Paving a path
Freshman Taite Anderson wants to make a name for herself at Bethel. She wants to be more than “the other Anderson” to people.
By Carlo Holmberg | Royal Report
As Taite Anderson walks through the halls of White Bear Lake High School, she gets the smiles and nods accompanied with the occasional “Hey, it’s Trey’s little sister” as people pass her by. She hopes when she moves on to college she will be known as Taite Anderson. No more “Trey’s sister” comments. But it didn’t turn out that way.
Taite wants to be different. She wants to get away. But in the fall of 2016, she finds herself as a biokenetics major at Bethel University and living in Edgren Hall on Freshman Hill. She had expected to go to Baylor University, but somehow ended up with the rest of the Anderson family at Bethel.
Basketball is Taite’s №.1 sport and she thought she would be done playing competitively after high school. False. As her senior year ended, she knew she couldn’t be done playing. Bethel was chosen because she wanted to play basketball. Intramural basketball would have been the alternative if she had chosen to go to Baylor, but her competitive personality kept her close to home.
“None of us actually expected to come here,” Trey Anderson mentions. “It just kinda happened.”
“It’s like I didn’t really ever leave [high school]. I don’t really ever have to go home and visit because they’re always here.” — Taite Anderson, freshman
Trey is Taite’s older brother. As a freshman at Bethel, he took on the position of starting quarterback. And if that weren’t enough, her dad, Trent Anderson, is a golf coach for the Bethel women’s golf team and her mom, Her mom, Beth, is part of the Bethel staff, both of whom are Bethel alumni.
“It’s like I didn’t really ever leave [high school],” Taite says. “I don’t really ever have to go home and visit because they’re always here.”
Taite loves her family and the legacy they have left and they legacy they are creating. Growing up, the family dynamic has always been a positive one. She remembers playing two-on-two with her dad, Trey, and her younger sister, Tessah. The teams would usually be her and Trey versus her dad and Tessah. They would play to 11 and the games would be pretty close. Taite and Trey would get all riled up and the game would get into a friendly fight. She liked seeing her dad act like a kid and play along with them. When they were younger, she and her siblings would gather binoculars and journals and climbs trees in the backyard, pretending to be explorers. In high school, Taite was good friends with Trey’s friends and Trey was good friends with her friends.
“It wasn’t weird for me to talk to them, and when my friends came over, a lot of times she would hangout with us,” Trey said. “I never thought she was annoying or anything.”
Going to school at Bethel is both a good and bad thing. There becomes an expectation of how to act and behave. Taite can have a little bit of doubt in herself and the pressure living up to the name doesn’t help.
Basketball season has started and she started out well enough for Coach Jon Herbrechtsmeyer to have her start in their next game in Milwaukee against Wisconsin Lutheran College. The self-doubt in herself caused her to send a text to her coach asking if he thought she was actually ready for job. He responded with encouraging words and told her she will be fine and she will do well. He was right. Taite led the team in total points with 16 points on her first varsity start. The next game Taite put up 19 points against the University of Wisconsin River Falls to help the Royal pull off a win.
“She is totally her own person with her own styles.” — Trey Anderson, sophomore
Sometimes, Trey and his friends would be outside playing a pick-up game of basketball and she would ask to join. Playing with bigger, stronger, and faster guys has made her stronger as a player.
It must have worked. Taite ranks third on the 8–1 team in minutes played and second in scoring
Taite wants to be know as a person who represents Christ well and carries herself well on the court.
“She is totally her own person with her own styles,” Trey said.
Pick three words to describe Taite:
Hannah Simpson: “Witty, aggressive, and focused; she takes naps a lot, she is sleepy.”
Maria Vavra: “She is confident, she’s a ‘balla’, easy going.”
Hannah Johnson: “We’re always joking with each other, but I don’t know how to describe that. We have a lot of fun together. She is good at flipping the switch at being serious when the time is necessary. She is hard-working, talented, compassionate.”
What animal represents Taite and why?
Maria Vavra: Black Panther- “Taite is fierce strong and stealthy. Taite Anderson is pretty cool.”
Hannah Simpson: Kangaroo- “Because she jumps very high and gets a lot of rebounds, and also when you look at her she might not have a lot of weapons but hidden in the pouch she whips out her aggression, epic tenacity and her muscles.”
Hannah Johnson: White Bear- “Not only because she is from White Bear Lake, but BECAUSE she can maul over her competitors and get buckets.”
SOURCE: Interviews
The next basketball game
Who: Bethel vs. Macalester
What: It’s a conference game
Where: At Macalester College
When: Dec. 9 at 5:45 p.m.
What’s at stake: Bethel will hope to improve to a seven-game win streak.
SOURCE: Bethel Athletics
