A year after his dad’s sudden death, Seneca Valley’s Tyler Pepin working on, off court to make him proud
JACKSON TWP — Walking across the court on senior night, Tyler Pepin fought away tears. If he had been there, Pepin knows his father wouldn’t have been able to.
Seneca Valley’s lone boys basketball senior held bouquets of flowers in both hands Feb. 7, passing through two rows of standing teammates, toward his mother, Irma Pepin, and younger sister, Danielle Pepin.
It was a bittersweet moment, with his dad, Dan Pepin, having died unexpectedly in October 2023. The few times Dan cried were over Tyler’s athletic accomplishments.
“I guarantee you, if he was walking across the half-court right there, he would’ve been crying,” Tyler said.
“100%,” his mother said in agreement.
Tyler told himself to hold a smile as he handed the flowers over.
“What I’m thinking was, ‘My dad was a strong dude. I can’t cry right now,’” Tyler said after the game. “I’m sitting there, I’m like, ‘Take a couple deep breaths.’ I’m like, ‘Alright, I hadn’t seen that dude cry too many times in my life. I’m not about to let a lot of people see me cry, and I’ll be just like dad.’”
Tyler said, regardless of his team’s 64-34 losing outcome to Pine-Richland that night — Seneca Valley opens the WPIAL Class 6A playoffs Monday with a play-in game against Woodland Hills — the stroll across the court and photos with those two is one of the best moments in his life.
It likely also served as a milestone in the family’s healing process.
Before every game, Tyler talks to his father, updating him on how he feels and what’s going on in his life. It’s something Tyler’s done since the first game he played without his dad in the stands.
“It was the closest I could get to being in my own space,” Tyler said. “You know, the national anthem, everyone’s focusing on the anthem. I can focus in on talking to my dad, be in my own personal bubble and just really have a conversation back and forth with him.”
The two connected through sports when Tyler was young. Initially, it was wrestling, which he picked up in large part because Dan grappled in college at Columbia. Dan coached him in that sport, but understood his son’s decision to focus his time on basketball when the family moved from Chicago to Pennsylvania.
Tyler had grown to love hoops living in the Windy City, watching his favorite player, Derrick Rose, star for the Bulls. His dad brought Tyler to a couple playoff games at the United Center.
When Tyler committed to basketball, Dan “looked for an AAU team, looked for the right shooting coaches, looked for anything that was going to help Tyler reach his dream to play basketball,” Irma said.
Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, with no spectators permitted in the gym, Dan wriggled his way into being the scorekeeper for Tyler’s Raiders team.
Oct. 6, 2023, was a “really regular” day, Tyler said. Getting home from school with Danielle, he parked his car in the garage. Danielle went to fetch the mail as Tyler made his way into the house.
That’s when everything changed.
Tyler heard his mother urgently yell for him to go open the front door. He figured he was letting Danielle in, but he noticed something in his mother’s voice was off.
“Something in me (was) just like, ‘Alright, I’ve gotta go see what’s happening,’” Tyler said. “I go to the front door, I look to my left, and then I see my father laying on the couch and my mom’s over him.”
Opening the door, Tyler was confused.
“It was almost like a movie, you know, a cutscene,” Tyler said. “Camera 1 to Camera 2, I open the door. I mean, it’s just paramedics, they’re running up with the stretcher. My sister’s crying.”
Irma had returned home shortly before her children to find her husband of 17 years unresponsive. She’d hoped the ambulance would get there before her children made it home. Instead, it arrived a moment after they pulled in. Tyler and Danielle witnessed what no child should.
Tyler went over and looked at Dan, motionless. He reached out and touched him.
“He was just really, like, cold,” Tyler said. “I really already knew what was up.”
His death didn’t make any sense.
Working hard was Dan’s way of life. He worked out every day, dieted and tracked his calories. But his death later was deemed to be caused by complications involving high blood pressure, Irma said.
Tyler’s immediate confusion gave way to feelings of anger.
Now, over 16 months later, his dad’s death still doesn’t feel real to him at times, he said.
“That evening, I feel like I lost my little boy,” Irma said, choking up. “It’s almost as if he felt like the weight was put on his shoulders, and he was like, ‘I have to protect my mom and my sister. I have to. What do I have to do going forward now that I don’t have a dad?’
“I just felt like he changed. He was very angry, and he matured so much faster, probably, in the week that passed.”
The family has healed to the point where seeing photos of Dan don’t evoke sad feelings. Still, Tyler finds himself searching for the answer to one question in particular.
“Does nothing matter because it’s all going to be gone at the end of the day? Or does everything matter because it’s going to be gone at the end of the day?” Tyler said. “I still struggle with that right now.”
He tries to figure life out by taking things slowly. He’s developed a perspective beyond his years, and reminds himself to be thankful for what he has.
“Senior night tonight, lose by 30, people are in there apologizing to me,” Tyler said. “I’m like, ‘It’s just life.’ That’s just how it happens. I mean, roll with the punches, come back.”
Tyler took a short break from basketball after Dan died to gather himself. For a stretch, Tyler went to hang out with friends a lot.
Being in the house just didn’t feel the same, he said.
“I’ve been trying to deal with myself in the most responsible ways,” Tyler said. “I don’t want to lash out. I want to be as nice as I can to everybody.”
Lately, Tyler’s realized how comforting it is to pass time with his mom.
“When he turned 18, it was like a little switch went in him,” Irma said. “Him and I watched some NBA games the other day. … And we just put together a bedroom set for him. You know, me, him and his sister, like, all day on Sunday. He even said, ‘Thank you, Mom. This was a really good afternoon, us all being together.
“It was probably the first time in that year and a half that it was, like, a comfortable us being together.”
“Does nothing matter because it’s all going to be gone at the end of the day? Or does everything matter because it’s going to be gone at the end of the day? I still struggle with that right now.” — Tyler Pepin
Danielle, Irma said, loves her pets and said she’s “very smart and compassionate when it comes to her friends and family.”
Tyler binge-watches television shows and is trying to get through “Naruto“ right now.
Basketball has been a large part of Tyler’s healing process, down to the practices teammates find to be a grind. Tyler compares his work ethic to Dan’s when he’s alone in the gym.
“I come in there, and it’s just like, ‘Let your mind be free,’” Tyler said.
Run The Show, a Cranberry Township gym, provided Tyler a way to turn to basketball whenever he needs. He has the pass code to the gym and would frequently go there to train.
“A lot of time when I would go shoot, it would be maybe 1 a.m. at the gym,” Tyler said. “It’s like another home there.”
The family sees constant reminders of Dan.
Tyler spends a lot of time with his cat, Willow, who the family brought in and bottle-fed as a stray kitten. Dan was a cat person, and Willow reminds Tyler of his dad.
“Now that the cat’s in the house, it’s almost like, ‘Your dad would love having this cat around the house,’” Tyler said. “It’s almost another part of our family that we can feel like my dad’s more around.”
Sometimes, as crazy as it might sound, they feel as if he really is.
Tyler, Irma and Danielle were talking about Dan one day in the kitchen, and a watermelon sitting on the counter swayed back and forth.
“I mean, it was rocking,” Irma said. “It was, like, a beautiful afternoon where we were all just, you know, together having conversation, and no one was trying to talk over each other. … What it should have done was roll off, right? It didn’t. It just rocked.”
“I definitely see a couple of signs of him, for sure,” Tyler said.
One winter day, Irma was having a tough time and asked Dan to send her a sign. Waiting in her car to pick Danielle up from school later that day, a perfectly intact snowflake stuck to her car window.
“Like, an actual snowflake,” Irma said. “The ones you imagine. … It didn’t even melt. It was enough time for me to grab my phone, get my camera and snap a picture. I was like, ‘That’s got to be him.’ I had never seen a snowflake in full form.”
Tyler doesn’t need any sign from beyond to know what his dad would think of him.
“I know he’s the proudest out of anyone in my life about me right now,” Tyler said. “He’s just happy — win, lose or draw — that I’m doing what I love for as long as I have.”
Tyler has a tattoo dedicated to his dad on his ankle, a stylized print of the date Dan died. Irma said she told Tyler she’d allow him to get a tattoo on the condition it was meaningful. When he told her that he wanted it to remember his father, she asked how he’d feel when people asked about it.
“He was like, ‘I’m going to tell them. It’s in honor of my dad.’”
