The RoundHouse | 7/23/2019 8:46:00 AM

 
Hitting the bottle cap is not the hard part for Nick Taylor, who directs tennis balls at targets quite often as one of the world's best Paralympics tennis players.
 
Accuracy is his best attribute. 
 
He proved that in a video, shot as part of the bottle cap challenge, that shows him smacking a tennis ball to hit the lid of a Gatorade bottle and lift it off. The bottle, filled with water, remains standing.
 
"There's one thing, my entire life, athletically, and it doesn't matter what sport - It's always been accuracy," said Taylor, men's tennis director of operations. "Even with a hockey stick, I can hit my spots. Where ever you tell me to, I can hit it. Tennis is the same thing."
 
Last week, Taylor set his iPhone 6 on slow-motion video, propped it in the can holder of a cooler and got to work in his wheelchair. 
 
Taylor labored over framing the WuShock logo in the background. He worried about the shadows obscuring the picture and the sun over-heating his phone.
 
He loosened the cap to about one turn, tight enough so that he could lift the bottle while holding the cap; loose enough to spin it off. Editing is difficult for him, so he restarted the camera after four or five tries to limit the amount of footage.
 
He estimates he took him between 20-30 takes before his serve hit the cap in the right place to spin it up and off the bottle.
 
"It certainly was not the first try," he said. "It certainly wasn't the first five tries."

 

Nick Taylor, a three-time Paralympic gold medalist and Director of Operations, shows off his unique kick serve for the #bottlecapchallenge. #watchus #sctop10 #tennis #espn #kickserve #wheelchairtennis pic.twitter.com/cFGVD0NoWx

— Wichita State Men's Tennis (@GoShockersMTEN) July 19, 2019

 
 
When the video landed on his Instagram account, the reaction started and grew quickly. Wichita State's men's tennis Twitter account posted it. ESPN's SportsCenter account added music and Tweeted it. Celebrities such as Billie Jean King added to the social media applause. Former Shocker Zach Brown called Taylor "one of the best teachers at WSU" when he Tweeted the video.
 
"To say it was not thought out and not planned would be an understatement," Taylor said. "It took me longer to set it up and longer to edit and post it than it did to actually do it. I've been entertained for days by the (social media) comments."
 
The bottle cap challenge started earlier this summer with martial arts fighters videoing kicking the cap off a bottle. It expanded to softball, football long-snappers and various celebrities such as Jason Statham and John Mayer. 
 
Wichita State coach Danny Bryan long marveled at Taylor's shot-making and his story. Taylor was born with arthrogryposis, a congenital disease that contracts and restricts muscular development. He plays in a power chair and holds the racket under his palm, fastened to his wrist by a cord. 
 
Bryan watched other videos featuring Taylor and expected them to hit a wide audience on social media. The bottle cap challenge did it.

 

Love it!

— Billie Jean King (@BillieJeanKing) July 20, 2019

 
 
"I've always thought it was cool – his serve – and I thought it would catch on," Bryan said. "The way he uses his foot. The way he uses his chair. The way he holds the racquet. It's inspirational and it's amazing."
 
Bryan remembers one of the first times he watched Taylor work out.
 
"His placement is incredible," Bryan said. "He was doing return practice and he set up cones. He was working on trying to hit it deeper, deeper than the cone, but in. It felt like he was hitting 75 percent of them in, off a return. His racquet-head control is incredible, especially for the way he is hitting it."

Taylor made an early attempt at the challenge last week, with Shocker assistant Justin DeSanto on the camera. Taylor wore new shoes, however, which made the kick-toss difficult. A few days later, he had a well-worn shoe ready. While DeSanto strung racquets in the Coleman Tennis Complex, Taylor tried again. 

"I need broken-in shoes," he said. "I didn't know where the ball was going to come off my foot, exactly. I was chasing it.
 
 

One of the best teachers at WSU as well https://t.co/LGOwg9xQoK

— Zach Brown (@Zacharygb2) July 19, 2019

 
 
Billie Jean King, the women's tennis superstar, noticed and that got everyone's attention around Shocker tennis.
 
"That was pretty cool," Taylor said.
 
Wichita State media relations estimates the video received around 3 million views on various social media platforms, helped largely by ESPN's promotion. Taylor, an adjunct professor in Wichita State's sport management department, finds the episode interesting from an academic standpoint.
 
"From a marketing perspective, I'm fascinated by it," he said.
 
Paul Suellentrop covers Wichita State Athletics and the American Athletic Conference for university Strategic Communications. Contact him at paul.suellentrop@wichita.edu.