Life riddled with hardship hasn’t slowed one of N.J.’s biggest track stars – NJ.com

For virtually all of his teenage life, Jakai Coker’s mother proved she was a fighter.

She refused to give in to an illness which has taken far too many far too soon — until one December day late last year, Valerie Thurston could fight no more.

It was the morning of Christmas Eve 2018 when the West Side senior track star’s life was turned upside down.

His mother died following a six-year battle with cervical cancer, just one week shy of Coker’s 18th birthday and six months before his high school graduation.

The emotional pain began immediately, but it wasn’t until the following morning when Coker felt an emptiness unlike anything he had ever experienced before.

“I woke up thinking like, ‘I can’t even go tell my mother Merry Christmas,’” Coker said. “Ever since I was little, she was always the first one to tell me Merry Christmas. For her to be gone that morning, that hurt.”

Six months earlier, Coker joined exclusive company in the track community after finishing first in the ‘Emerging Elite’ 400-meter hurdles championship at the New Balance Nationals in North Carolina, clocking in at a career-best 53.43 seconds.

Following his mother’s death, Coker continued putting on a strong face to the outside world despite “hurting pretty badly” internally. In public settings, he’ll often hide his true emotions behind a trademark smile and affable personality.

He acknowledged that only those closest to him even knew of his mother’s illness and has since honored her memory in forever fashion with three tribute tattoos inked across his arms and legs.

“There’s always beauty at the end of all pain,” one script reads.

“To go through what he’s been through,” West Side track and field coach Ricky Meekins said, “that’s one strong brother.”

The captivating sprinter and hurdler from Newark said he now uses track and field not so much as an escape from reality, but rather as an “escape from my pain.”

Still, not a day goes by where he’s not thinking about his mother. His rock.

“And whenever I win, I feel like she’s right there, watching over me, telling me she’s proud of me,” said Coker, who also serves as a leg on West Side’s 4×400 relay team, which ran the third-fastest time in New Jersey this spring last week at the Essex County Relays (3:19.67).

“It’s painful, but it has just made me work harder because I know what she wanted from me. … Now I’m holding myself to her standards more than ever.”

‘SHE JUST KNEW IT WAS RIGHT WHEN I WALKED IN WITH MEDALS’

Coker’s mother was diagnosed when he when in sixth grade, long before he emerged as one of the best athletes in the state.

While battling the illness and all the treatment that came with it, his mother rarely was able to attend track meets during his high school career.

For the most part, she only knew of her son’s long list of successes from the stories he told and the medals he brought home.

“She’d always be happy about those when I showed her the places on the medals,” said Coker, a Penn Relays qualifier this year and currently ranked inside the Top 20 nationally in the 400-meter hurdles.

“She’d be like, ‘Oh that’s good, Jakai,’ even if sometimes I wasn’t happy with them myself. She didn’t really know any better. She just knew it was right when I walked in with medals.”

Walking in now is different for Coker.

He and his older sister, Aatiyah — and her four children ranging from a 3-year-old boy to 11-year-old twin girls — were forced to move following their mother’s death, unable to afford their previous home any longer.

The six of them now cram into a small two-bedroom apartment in Newark — the three young girls sharing a makeshift bedroom in the living room — with Coker having the added responsibility of helping care for his nieces and nephews any time his sister isn’t around.

He won’t hesitate in assisting with everyone’s laundry, preparing dinners or helping the group wake up and get ready for school each morning, despite his own hectic schedule as a student-athlete.

He smiles and shrugs off the notion of it all being too much to handle.

For Coker, nothing comes before family.

To outsiders, he might be recognized as one of the most electrifying athletes in the Garden State.

But at home, he’s simply ‘Uncle Jakai.’

“I figure, my sister is busy enough with work and taking care of all six people in the house when she’s home,” he said. “So doing some laundry or making some dinner is the least I can do.”

‘HE JUST LEFT ME’

Coker, also a wide receiver and safety on West Side’s football team who appeared on NJ.com’s list of the 40 most underrated players in 2018, has no choice but to stay strong these days.

On top of everything else, he is a father himself — after growing up half his life without one.

He was dealt his first life-altering blow nearly a decade ago when a man he believed to be his biological father left him and his mother after DNA tests revealed otherwise.

Coker had just turned 9.

“He found out he wasn’t [my father] and [stopped] speaking to me,” Coker said. “That hurt a lot, being that I was only in second grade. He just left me.”

It wasn’t until three years later when Coker learned that his true biological father died a few months before he was born.

What he has endured would be enough to break anyone, let alone a teenager.

But not Coker.

He was forced to grow up fast, but he’s become stronger through all the hardships he has encountered.

“Now I want to be able to give my son the father I never had,” Coker said. “And I want him to have everything I didn’t have.”

Coker said his son, Mekhi, who recently turned 2, spends weekdays with his mother but gets time with him on weekends when he isn’t busy, which around this time of year isn’t too often.

He’s been focused on earning a college track scholarship in hopes of bettering the lives of everyone around him in the future.

That possibility was nothing but a pipe dream years ago, largely because of struggles and an admittedly lackluster attitude in the classroom early in his high school career.

That mindset has changed dramatically — and so, too, have his chances of becoming a collegiate student-athlete.

“It’s time to finish strong,” Coker said. “I’m striving for that harder than I ever have been before.”

And right now, it’s all clicking for the West Side senior.

Meekins was happy to report that Coker is currently enjoying the “best academic year he’s had” since he has been in high school and “rounding into form” athletically as championship season nears.

GREATNESS IN REACH

At last week’s Essex County Relays, Coker — who began his high school career at Weequahic, where his older brother, Aakir Johnson, was a jumping star — was a busy man en route to earning four medals in four events, including three golds and a silver.

Coker had the top individual time in the 400-meter hurdles (54.32) to lead West Side to a first-place finish, served as legs on the team’s school-record 4×400 (3:19.67) and second-place 4×200 relay teams and, combined with teammate James Bell, won the overall title in the long jump at 40-9 1/2.

“A good day, but not a great day,” Coker said. “We’re looking for great days.”

The good day resulted in Coker having a hand in 38 of West Side’s 60 total team points, as the Roughriders finished third overall behind St. Benedict’s and Seton Hall Prep.

“Track-wise, the kid is just phenomenal,” Meekins said. “A lot of people don’t understand that because of football, by the time we get him indoors, he’s way behind everybody else. We had a 10th-grader beating him indoors this year and I had to break the news, like, ‘You ain’t gonna touch him outdoors.’ He’s just a whole different athlete come the spring.”

Over the next few weeks, Coker has his eyes set on more greatness to punctuate his final high school season.

His first goal is to not only beat, but “shatter” his Nationals-winning mark of 53.43 in the 400-meter hurdles. Another on his list is going sub-3:15 with his 4×400 relay teammates, a mark which could potentially earn the Essex County program a Meet of Champions title in June.

As far as college is concerned, it’s a waiting game to see if a school comes calling.

All it takes is one.

“I want to go to college,” Coker said. “When I first got to high school, I didn’t know I could be a D1 athlete. I wasn’t on top of everything school-wise as I should have been. But now I see I have the ability to be one so I’m working harder than everyone else.

“I should have offers by now, but my grades weren’t there. Now I’m the first one in class at school, the first one done with my work and I want my mom watching down on me telling me how proud she is of me. Going to college is something I know my mom would have wanted.”

It’s also something his coach believes is destined to happen.

In Meekins’ mind, there’s no one more deserving than Coker.

“He’s just such a strong kid and the character of this kid is amazing,” he said. “We put a lot of pressure on him to do this, to do that and he always gets it done. That’s the beauty of it. His character is off-the-charts. There’s no doubt he will be successful at a college somewhere.

“Things can only get easier for him.”

JJ Conrad covers track and field for NJ Advance Media He may be reached at jconrad@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JJ_Conrad. Like NJ.com High School Sports on Facebook.