Mother's Dedication Motivates Wright

Although his tenacity on the court says otherwise, there is a soft side to Keith Wright. Just ask the 6’8” senior forward and co-captain of the Harvard men’s basketball team about his mother.

“I’m a mama’s boy, and I’ll admit it,” Wright says. “I’m not ashamed of it.”

If you have attended a Crimson basketball game, chances are high that you’ve seen the object of Wright’s affection, Sabrena Tabron. Tabron, who divorced Wright’s father when Keith was in the second grade, has been in the stands for all but a handful of her son’s games. This year alone she has attended all but the Nov. 19 game at Loyola Marymount and the Jan. 10 game against Monmouth.

Clearly, Tabron is far from the casual fan. She spends most of the games on her feet, reminding the team to keep their hands up on defense and yelling at them to make that extra pass. Occasionally, Tabron will hold up signs to encourage her son and his teammates. She is a cross between super-fan, sideline coach, and mother.

Tabron’s sign from the Feb. 24 game against Princeton, which read, “I’m Keith Wright’s mom,” indicates which  of the three roles she considers most important. This is even clearer when she tells the story of how she and Keith arrived at Harvard.

In some ways, this family journey began years before Keith’s birth, when Tabron could be found on basketball courts in California. Tabron, who played forward like her son, competed at the high school and collegiate level. She played at San Francisco State for a year, where she led the conference in blocked shots as a freshman. She followed that up with two years at California Baptist University. Keith wears number forty-four in her honor.

And Tabron learned much more from her basketball career than a couple on-the-court tips to pass along to her son.

“Basically, basketball always defined who I was, and therefore when it came to college, I didn’t have the stamina to balance education along with sports,” she explains. “So, in raising my children, I had decided that sports would never define them. I always played sports, and it was always basketball, basketball, basketball from the time I was six. So [I decided that] when I had kids, I wouldn’t allow them to play basketball and not focus on their education.”

True to her word, Tabron made sure that education came first in her household.

Keith, his younger sister, and his mother lived in California until 2001, when Tabron decided to relocate her children to the East Coast.

“I chose to leave San Francisco back in 2001 when I wanted to provide my kids with a better life, with a better public school education,” Tabron says. “So I did a little research and found that Princess Anne High School in Virginia Beach was then one of the top 10 schools in the country for their IB program. So I packed up my family and moved cross-country without a job, without a house, and without family.”

Unlike most collegiate basketball players, Wright did not play organized basketball as a child.

But as he transitioned from middle to high school, Wright’s interest in basketball grew. He tried to play during his freshman year of high school—until he called his mother from try-outs to tell her about his interim report card. When Wright informed his mother of the one C on his mid-year grades, she prohibited him from trying out for the team. Tabron says she wanted to teach her son that basketball is a privilege.

Wright obeyed his mother’s wishes and did not play that season.

A year later, Wright told his mother that he wanted to play basketball, in high school and in college. And since his grades met her high standards, Tabron let Keith play.

Both Wright and his mother agree that Keith’s basketball career did not have the most auspicious start.

Keith was competing against students who had been playing their whole lives, and his inexperience showed on the court.

Tabron knew that her son needed plenty of work if he intended to play in college, so she picked up a second job cleaning homes and apartments in order to pay for extra training and conditioning for her son. Sometimes Wright would join his mother and help her clean. Their sacrifices paid off when the family phone rang non-stop during Wright’s senior year.

He received calls from colleges across the country, including every Ivy League school. In the end, the future Ivy League Player of the Year narrowed his choices to Harvard and Princeton. Tabron believes that her son’s recruiting trip to Princeton was the deciding factor.

“I think, honestly, it was [then-] Princeton coach, Sydney Johnson, who helped him decide on Harvard,” Tabron remembers. “[Johnson] said to him, ‘You need to come to Princeton, because Princeton is rich with basketball history.’”

But Wright had other ideas.

“Keith turned and said, ‘I don’t want to be a part of history. I want to make history,’” Tabron notes.

Wright decided that he would write history in a Crimson uniform.  He credits his mother for swaying his decision to go to an Ivy League school.

“She always told me not to let basketball define me as a person,” Wright explains. “[She did not want people to] hear my name and associate that with just a basketball player.... The decision I made was solely my decision, but she definitely influenced that with the way that she raised me.”

In the fall of 2008, Wright said goodbye to his mother and headed to Cambridge.

He had a rough freshman season, contracting mononucleosis and suffering from an Achilles heel injury. Meanwhile, Wright’s sister Morgan was finishing her senior year of high school. When Morgan decided to head northeast to St. John’s University for her education, her mother followed.

Tabron decided to move to the Boston area, where she would be close to her two oldest children. The decision became official when she received a callback two days after sending out blind resumes.

At first, Keith was strongly opposed to his mother’s plan.

“I hated it,” Wright remembers. “I was dating someone from home at the time, and we were best friends in high school. And all my good friends were back home.”

But it did not take long for Wright to change his mind regarding his mom’s decision.

“It was the best thing that could ever have happened,” Wright admits.

With his family closer, Wright’s basketball career seemed to be on the upswing. He took advantage of the accessibility of the weight room and basketball courts, working out at Harvard over the summers.

The Achilles heel injury that plagued him during freshman year healed. What’s more, Tabron says that her son seemed more relaxed after the move. He stopped worrying about off-the-court issues like financial concerns and laundry.

“I think Keith’s biggest challenge was [leaving Virginia],’” Tabron explains. “And I said to him, ‘You need to realize that you are so much bigger than you see right now.’ He didn’t really get it at first, but I think as he goes back to visit friends he sees how he has evolved into a different person and everyone has stayed the same. He doesn’t mind it now because he never does laundry and he never cleans his room.”

“I guess maybe he thought I was going to cramp his style—[even though] he doesn’t even have a style—but it just works for us,” she adds. “I don’t see him every day, but we still talk at least twice a day.”

The rest is history.

Since his family moved to the Boston area, Wright and his teammates have transformed Harvard basketball. The team has increased its season win totals every year since Wright’s freshman campaign in 2008. In a couple of weeks, the team will be playing in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1946.

Tabron has had a first-row view of the Crimson’s rise, and she praises Harvard coach Tommy Amaker for taking what was a talented group of basketball players and transforming them into a cohesive team.

Tabron considers the 79-67 home win against Princeton on March 5, 2011 to be her favorite moment of her son’s Crimson career.

“When they won [a share of] the Ivy League championship and everyone was rushing the floor, it was unbelievable,” Tabron recalls. “Keith left the floor and came into the stands and gave me a big hug and said ‘Thank you mom.’ This woman who sent me a picture...said, ‘What a great moment to know that he loves you so much that he thanked you for sacrificing for him.’”

“He defined himself as wanting to make history, not because he wanted to be a part of it,” she adds. “And at that moment, he did.”

Unfortunately for Harvard fans, Tabron’s time in the stands is coming to end.

She will stay in the Boston area with her two youngest children, ages eight and 11, where she will continue her work as the marketing and outreach director at an assisted living facility.

Although she vows to attend future Harvard-Princeton games, Tabron says she must dedicate a lot of her time to Wright’s siblings.

As his career comes to a close, Wright cannot help but think about how much his mother has done for him.

“I reflect on how my mom has helped me every day,” Wright says. “We’ve gone through a lot together, and I think that this portion of it has been awesome. It really caps off the tremendous relationship we have and the tremendous job she has done raising me and the man that I’ve become.”

But it’s not over.

“When they go to the Dance, am I going?” Tabron asks incredulously. “When they went to the NIT, my son called me and said were playing in Oklahoma. I hung up the phone, purchased a ticket, and beat the team there.”

“Sharon Casey, [the mother of junior forward Kyle Casey], and I have a savings account for when they are selected this year so we can purchase our tickets,” she continues. “So yes, I will be there.”

And it seems fitting that Wright and his mother will end this chapter of Harvard basketball history just as they started it: together.