Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BY DAN MURPHY W hen Jay Hayes packs his bags to move to South Bend this sum- mer there's one item he surely won't forget. Hayes has worn a recreation league basketball jersey under his pads during football games as long as he can remember. The aqua blue jersey with a white No. 2 on the back was a gift from his father. Joe Hinds was a big enough man that his former jersey can still fit his 6-4, 275-pound son without stretch- ing it to threads. He was athletic, a former high school track star in New York City. He was strong, too, hardy enough to withstand a few bullets and stab wounds from a life lived hard in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighbor- hood. Hinds died when Hayes was 11 years old from a gunshot wound to the head. His death ended a six-month string that robbed Hayes of the three most influential male figures in his young life — his father, his uncle and the man to whom he was closest, his grandfather. "I still have that shirt," Hayes said. "My father used to tell people that I'd be in the NBA or in the NFL and that I could do whatever I want, and that always made me proud." The year after those deaths Hayes joined an organized football team for the first time. Football, Hayes says, taught him how to be man. It steered him down a path he otherwise doesn't think he would have found. It makes him see the road in front of him in a different than most 18-year-old high school football standouts. "Football is the vehicle," Hayes said. "Football can take you many places if you dedicate yourself, if you do every- thing right and you grind constantly. It's like a cab in New York. You have to pay. You have to pay for cabs, but you just point it in that direction and it'll get you there." Brooklyn Native Jay Hayes Sees Football As A Vehicle For His Future Hayes is the only player to make the MSG Varsity All-New York City team for three consecutive years. PHOTO COURTESY USA FOOTBALL