Light from the setting sun catches Jahsen Wint as he sits in the lobby of Pacplex, a multipurpose athletic facility in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, NY, after a workout. Nearly every day after school, Wint would go to the complex to lift weights and do football drills on the indoor soccer field.

During an Erasmus Hall practice at the team's field in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, Ohio State defensive coordinator Chris Ash observes Wint as he runs through drills designed to show his ability to play defensive back at the collegiate level. “I didn’t think a school like that would come all the way to Brooklyn, to come see me,” said Wint. “It was nerve-racking because the way I performed that day would determine whether I would go here or not — or get the offer.”

At home after an afternoon workout, Wint heats a bowl of Jamaican porridge in the microwave. As a high school sophomore, Wint left his mother's house to live with his aunt in a quieter neighborhood in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn where he could better focus on preparing athletically and academically to earn a college scholarship.

In Wint's bedroom, a friend from school takes the braids out of his hair, a ritual that doubles as something like meditation. "My time to think," said Wint. "It's just soothing."

When Diana Wint took in her nephew, she became something like a second mother to him. Among those new duties meant teaching him to drive. During their first lesson, Diana shrieked as Jahsen peeled off down the street in front of their house in her BMW coupe, giggling at his aunt's reaction.

A couple days before Wint would leave Brooklyn to move into his dorm in Columbus, Ohio, his family and friends held a surprise going away party for him at his aunt's house. As Wint ceremoniously cut the cake, which was decorated to look like Ohio State's football field, his mother, seated on the couch to his right, captured the moment on her phone.

Shortly after Ohio State's orientation luncheon for the freshmen football players and their families, Wint walked through the indoor practice facility with his aunt, uncle, and young cousin, feeling a sense of vindication. "I didn't waste my time," he said. "I didn't leave my mom's house for no reason."

Diana Wint sheds a tear as she hugs her nephew goodbye outside his new dorm at Ohio State University.