Marcus Freeman had been to Hanako Wyrick’s house in the middle of Los Angeles before — the first time serving just as an introduction, relaying information about Purdue, its football program and getting to know her son, Domonique Young. Freeman got a handshake in with Wyrick, who was a bit preoccupied corralling three kids under the age of 5.
The second time, though? When Freeman visited to offer Young a scholarship to Purdue?
That was a bit of a different vibe.
Wyrick, fully invested in the details of the conversation knowing Young's acceptance of the offer likely was imminent, locked Freeman into a hug, told him she trusted him with her son.
And she cried.
She cried because she realized what the moment meant for Young, the son she’d had at 16, the kid she’d brought to high school with her as a 6-week-old, the one she’d seen fall in love with football as a 9-year-old, the one she helped rise above a rough neighborhood infested with gangs and all the temptations that culture brings.
She wasn’t ready for him to go. Young wasn't ready to go. Who'd take care of mom with him gone? Who'd help out with his young siblings, a 5-year-old and 3-year-old twins?
But Wyrick knew it was time.
She knew it was right.
She knew it was the logical next step.
So she cried, happy, unashamed, proud tears in waves.
“It felt like a movie,” said Wyrick, reflecting on that visit, days before Mother's Day. “I was raised in Compton, that’s where I grew up. I didn’t go to college. I went back to school in my early 20s to even get my diploma. So for somebody to come to my house and tell me all these wonderful things about my child and tell me, ‘We’ll take care of him,’ that he’s made it a place that a lot of people don’t get and for them to have that much faith in his potential really made me feel good. But at the same time, not taking away from that’s Dominique’s talent and that was his hard work. It just made me happy.
“It was one of those things that dreams do come true. You know how they say, ‘If you work hard enough, you can have what you want.’ It was one of those things. I’ve seen his work since he was 9 years old turn into what he wanted to be. That’s why I was so emotional. Because it gives him that boost like, ‘Oh, I can really make it’ to where he wants to make it in his life.”
From a young age, Young knew what he wanted to be was a football player and to make his mom proud.
He's doing both now as a second-year receiver at Purdue and a 21-year-old who's proven to be determined, disciplined and dedicated to his craft and his family.
They’re traits Young showed even as a kid — ones he insists he got from his mom and ones she insists he didn't.
It was her, though, who knew the importance breaking away from an environment that too frequently took promising young men, entangled them in violence and trouble and didn’t let them go. She was determined not to let that be the case with her son.
An unlikely encounter helped her find football.
During a routine visit to the store, Wyrick struck up a conversation with a man who said he was a coach, and she learned about a team. So she took a 9-year-old Young to the park for a tryout. Initially, she says he didn't like it. But once Young realized he was good, that changed things.
“It was something for him to do, so he wouldn’t be in the neighborhood all the time and not have anything to do. I’m just grateful that he excelled at it and that he enjoyed it,” said Wyrick, fitting in a 30-minute conversation this week during a morning commute to work as a city bus driver in L.A.
But football wasn’t the only key to keep Young on the right path.
Wyrick had to get her own place once she the baby and got a job working at McDonald’s to try to support him. She attended high school as long as she could after she learned of the pregnancy — she says she actually went into labor in a class — and brought Young to high school with her after he was born. But, ultimately, she needed help. And it was the support from Wyrick’s family that was imperative. Young called his grandmother, Billie Hunt, his “second best friend” (after his mom), and Wyrick’s father and brother supplied positive role models of men in his life, Wyrick said.
But Wyrick herself made up for anything Young seemingly was missing from an absent father: She was the provider, the protector, the disciplinarian, the final decision-maker, while still being the encourager, the nurturer, the intent listener.
Wyrick did all she could to keep Young away from the neighborhood by having him attend different schools. Young was OK with it, realizing the potential dangers around him, and even woke up at 5 a.m. during junior high to take a two-hour bus ride to school in Orange County.
“I wanted him to go to better schools and get him away from that neighborhood, the neighborhood we grew up in, because I didn’t want him to be a statistic: You have mother who is 16 when you’re born, the odds of you being a gang member or in jail or even dead are very high,” she said. “He had good role models. I had my whole family.”
When he wasn’t in school or at football, Young hung out with his mom as much as he could. He fondly remembers “mommy-son time” as a kid when they’d go watch a movie or grab some food. Even as he got older, Young didn’t want to give that time up. He cherished every moment spent with her, soaking in her brutal honesty, her advice on any situation and talking to her about football — even if she doesn’t understand much about the game and his descriptions often had to include him acting out things. (And still do.)
Young never was worried he’d get made fun of for hanging out with his mom. Never was worried of being called a momma’s boy.
For one, "it's true," says the guy who had a picture of his mom hanging over his bed from the time he was in third grade up until when he left for college.
For another, "Even if I did, it really didn’t bother me. I had a mission to get somewhere."
“When I was younger, I just always knew I wanted to play football. It’s always just been there,” Young said. “My mom would always say, ‘You can’t hang out with these people and these people and do this and that if you want to get to where you’re going to go.’ Just as I got older and started meeting people who played football and meeting people who played in college and in the league, they were saying the same thing my mom was saying. So I just put my head down and was like, ‘You know what? I’m not going to hang out with you guys because you guys aren’t on the same mission as I am and I don’t want to stray away from that and do something that might cause me not to get to where I go.’”
And that's where Purdue came in.
It was Young's best opportunity to maximize his football potential, as well as give him an opportunity to attend a reputable college. And it was 2,100 miles from home.
A broken ankle essentially wiped out Young’s senior season in high school — a pivotal one, considering he’d just converted from defense to his preferred receiver position — and prevented him from getting many offers to play football at big colleges. So he went the junior college route. And, even then, just as he did in junior high and high school, Young had the maturity to want the best option, even though it was farther from home and would require sacrifice. Young attended Cerritos — and it took him two buses and a train ride to get there each day. But he knew it was the better choice in terms of football growth.
And, deep down, his mom did, too.
“She was just always supportive,” Young said. “She honestly really doesn’t like football much because I get hurt a lot. But she just supports me. It made it easier instead of having a mom who didn’t want me to do it. Whatever made me happy.
"No matter what I did, she was always there for me. She always says, ‘I have your front and your back,’ so it means ‘I have you no matter what you do.’ I didn’t really realize what it meant until I got here, until I saw how she still supports me while I’m here. It’s not like, ‘Oh, you’re in college, you’re on your own.’ Because I have some friends who went D-I and their parents are just like, ‘OK, now you’re there.’ But she’s still supporting me. It’s cool just to know I’ll always have her there for support, if I’m having a bad day."
Young always has been open with his appreciation and love for his mom, Wyrick said, but these days, those emotions are mostly shared in a phone call.
Both admitted it's been hard to be so far away from each other, and it took time for Young to get settled in West Lafayette. After arriving on campus last July, he called his mom and cried. He had held together on the drive to the airport and saying goodbye at the airport, but once it was official, once he was at his new home in Indiana, it was rough. Mom felt it to, that absence, that missing piece of her heart, but she knew he needed encouragement. So she gave it.
Supplying the right words at the right time. Just like always.
“When I first got here I was kind of depressed because it was the first time I’d been away from home, I didn’t really know anyone and football was extremely hard — the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was sort of beat up,” Young said. “I would always call her. She was (saying), ‘Just stick with it. It’s going to get better.’
“It was always that I wanted to come home — to be home — because I missed home. It wasn’t like I wanted to leave to come back and not do this anymore. I think the first time I said that, that’s what she thought I meant. She said, ‘No.’ She’s like, ‘You worked that hard to get there so you have to stick it out.’
“It got better. Now I love it.”
Young still calls when he’s upset, when he’s sad, when he needs advice. But he also likes to be able to call his mom at random times, just to check in and let her know he's thinking about her.
He's hopeful she'll get to attend a Purdue game in person this season, and she's making plans to get to at least the regular-season home finale, which would be senior day.
It'll be a special moment, for sure, to have Wyrick in the stands again. Her work schedule limited her ability to attend many of Young's games while he was in high school and junior college, but he remembers breaking receiving records at Cerritos in one game she attended.
But that’s November.
This is May. And this is when Young gets to hug his mom again.
With the break between finals and Maymester coinciding with Mother's Day, Young was able to fly back to L.A. Friday to spend a week at home, the first time he's seen his mom since January. With an unexpected three consecutive days off — Saturday, Sunday and Monday — Wyrick is be able to bask in his attention again. They’ll probably go to breakfast, he’ll probably have a card, maybe some flowers, for her to celebrate all that she means.
And they’ll just talk. They’ll laugh. They’ll share. They’ll enjoy being together, a mom and son who may be far apart in miles but inseparable in bond.
“He’s grown up to be a very dependable and determined young man,” Wyrick said. “He’s the type that if he says he’s going to do something, he does it. He’s never given me any problems. He wasn’t a bad kid. He wasn’t hard-headed. He wasn’t rebellious. He was just very focused on what he wanted to do.
“Domonique makes good decisions. So I’ve never really had to feel like he’s going to go the wrong way because he makes good decisions for himself. Honestly, he makes being a parent easy. He’s a different type of kid. I was blessed with Domonique.”
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