Norville family provides pipeline to Illinois College

Tamar Norville plans to room with her older sister, Melissa, when she arrives on the Illinois College campus this fall.

If you gathered each of the Norvilles who’ve advanced from Batavia to the school in downstate Jacksonville, there’d be enough for two sets of suitemates.

Tamar Norville will become the eighth member of her immediate family to compete for the Blueboys or Lady Blues, so she naturally echoes her brothers’ and sisters’ praises. A vocal music scholarship – plus two younger siblings waiting in the wings – ensures she’ll be singing for IC for years to come.

“People up here say that it’s the Norville school, and people down there laugh that there are so many of us on campus all the time,” Norville said. “It’s funny, and especially because we’ve all gone from Batavia colors and now we’re blue and white.”

A handful of Matthew and Felicia Norville’s nine children sported the royal blue and white of nemesis Geneva between stints in Batavia crimson and gold. The family briefly relocated from Batavia in the 2000s, but Matthew Norville, who founded the non-denominational Batavia Christian Center in 1988, ultimately figured his family should stay in the city of his ministry.

Norville and his first six children to enter IC shared at least basketball on their multi-sport slates. Along with religion, he instilled in his family the appreciation of staying active. IC, like the rest of its brethren in NCAA Division III, does not award athletic scholarships. The Norvilles saw that as an excuse to not pigeonhole themselves.

Matthew Norville graduated from St. Charles High School in 1976, and landed at Illinois College by little more than random circumstance. Mostly averse to where he wound up for college, he enlisted his parents’ recommendation.

His father had an acquaintance at IC, which offered a solid liberal arts curriculum at a manageable distance from home. Still, Norville hardly fathomed the pipeline that took root years after he left the town slightly west of Springfield in 1980.

“When I graduated,” he said, “I thought I’d never see the campus again.”

The Norvilles moved to Los Angeles after their marriage in the early 1980s. Though Matthew (business administration, economics) and Felicia (deaf education) earned academic degrees, they always had envisioned starting a church in Batavia. Both graduated from Crenshaw Christian Center School of Ministry in 1987 and became ordained ministers a year later.

Once the family returned to the Midwest – the first of its children in tow – Felicia’s fond memories of visiting her husband in college steered the Norvilles to Jacksonville for homecoming and other alumni events.

Tamar Norville recalls seeing her oldest brother, Matthew Jr., dunk for the men’s basketball team in a game during his senior season in 2004.

She was 10, and easily enamored.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to go to IC, just from watching my siblings and everything,” Norville said. “Visiting the campus so much and seeing them there doing athletics, I already was well-acquainted with the college.”

Tamar Norville is set to compete in tennis, basketball and track, and possibly could team with three-time NCAA Division III national track champion Melissa in the Lady Blues’ 4x400-meter relay next spring.

Entering her senior season, Melissa Norville quickly grew accustomed to familiar support. The academic and athletic careers of siblings Candace and Josiah overlapped with the start of her own before the years of family visits added up.

By day, Matthew Norville Jr. serves as the sports coordinator at Jacksonville’s Sherwood Eddy Memorial YMCA. By night, he’s a broadcaster for FM-107.1 WEAI.

Candace Norville also remained in town, coaching at Jonathan Turner Junior High, adjacent to the IC campus. Despite summing up the social scene of the Morgan County seat – population 27,581 – as “Applebee’s and that’s about it,” Norville has basked in the city’s friendly environment.

“Each year, every time a new Norville comes through and they realize we’re all not in college, they see that we actually like Jacksonville and want to stick around,” she said.

Fine by the IC community. Dr. Richard Maye, chair of the school’s sociology department, happily has taught the first six Norville siblings in either an introductory or upper-level course.

“Each one has always been a favorite of mine in the classroom – though they didn’t know it – because of their behavior and participation in discussion,” said Maye, an educator for 44 years. “And I think each one reflects wonderful parenting. It comes through very clear that they’re from a good home.”

Tamar Norville worked to capture that spirit while writing an application essay for IC’s recently-added legacy scholarship.

She discussed the family campus visits, the dinner table talks and the overall giddy transition from crimson to blue.

Her siblings likely would have crafted similar prose if given the opportunity. Chances are, it might have matched their current send-up of the school.

“It’s not like I was [WNBA star] Candace Parker by any means, but if I was really going to get committed to a D-I scholarship, I probably was going to have to do just one sport,” Candace Norville said. “But at 17 and today, I would pick IC a thousand times. That’s who I am. Not wanting to do just one thing.”

Doing many things in one place was fulfilling enough, Applebee’s or not.

Soon, another Norville will head to “the Norville school” to embark on the same path.