mastered that one. But basketball was everything to me. It was the early 2000s, it was a real culture for me and my friends. Me and my best friend, Taylor, we would ride her bike. Well, she pedaled. I sat on the handlebars. And we would go down to the park, and we would challenge the boys to a little two-on-two pickup.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
When we got a little older, you know, we were trying to be cute. We'd wear the jersey dresses. It was an actual dress, but a basketball jersey. It was our life. And, you know, everything, basketball was everything to me. So one time, my mom, she took me to New York City, and we went to the NBA store. I had never seen anything like this.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
You walk in and they have this display of basketballs with the imprint of the player's hand on it. So you can put your hand on the ball and just see how big Shaquille O'Neal's hand actually is. It looks like a tennis ball in this hand. So then you go through the store, you go in the back, up the stairs, around the corner, and this tiny section is the WNBA.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
And in my small Massachusetts town, I have never seen this much women's basketball gear in my life. But the thing that stuck out the most was the WNBA basketball. And you know it right when you see it, not just because it's smaller, it is, but it's the orange and white stripes. It's just iconic. I knew I couldn't ask for one of these basketballs.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
I mean, my mom, she was one of those moms that would take me to the amusement park. I'd go on the roller coaster, we'd get off, and she'd bring me to the screen, you know, the screen that shows you the picture of when you go down that first hill and she would look at me and she would say, Toya, you better look at that screen real good because you're not going to take one of these pictures home.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
But this day, she bought me a basketball. And it was perfect because I needed one of those balls, the WNBA balls, because I was going to play in the WNBA. I mean, why not? I was a Chester, and I was great at sports. I even played on our town's first all-girls basketball team, and we went undefeated against all those boys. I was on my way.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
When I got to high school, freshman year, I told my coach, I looked him straight in his face, and I said, I'm going to dunk a basketball by my senior year. And I thought I was going to because I could palm the ball, and everybody knows that's the first step if you want to dunk a basketball. So I get to college, I'm still playing basketball, and I was recruited, but I was recruited to Division III.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
And not that you can't go pro in Division III, but let's be honest, you're probably not going to. But I loved it, and I was having fun, and I wanted to do what every college basketball player wants to do. I wanted to score 1,000 points in every college gym, There's a big sign and it's all the players that have ever scored a thousand points. And at my school, there was only six or seven.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
I wanted that. I wanted to see Toya Chester and the number of points that I scored. So I was first in all the sprints, but at the end of my freshman year, I only had 220 points and that's not on track to make a thousand. So I tried harder in sophomore year. I made captain. Junior year, I'm going good and we get to senior year and I am cruising.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
We have a winning season and we're going to the playoffs. It's the last game of the regular season before playoffs. And yours truly only needed 12 points to make a thousand. I was ready to go. So we're playing at MCLA, which is really far. It's in North Adams. and we're driving to the game, and I'm holding out hope, to be honest, but I know that my mom is not gonna make the game.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
It's far, it's four hours, which is, you know, normally fine. She'd go to as many as she could go to, but it's the game that I'm gonna score a thousand points, you know? I mean, when this happens, the coach, you score your thousandth point, the coach will call a timeout, and then your mom pops out of nowhere with flowers and balloons, and it's a whole thing, but...
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
It's okay, I'm gonna just tell her about it after the game. So we're driving, we get to almost Vermont, we pull up to the school, go into the locker room to get ready, and we look around and there's pieces of paper scattered around like they were left behind. We pick it up and it's our plays.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
The other team had written out our plays and they put the names of our plays and the names of our players and what our favorite moves were. And we thought, okay, this is perfect. We'll be clever. We'll change all the names of our plays to mess with their heads. It wasn't working. By the time we get to the second half, I only have six points. And I was averaging 21 points a game.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
So I should have been already hit a thousand. So it's the second half. I'm a forward, so I'm playing down low. A girl gets the ball at the top of the key. She's their three-pointer. She's going to shoot it. I hear, Toya! I turn. I look. I go to run. I'm running up there. I jump up so high. I'm about to block her like Ben Wallace. I never jumped this high in my life. My feet are at her shoulders.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
And she ducked. She didn't shoot the ball. She ducked. And so I land on her back and she stands up. And so I fly off of her back. And I land on the floor and I smash the back of my head. It was so loud. It's all I could hear. The gym's silent, but in my head, all I can hear is my head smashing. And I'm thinking, I just cracked my head open. So I reach back. There's no blood. I'm good.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
So I go to hop back up, but I don't make it all the way. I hear my coach. She says, Toya, get up. And I say, I can't move. She said, get up. I say, I can't move. I had hopped up so fast that I threw my back out. Now, at this point, I'm crying. Now, whether it's because my back hurts or I know I'm not gonna hit a thousand points, I don't know, but the tears are streaming.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
They're telling me I'm gonna go in an ambulance and go to the hospital. I get there, they give me ibuprofen. Don't get me started on that bill. I was pissed. But that was it. That was the end. I never played college basketball again. We went another three rounds in the playoffs. And if you do the math, I definitely would've hit a thousand.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
I did learn a lesson that day, though, and I guess that's important. I learned that when you fall down and you hurt yourself, don't get up too quickly. You might throw your back out. It took me a long time to forgive myself for throwing my back out. But what is there to forgive? I scored 994 points in my college basketball career. It's almost a thousand. Thanks.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
People are always asking me my thoughts on professional sports, on college sports, what I thought of the game, who I think is going to win, who's my favorite player. And my answer is always, I don't know. And then they say, oh, you don't like sports? I love sports, but I like to play sports, not watch them.
The Moth
The Moth Podcast: March Madness
So I grew up in what I thought was a decently sized town in central Massachusetts. I say decently sized because unlike most of the cities around me, we had a high school, we had Searstown Mall, and we had traffic lights. Now, my family was the first family to settle in my town after slavery, so all the black families, most of them, we were related.