Tailon Leitzsey doesn’t remember the exact number of days he slept in his car. He estimates it was eight. Leitzsey does remember getting “the best” night of sleep in his life Tuesday night though.
On Tuesday, Leitzsey wasn’t sure why Illinois’ Head Coach Bret Bielema called him, Alex McEachern, Christian Bobak and Michael Marchese to the front of the team room inside the Henry Dale and Betty Smith Football Center.
Bielema did a good job of hiding the fact that he was awarding the four walk-ons with full-ride scholarships.
Three of those walk-ons – McEachern, Bobak and Marchese – were immediately mobbed by the rest of their teammates. Leitzsey wasn’t. He sat in a front row seat and buried his face in his hands, overwhelmed with emotion with tears coming down his face.
Leitzsey thought about the nights sleeping in his car across the street from Illinois’ facility looking for an opportunity to try out for the football team. He thought about his six-month-old daughter Kairi and how the scholarship makes providing for her and his girlfriend Cherese easier. A chance was all he ever needed.
“Being a parent, you don’t want to be stressed out all the time because your child can feel that, so I was always trying to keep positive energy around here,” Leitzsey said. “That helps with my stress levels just easing mind of that. Focusing on school and football because I was also working too. Now I can focus on school and football, and being a dad, of course, that’s my favorite thing.”
He prepared himself for this. In the summer of 2018, Leitzsey woke up seven days a week at six in the morning and would work out from seven to 11. He would then go to his two jobs. The first at a daycare. The second as a dishwasher. He wouldn’t get home until 2:30 a.m. the next morning.
When he left his parent's South Carolina home at the end of the summer he drove to a new school, as a transfer from NAIA Missouri Baptists, with a checklist. The first point was to get into Illinois’ kinesiology program. The second was to make the football team. The third was to be put on scholarship. The first two, he admits, came quickly. The third took over two years.
Leitzsey knew that he would make the team if he was just given an opportunity. That’s all he wanted – and needed.
“My mindset was more so I’ve seen a lot of other people do that thing I’m trying to do,” he said. “I feel like, why not me? I feel like if I really put my mind to it and I want to work for it, I can achieve it. That was more what drove me is the understanding it’s not impossible. Even if it’s one in a million, there’s still a one percent chance I can do it so why not shoot for it?”
Almost none of this happened. It is only possible because Leitzsey decided to start playing football again in his senior year of high school. Leitzsey started playing football when he was three, but by the time he got to high school he says he was burned out, and he developed a love for basketball.
Still, the coaches at Riverside High School kept trying to get him to get back on the gridiron. Finally, as a senior Leitzsey decided to give it a try again during spring football practices. He almost quit, but once he got his first tackle the love for football blossomed and he stuck with it.
He was good enough to get a full scholarship to Missouri Baptist and played there his freshman season, but when he decided that he wanted to change his major to kinesiology he transferred because Missouri Baptist didn’t offer a program for it. He decided to transfer to Illinois because of the prestigious program Illinois offered.
The problem was he hadn’t been accepted to Illinois’ program at the time, but he was moving to Champaign to continue to pursue his education and football goals.
“I prayed about it and felt like God was really telling me to come here prior to me even leaving South Carolina,” he said.
When he arrived in Champaign, he didn’t have a place to stay. That’s why slept in his car. Some nights he splurged for an Airbnb, and he was able to create a relationship with the owner to clean and stay at the place for free.
He still needed an opportunity to try out for the football team though. That’s one of the reasons he actually slept in his car across the street from the football facility. Eventually, he got the opportunity.
“I knew I had put the work in,” Leitzsey said. “Coming here, I had zero doubts I would make the team. It was just getting in front of the coaches to get an opportunity. I actually asked them, I was like, ‘Look, I’m not coming here asking for a scholarship or nothing. I just want an opportunity to try out.’”
He made the team. He was then enrolled into classes, and then he was set up with a fellow walk-on D’Ante’ Cox. Cox allowed Leitzsey to stay with him for about a month for free. Through the journey a Bible verse, Mark 11:24 regularly popped up on his phone.
“Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”
Two of the three things on his checklist had been checked off, but he still hadn’t completed the third one. Despite making the team in 2018, Leitzsey didn’t play in a game in 2018 or 2019, but finally, in 2020 he played in his first game. He didn’t record a stat, but Leitzsey appeared in the Illini’s loss to Northwestern with Illinois’ secondary handcuffed with COVID and injuries.
Getting on the field for the first time wasn’t the highlight of Leitzsey’s fall though. His daughter, Kairi was born. Now he had to balance school, football, and fatherhood at the same time. He also was trying to find ways to pay for school with his busy schedule. The daily life of a college athlete doesn’t allow for regular hours at a traditional job, so he worked for food delivery services like InstaCart, UberEATS and Door Dash.
He kept at it though, still grinding to check that third box. Then Tuesday came when Bielema put him on scholarship. The third box checked off.
“It was a lot of stuff going through my brain,” he said. “I just had a daughter, she’s six months old, that was one of the major things just weighing on me knowing that I have to provide for my family, pay for school, try to make sure I can stay in school and play football.”
What made the moment sweeter is that he was able to celebrate the scholarship with his parents, along with his girlfriend Cherese and their daughter Kairi. Both Cherese and Tailon had a busy week of school with a couple of exams each, so Tailon’s parents came to Champaign to help care for Kairi.
“I came in and they were like, ‘How were the meetings?’ I was like, ‘They went well, by the way, I got put on full scholarship.’ I was nonchalant,” he said. “They were like ‘What?’ and then everyone is going crazy because they know the process. It’s amazing to know the sacrifices were worth it, and that I can finish these last two years and get a free education.”
