Usually it’s dad.
Dad played football. Dad may even be coaching his son. So dad’s usually the one riding the ballplaying son when things aren’t going right on the field. But it’s not just dad, says Aaron Hall ’25, graduate student and standout ballplayer. He recalls a time when he wasn’t playing to his capacity.
“It hits different when your mother comes up and whispers some choice words in your ear,” he says. “When she comes up and tells you you’re playing soft, that’s a different drive.” Not the kind of don’t-upset-mom you expect to hear from a third-team all-ACC defensive tackle – or from his mom.
But it doesn’t surprise Tracie Canada, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke. Moms, that is, are doing a lot more with their football-playing sons than they’re usually given credit for. And that’s especially true of Black moms, as she discussed in a piece for Essence magazine last year that grew from her 2025 book “Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football.”
“Fathers, and coaches as pseudo-fathers, figure predominantly in popular conceptions of sport,” she says in the Essence piece. But they’re not the most important figures in the football lives of their sons, she told DukeMag. “The argument that I end up making is that football can’t happen without the moms.”
“Moms are the gatekeepers in a way,” she says. Canada asks. “What became interesting to me was this really interesting dynamic where these moms were so incredibly important to the entire enterprise, and in a way, they’re incredibly invisible to the entire enterprise.”
“It’s a beautiful form of care, of how they are caring for their sons, how they are investing in them and trying to make these things work for them.”
- Tracie Canada
Canada grew interested in all this as an undergrad at Duke, when she lived in Randolph dorm, which included first-year football players. She ended up working in the football recruiting office, where she saw more of the football families and began framing questions about their experiences. Black men were overrepresented in the cohort, so that became part of the story, too. “When you are a Black person living in a body that is bigger, larger, taller than the norm, that is seen as a stereotyped body, that’s a body that is seen as dangerous, as threatening in the world outside.”
In grad school she focused on those young men, following teams and players around. Practicing ethnography, or as she says those in the field call it, “deep hanging out.” She asked questions: “How do you balance the sport and school? How do you take care of your body, because your body is beaten up by this sport?” Along with her interest in the teams and the players, she says, “I would dub myself a kinship scholar” – someone who looks into friendships, family connections, and how they relate to her topic. “I’m interested in relationships.”
Enter the mothers.
Dads, traditionally, tend to shift into something of a coaching role with their sons in football: “It’s a sport played by men. It’s coached by men. It’s run by men.” Whereas moms … ?
“They wanted them to be OK as players, but they had a more holistic, humanistic interest in their sons as, like, are you OK as a person?” Over her years of research into how football affected its college players – and especially its Black players – the moms kept showing up. They did the work of hauling kids back and forth to practice (and sometimes stepping in to help coach, and not always gently, as Hall noted). They became team moms for youth players, setting up banquets and other support. They sat together in the stands, supported each other, created community. Canada sat with moms in the stands, listened to stories, and moms ended up as a full chapter in her book.
And it’s not just coming from the moms, she learned. “In a reciprocal way, if you just focus on the sons, they bring their moms into these conversations all the time. They’re giving them credit: ‘She’s the only reason I’m here.’ ‘She’s the reason why I have these clothes.’ ‘She’s the reason why I thought to do this.’ And when something happens focused on an experience specific to a Black player? Again: mom.
“I had several people who would tell me that they might have interactions with police that were really scary for them. They weren’t sure what they were supposed to do. And after the situation ended, they would immediately call their mom,” Canada says.
Football teams – especially college football teams – commonly describe themselves as a family, with players, coaches and administrators all buying into the metaphor. Canada certainly sees big-time college football providing care for its players, but with the money and focus on winning that define the game, she distinguishes between what she calls “corporeal concern” and “kindred care.” The first is the concern the player can expect from the school: academic resources, food, travel, medical care. On the other side was something more organic, growing in the locker room and outside it. Not that the teams and schools don’t care for the players; just that moms bring something different.
“Something I think is different and is what is coming from moms, is this more holistic concern for you as a person.” She uses the term “kindred care,” which she bases on author Octavia Butler’s book “Kindred,” which deals with issues of family and communities. “These moms are doing the work, attempting to make sure their sons have access to that care. “It’s a beautiful form of care, of how they are caring for their sons, how they are investing in them and trying to make these things work for them. These women are playing a significant role in the system, and I would argue, are still part of the reason why the system even exists. And so I would like to write them back into the narrative, to recognize their contributions, to say the moms are incredibly important to this.”
VJ Anthony and his mom, Bonnye Anthony
#7 DEFENSIVE END | TRINITY ’25
Vincent “VJ” Anthony Jr., All-ACC honorable mention defensive end, cuts to the chase. “I was a mama’s boy when I was younger, so any time my dad was coaching me hard and I never understood it, I went to my mom and she kind of explained things, made things smoother for me.” Like way smoother. When as a kid VJ wanted to play football, his mom, Bonnye, suggested flag football for safety, but that got a hard “no” from dad. Bonnye told the coach’s wife she wanted to be on the field for support: “You can’t be on the field unless you’re a team mom,” the coach’s wife said. “I said, ‘Well, sign me up.’” Bonnye spent years getting snacks and ordering pompoms. “Several of those players are still friends of our family,” Bonnye says. “I still talk to their parents.” And it’s not all just stereotypical mom stuff. VJ remembers the time his mom helped him learn place kicking: “That’s my first time kicking it, and her to hold it? And my mom never played football.” Because the family lives in Durham, Bonnye says, “we’ve opened up our home to players that attend Duke that can’t get home, so I just love that camaraderie.” VJ concurs. “Black mothers have been doing this for years,” he says. “All mothers that have a son in sports. I’m just glad this is being talked about.”
Tre Freeman and his mom, Tomika Freeman
#12 LINEBACKER | TRINITY ’25
“Unwavering support” is how Tre Freeman, two-time all-ACC linebacker, describes his mom. His mom, Tomika, agrees. “We’re not really looking at the X’s and O’s,” she says, “and we don’t really care how they can get better on that rectangular field. But, like, are you having fun? Do you love this? Is this what you want to be doing?” The answer was always yes, so the support remained, and she feels like she’s the ultimate winner. “I’m getting to see my son shine in spaces that people in my family have only dreamed about.” Like many Black moms, she worried about presumptions about why her son was at Duke: “In the beginning we talked a lot about his insecurities. Other people would see him in class and see, oh, he’s an athlete, and then discredit whatever he had to say.” She kept his spirits up. When classmates did make assumptions, professors upbraided the classmates, not Tre, and the confidence she had planted grew. All the years as team mom, “the early mornings, long drives, the wins, the losses, those are all the things that created moments where we grew closer as mother and son. As teammates in this life.” She has made him song playlists all his life. She’s sent pump-up music before big games, but now her playlists are more philosophical: “You’ve done what you’ve done; this is where you are. Now, let’s trust and see what happens. Whatever it is, it’s for you and it’s OK.”
Aaron Hall and his mom, Tishna Hall
#99 DEFENSIVE TACKLE | GRAD STUDENT
After a game against Virginia, teammates teased Aaron Hall that he may have overdone it on the post-shower cologne. His mom, Tishna, leaned over and took a big sniff. It may not even have been about the cologne; what mom can resist a big breath of a big son? “He was a preemie,” she says of her 6’4” defensive tackle, the captain of his team. “And now I have a massive handsome love bug.” That’s a mom talking, and Aaron appreciates it. “Something you have to know about my mom, but I think all Black mothers, is their level of unconditional love.” She’ll push him, criticize him, challenge him. “But pushing you, carrying you, picking you up when you’re down.” And he doesn’t limit that. “My mom and other Black moms are not the only moms who have treated me like their sons. That’s the best part of being here. It’s just a mom overall – and how much they do and contribute for this community and this program at the end of the day.”
Jayden Moore and his mom, Janice Moore
#8 WIDE RECEIVER | REDSHIRT SOPHOMORE
Jayden Moore says his dad was commonly his coach, and made sure to keep the coaching on the field or the court. “He was trying to stay coach – not be that dad that stays all over his son.” In a household of five competitive kids, that meant his mom had to apply occasional tough love. That doesn’t mean his mom, Janice, lost track of what she loved: “To watch my sons grow in a sport that they love, but also to see that just authentic joy when things go right, to see them experience the really low lows of when things don’t.” Janice, who is of Filipino and Irish heritage, learned early on that, “As a mom to five black children, if I did not provide them a safe space at home to explore their interests, to learn about who they are, the world is going to tell them.” Jayden says he experienced some eye-opening realities growing up. But “don’t let your worst enemy live between your two eyes,” he says his mom taught him. “You have to be strong and be who YOU are.”
Wesley Williams and his mom, Paula Williams
#97 DEFENSIVE END | TRINITY ’25
“I don’t know that much about football,” Paula Williams says when talking about supporting her son Wesley, who was honorable mention all-ACC as a red-shirt junior. But she’s been looking out for him from the start. He was always large for his age and she worried about him playing with older boys because of his size. In their family football was a pursuit, but not the only one. “You don’t have to be an athlete, but you’re going to do something,” she says her family told their kids. “You’re not just going to come home from school and sit around.” Wesley remembers not just support but leadership. “You can’t allow other people to box you in,” he said, and judge you based on size, skin color, or other secondary qualities. “Like, I’m a big Black football player,” which could allow others to think they knew how to categorize him. Paula always wanted her children to be known for the gifts and talents they possessed. “Know who you are, and know whose you are,” he says Paula taught him – by which she meant a child of God. And criticism helps you improve, but that didn’t mean unkind language: “When we were kids … like say we dropped something or messed up, and we’d say, ‘I’m so stupid.’ She’d say ‘No you’re not.’” “Of course they’re strong and they have muscles and physical prowess,” Paula says. “But they’re treasured members of a family unit and deeply loved.”