By Kiara Doyal, The Seattle Medium
Chalayia Jackson, President of the CD Panthers Youth Football team, continues to carry on a family legacy that started over 25 years ago, helping provide the youth of Seattle with a positive, nurturing, and safe place where they can have fun, build character, and grow into productive young adults through the sport of football.
Charles Jackson, Chalayia’s grandfather, coached, mentored, and guided young children through sports for almost 60 years. In 1995, Mr. Jackson formed the CD Panthers, and from there on, he has been known as the founder of Seattle’s Black community’s football culture.
There is probably not one young athlete who has grown up playing in the Seattle community center leagues—Rainier, CAYA, and now the CD Panthers—who has not come under the tutelage of Mr. Jackson. Now, Chalayia has taken the baton from her late grandfather in the next leg of the journey that is the CD Panthers football legacy.
“My grandfather founded the CD Panthers Youth Football [franchise] over 25 years ago, and at the time, I was not really involved until my youngest son started playing,” says Jackson. “I started as just a parent being there with my family to help run everything. I then moved on to being the registrar of the CD Panthers.”
“After [some] years went by, my grandad stepped down, and that is when my brother and two other people stepped up to [run the organization]. And, for roughly the last 10 years now, I have been the President of the CD Panthers,” she continued.
For Jackson, youth football wasn’t initially something she set out to do, but she says it has been a blessing to help youth and to continue to do so year after year.
“Now, after experiencing and going through it for so many years, what keeps me involved with little league football is more so the youth, and my family’s legacy pushes me to keep going,” says Jackson. “Especially for us as minorities, we don’t really have too much around here, so I try to keep things going that people can’t take away from us at all.”
With youth and gun violence being a prominent issue today within the Seattle community, providing kids with a positive outlet is something Jackson says is very important to her, and she feels it is important to have kids join sports at an early age.
“It is more about keeping their minds going by doing something positive,” says Jackson. “There is so much gun violence today, and this was one of the things my grandad did to try to keep kids off the streets.”
Like all seasonal programs, many people think that running a youth football program is not a year-round job because the kids are not playing during the off-season. However, Jackson expressed that there is little to no time off in the world of youth football when you run the organization.
“I get a month and a half off during the off-season where I will try to sneak in some time off, but at the end of the day, there is no time at all,” says Jackson. “It is just a balance that you have to have in life and something you have to have passion for to be able to make things work.”
According to Kyana MoiMoi, a long-time friend of Jackson, Jackson is all about giving back to the community she loves dearly, and she says that if Jackson sees a kid walking on the street, she will pick them up and take them to their destination.
“The biggest thing for me is seeing how rewarding giving back to the community has been for her, where there is no money coming out of it for her,” says MoiMoi. “That is just so big and is something I think the world lacks nowadays. So, I try to keep my kids around her and her energy, so they can lead with that too when they get older.”
As one of three girls in her family, MoiMoi initially wasn’t interested in football. However, everything changed when she became a mother to four boys.
“I just happened to live on the same street as Judkins Park, where I knew Mr. Jackson founded the CD Panthers,” MoiMoi recalls. “I signed my son up when he was probably around 7 years old—he is now 17—and I took him to his first practice.”
“All four of my sons have gone through the CD Panthers youth football program,” she continued. “My oldest even won a championship with them, and I think that is what motivated a lot of youth to get involved with Chalayia’s program because they can see how big of an impact it has had on the community.”
Overall, Jackson says the legacy of her grandfather and her commitment to do something positive for youth is what started her down the path of making sure that the CD Panthers is a positive outlet for the youth and a program the community can be proud of. But as each year goes by, she realizes that running a youth program for the community is something she was born to do.
“This is my life. I love what I do. I love my community so much, and I am one of those people that doesn’t really speak about what I am doing because my actions show a lot for it,” says Jackson. “This is my heart. I never thought I would be doing this, like I mentioned before, but I just feel like it is a calling from God to help my community.”