How an NC State football player’s special bond with his mom helps them both succeed
Jonnita Baker-Williams stood next to the Murphy Center with tears streaming down her cheek.
Her son, N.C. State nickel back Tyler Baker-Williams got off the bus with his teammates on a perfect September afternoon, preparing for the Walk of Champions.
The N.C. State band, cheerleaders and hundreds of fans made a path from Trinity Road to the Murphy Center and like he always does, Tyler easily located his mom for a long embrace. It wasn’t the first Walk of Champions for Baker-Williams. He’s played in 19 home games in his career; 19 times he’s stepped off the bus and greeted his mom.
Jonnita has been there every time, waiting for Tyler with a warm embrace. But this time was different. Tyler is listed as a junior on the roster because of the COVID year of 2020, but he’s really a senior. Maybe Jonnita realized this could possibly be his final first Walk of Champions. There’s a possibility she’ll only get to do this six more times, and then Tyler might be off. Maybe he’ll leave for the NFL, or maybe enter the workforce, if he decides not to take advantage of his extra year.
Jonnita wiped the tears from her face.
Maybe it was just a mother getting emotional as she watched her son, now a grown man and a leader of the Wolfpack defense, get ready to play the game he loves, a game he’s been preparing for his whole life.
But maybe it was something more. The hug at the end of the Walk of Champions could have reminded Jonnita of a different kind of walk: the walks she and Tyler take around Lake Johnson, a break during their scheduled jogs through Raleigh.
Starting early
Mothers and sons have different ways of bonding. Years ago, Jonnita and Tyler found theirs through running. Once a prep track and field athlete, Jonnita got into running shortly after she graduated from Campbell University. Tyler got it natural, it’s not like he could help it.
Jonnita ran while she was pregnant with Tyler until the doctor’s told her to stop. When Tyler started playing football, he wanted to play Mighty Mites with his friends. He was the biggest kid in his age group and the football league wanted him to play up a level. In order to stay with his peers in Mighty Mite Tyler needed to drop weight, so Jonnita got him up early and they ran together. That’s where it started and has continued through his prep career at Southeast Raleigh where he dominated on the field named after his grandfather, until now, his fourth season at N.C. State.
That’s right, even when Tyler has summer workouts with the team, he makes time to have weekly runs with Jonnita. It was tradition, but after a while it became more than that. It was comfort, a safe place, motivation for mother and son at times when they both faced obstacles; Tyler during COVID a year ago and Jonnita when she got sick within the last few years. The runs, the talks, the slow walks, turned into an outing that mother and son needed more than they realized.
“It’s like we were a team,” Jonnita told the News & Observer in an interview. “I helped him and then he helped me.”
At a young age, Tyler convinced himself that a bowl of cereal or a Pop-Tart would be enough to hold him on a run with mom. Tyler would sleep in as long as he could, then wake up at the last minute and grab something quick, thinking they would be back home in no time.
He learned his lesson early, when pains from an empty stomach had him questioning his lack of breakfast choices before running with Jonnita. He admits now part of it was him looking for an excuse to not run.
“I used to find ways to stop,” Tyler said. “Like my stomach is hurting, I’m cramping, I’m hungry, I haven’t eaten yet.”
When Jonnita wouldn’t budge, Tyler finally accepted this was going to be a thing whether he liked it or not.
“I realized I was cheating myself,” Tyler said. “So I just said forget it and started running with her.”
In the early days Tyler admits the runs felt like punishment. Jonnita could sense he felt that way as well. It gradually evolved into something Tyler may not always enjoyed, but tolerated. He was always into sports - football, track, basketball - and a lot of times the best athlete on the field. Around the summer before his freshman year of high school, Tyler realized he was always better conditioned than his counterparts. It clicked to him that running with his mom gave him an edge.
Developing a routine
Jonnita was always into sports, you could say it was in her DNA, eventually passed onto Tyler. Her father, John H. Baker, Jr., played 10 years in the NFL for four different teams. “Big John” as he was known as, later became the first African-American sheriff in North Carolina since the Reconstruction era, holding that post for 24 years.
On the weekends a young Tyler would make his way over to Southeast Raleigh and run, catch, throw, just about everything you can do with a ball, on his grandfather’s field. Putting in extra work was instilled in him at a young age, including waking up early while most of his peers were asleep. Tyler didn’t realize it at the time, but that prepared him for the life of a student-athlete, where workouts start at the crack of dawn.
“I definitely realize that now,” Tyler said. “It became a routine, that kind of trained me to fuel before your workout, which is what I do now.”
And Jonnita doesn’t let him off the hook during the grueling summer months, when Tyler trains with his N.C. State teammates in the afternoon heat. She still expects him to show up that morning for a run and he better give her the time that he needs to get back, or she’ll have him out all day.
“Tyler gets mad at me because I’m like Forrest Gump, depending on how I feel,” Jonnita said. “I can keep going and going. When we run downtown he likes to do a certain trail and I’m like ‘no Tyler let’s turn on Glenwood Avenue, you feel OK, I feel OK, you can do it.’ No telling where we end up if it’s downtown and then I get into Forrest Gump mode.”
Tyler, who has started 14 games in his career, doesn’t catch a break during the season, either. During the week was asking a lot, but he would show up every Sunday for a jog and Jonnita would be waiting, excited like a child waiting for a parent to return home from a long day’s work.
“I pace through the house waiting on Tyler,” Jonnita said.”He’ll tell me he’s coming at a certain time and I’ll be sitting by the door waiting on him.”
That bond, the runs, brought them closer during different tough moments. Last season, Tyler missed two games due to COVID contract tracing. While N.C. State took on Pittsburgh and UVA in consecutive weeks, Tyler was back home in a hotel, quarantined. He would go out for one thing, runs with Jonnita. It was the only way he stayed in shape during his time away from the team.
Tyler bounced back, reclaiming his starting spot for the final eight games, including a 14-tackle performance versus Miami, the best game of his career.
The runs with Jonnita, though, became less consistent.
Fighting forward
Two years ago, Jonnita was diagnosed with breast cancer, and while the runs with Tyler didn’t end, it obviously changed things. There was more walking than running. They talked and enjoyed the quality time, taking it all in instead of letting life pass them by as they blazed through the city streets.
Jonnita thinks that was an eye opener for Tyler, and suddenly she didn’t have to drag him out to run. Tyler recalled all those days she ran alongside him to drop weight for Mighty Mites, or ran with him during his time away from the team, and knew he could return the favor.
“He realized then that I had helped him along,” Jonnita said. “He was my motivation. He really helped me. It was like, ‘Tyler is going to come run with me, I can do this,’ so I pushed myself to run with him.”
If she calls Tyler, feeling up to getting out and getting some air, he’s there and they are out the door.
After beating it once, Jonnita’s cancer recently returned. When Tyler can get away, they spend more time walking than running —which is fine by them, because that’s when the real bonding starts.
“I’m an old school mom,” Jonnita said. “I don’t hold back.”
Keeping it going
School, football, life, girls, parties. Nothing is off limits to Jonnita.
“I’m all in his business,” Jonnita said before listing off questions she asked Tyler. “How is football coming? Tyler, what are you doing? You are not doing anything wrong, you’re not smoking or drinking? The momma stuff, all the momma stuff, all the nosey momma stuff.”
Jonnita joked that Tyler “doesn’t not answer the questions,” getting a response out of him even if, like most college students, he could do without his mom prying into his college life. The walks have trumped the runs for multiple reasons, one of them because as a Division I athlete, Tyler is in tip-top shape. But the more they walk, the more they can talk and build that bond.
“She’s the number one woman in my world,” Tyler said. “It means everything to just talk. It’s a time when I can just release everything, just tell her everything, feelings, emotions, anything that’s bothering me. I tell her everything and she always has the right response for me. It’s one of the best things I enjoy doing with her.”
As they walk alongside each other, Jonnita looks at Tyler, now 6 feet and 209 pounds, and can still see her little boy, just trying to make weight to play Mighty Mites. The years have flown by and soon Tyler will be done with N.C. State football and, perhaps, no longer in Raleigh.
Outside the Murphy Center on Thursday, ahead of the Wolfpack’s game against South Florida, there was Jonnita and family, waiting for Tyler. A mother and son embraced, tears running down Jonnita’s cheek. Her little boy doesn’t complain about running anymore; he looks forward to all their moments together, even if it’s just a quick embrace before a game.
The football season is young, and Tyler is busy with games, practices and school. He tries to continue to make it out on Sundays to walk with Jonnita. With improved health, they’ll get back to running again, too, back to those 10-mile trips throughout the city. If Tyler says he’s coming, Jonnita will be waiting by the door, sneakers laced up, ready to go.
“I just want us to keep doing it,” she said. “We hadn’t been doing it that much now because of me and my health. Some days I have good days, bad days, but he tries to come on weekends; if I’m up to it he will do it. If he’s willing to come, I push myself. Words can’t describe how that makes me feel to know that he’s there.”
This story was originally published September 4, 2021 at 1:05 PM.
