The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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2021 FOOTBALL RECRUITING ISSUE "The orphanage director emailed me. He said, 'The boy you journaled about … I believe you were praying for your own son.'" At the time, it wasn't so cut and dried. She'd been given a preliminary di- agnosis of cancer, and required sur- gery to confirm, settle on a progno- sis and a treatment path. Surgeons removed several lymph nodes, and eventually determined it was not, in fact, cancer. Still, the healing wasn't easy or of short duration — especially when she tried to get fully up to speed too soon. But once she bounced back and the Colsons pursued the adoption pro- cess by self-filing all the paperwork, it still took two full years to bring Junior to the states. Once they did, nobody looked back. "Junior is a very accepting per- son," Mrs. Colson said. "He loved us, accepted us and adopted us, the same way we did him. It's been a beautiful process, and we wouldn't change a thing." SPORTS AS A VEHICLE The Colsons learned enough Cre- ole to get by, while ushering Junior into sports to get a head start on him learning English. They put Junior into the same youth football program as their son, Josh. Intelligent as he is, Junior couldn't figure out what the coaches wanted of him. "Finally, one of the coaches came over to me and said, 'I know he's smart,'" Mrs. Colson remembered. "'He doesn't talk much. I can't get him to learn this play.' "I said, 'Coach, he doesn't speak English. Show him the play, and he'll do the play. Run it out for him.' So he runs it out for him, and you saw the light bulb go on in Junior's head. He was like, 'YES!' "It was a victorious, funny mo- ment. At first, the two of them weren't figuring it out. I don't think Junior even used enough words to tell me, 'I don't understand.'" Steve and Melanie Colson under- stood perfectly not long thereafter, when Junior declared his intention to play college football. They played along. Mrs. Colson recalled: "We were like, 'Oooo-kay! You're 50 pounds, and Haitians are typically pretty small. So we'll support you as long as the boat rides that direction … sure.' "We weren't going to tell him no. But the first three or four years he came here from Haiti, there was no indication this young man would grow up and be a Power Five foot- ball player." It wasn't any lock even going into his sophomore year at Ravenwood, Fowler remembered. The self-pro- claimed receiver wasn't headed for Ravenwood's starting lineup, and maybe not even for the two-deep. So the coaches sent him to play safety, where he experienced issues with backpedaling. He wasn't going to start there, either, so Fowler — the defensive coordinator and lineback- ers coach — waved him over. "The very first time I saw him move as a linebacker, I knew that's what he was going to do forever," Fowler said. "It was so obvious to me." A seven-on-seven camp confirmed that first impression, with emphasis. "He gets a receiver out in the flat, with all the space in the world and no pads on," Fowler recalled. "He runs full speed right through the guy's hip, without ever slowing down. The guy made a bunch of adjustments — he tried to juke, tried to stop and start, and Junior never broke stride. He just ran right through his hip. He always had him. He was able to make adjustments at full speed that nobody can do, or almost nobody. "People that come to mind when I think of it are [legendary NFL safe- ties] Troy Polamalu, Ed Reed, Bob Sanders, even Roy Williams from the Cowboys, years ago. These are guys that, when they go to tackle you, don't need to slow down much. In Junior's case, it's almost like he never slowed down. "He had the ability to do things that most people don't even have the potential to do, let alone actually execute it. And he did it perfectly naturally, because he'd never played linebacker." He did it well enough to not only start as a sophomore, but absolutely explode his junior season. The bur- geoning star recorded 175 tackles with 30 tackles for loss and 14 sacks on a 13-2 squad that finished as the state runner-up in Class 6A. Colson exploded as a junior linebacker, racking up 175 tackles with 30 tackles for loss and 14 sacks on a 13-2 squad that finished as the Tennessee state runner-up in Class 6A. PHOTO BY EJ HOLLAND 32 THE WOLVERINE MARCH 2021