Mom | "Ecstatic Again" For Deion Colzie & Notre Dame Commitment
Yolanda Jackson was in pain when her son, Deion Colzie, decommitted from Notre Dame, the school she always dreamed he’d end up at, back in March.
“It was extremely difficult for me. I’ll be really honest, when he first decommitted, it hurt me to the core,” Jackson says.
But as a mother, she didn’t let that prevent her from doing what she knew was the best thing she could do for her son.
“I realized he needed to take on the active role in the recruiting process,” she says. “At the end of the day, the schools are recruiting him. We want them to have input from his parents, from his family, but at the end of the day, they’re recruiting him.
“It has to be a good fit for him. He’s the one who is going to be spending the next four years there getting an education and playing the sport he loves. It’s important that he is able to make that decision and describe what the best fit is for him.”
Jackson knows that parents can often see things kids just don’t have the experience to see, but she also understands part of gaining that experience comes from going through it for themselves.
“That’s why I was hurt when he decommitted,” she says. “From my point of view, I was seeing things that I didn’t think he saw with respect to attending Notre Dame.”
So, she gave him the space the 2021 Georgia receiver needed to sort through a bevy of options.
“I wouldn’t say I backed off 100 percent, but I would say I backed off probably 90 percent,” she says. “One of the things that I didn’t do; I didn’t press him. I didn’t bother him a lot with questions about where he was or where his head was or what he wanted to do. Every now and then, I would ask him a question like, ‘How was practice? What schools are you hearing from?’”
But it wasn’t easy.
“I kept praying that he would see the things I was seeing as a parent,” she says. “I was hoping that those things would become apparent to him at some point and he would make the right choice for him.”
Colzie’s mother and his stepfather, Frank Jackson, were honest and told him they’d be there for him no matter what.
“Frank and I both told him, of course we wanted him to go to Notre Dame, but we were going to support him 100 percent wherever he ended up choosing,” says Mrs. Jackson.
The atmosphere and the academics were two of the biggest reasons they believed Notre Dame was the best place for Colzie, who is currently at Athens Academy.
“It’s a family atmosphere,” his mother says. “It’s a small campus, private school, very similar to where he is now.
“Education is a key. Of course, they have great academics there as well. It’s an excellent academic school, which is the first concern for me. I want to make sure he goes somewhere academics is a high priority. That’s the biggest thing for me. The reality of it is I just really wanted him to be able to have a really good education and be able to have a degree that’s going to be really worth something. That’s not saying a degree from anywhere else wouldn’t be worth anything, but the 4 for 40, you can’t beat that.”
And in the end, Colzie came to the same conclusion, announcing his commitment to Notre Dame on Monday.
“I had to allow him that space and that opportunity to do what he felt was right,” says Jackson. “It turns out that he ended back up at Notre Dame, which I honestly think was destined to be.”
She says she feels the same way she did the first time Colzie committed to the Irish almost a year ago.
“I’m ecstatic. I’m happy. It was a process that I understood he had to go through for himself and sort things out. I’m just glad that he ended back up at Notre Dame.”