It was an October day in Virginia in 1998 when Ayinde Eley was born. Before his arrival, Eley’s father, Donald Hill-Eley, the offensive coordinator at Hampton, tended to his wife, Songhai Barclift, but was torn. He had practice to lead, and the Pirates had a big game that week.
“I was young, didn’t understand all that family stuff,” Hill-Eley said. “So I left and went to practice and by the time I came back, I had a son.”
So it began for Hill-Eley and his son Ayinde – football was something they shared, but also something that conspired to keep the father apart from many of his son’s biggest moments in the game.
As Eley was growing up into a fine player, one who would play first at Maryland and then at Georgia Tech, his father almost always was with his own team when his son played his games.
“I never felt any type of way, really,” Eley said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It was always good. I just tried to play good or do good so I had something to tell him.”
But, in Eley’s final college season, a payoff neither anticipated has arrived. After coaching hundreds of sons not his own, Hill-Eley is on the Tech staff with his own child on the roster. First as an offensive analyst and now as running backs coach, Hill-Eley shares practices, games, road trips and, not least, lunch in his office with his son. In a season marked by change and rejuvenation, one that continues with the Jackets’ game at Florida State on Saturday, Donald Hill-Eley and Ayinde Eley have experienced both in a manner that goes far deeper than coaching changes and wins and losses.
“(Eley) and his dad, they have always been connected through football,” Barclift said. “Even when (Hill-Eley) was in Alabama and Ayinde was in Maryland, that was their thing, to talk about their upcoming games. So I think this is like a full-circle moment for them.”
The bond through football was much simpler when Eley was a young boy. At that time, Hill-Eley was offensive coordinator and then head coach at Morgan State, an HBCU school at the FCS level in Baltimore. Little Ayinde watched game video on his dad’s lap at home and tagged along with him to practice and meetings.
After a particularly sloppy game by the Bears, Hill-Eley elected to go with an unusual method for teaching discipline.
“I got so mad, I was like, ‘Hey, you guys want to act like children, I’m going to let you be run by a child,’” Hill-Eley said.
The team had to run gassers – sprints from one sideline to the other and back twice – and little Ayinde was in charge. Hill-Eley figures he was probably 5 or 6. To his delight, Eley realized that, when he blew the whistle, the players had to run.
“He had a lot of fun that day, and a lot of the players today still remind me how hard he ran them all day,” Hill-Eley said.
Around 2004, Barclift, an OB-GYN with the U.S. Public Health Service, was sent to work in Mississippi. She went with her son, and Hill-Eley stayed behind to coach his team at Morgan State.
“I think when he was really young, he did miss his dad not being there,” Barclift said. “He would always say, ‘I wish my dad coached and I would play.’”
But Hill-Eley tried to use football to connect with his son across the miles, getting to know his son’s coaches and going to Mississippi to run camps for Ayinde and his teammates.
“I think he always felt his dad’s presence on the team,” Barclift said.
Mother and son returned to Maryland in 2007 – Barclift and Hill-Eley divorced shortly after – but it was still complicated for Hill-Eley to watch his son play. Even when Eley was playing youth football, and on through his time playing in high school at Good Counsel High, then at Maryland and finally at Tech, Hill-Eley typically was able to make it to one game a year.
“If everything lined up, two,” Hill-Eley said. “But never three.”
Hill-Eley told Ayinde that it was a sacrifice that both had to make as they pursued their goals and honored their commitments.
“It’s not that I’m being a deadbeat and not being there for him,” Hill-Eley said. “I made a commitment that I was going to be a head coach of a team, I was going to run an organization. He made a commitment to play.”
Still, Hill-Eley was able to watch recordings of games and got live updates from Barclift. He communicated with Eley’s coaches. In a way, there might have been a benefit, as Barclift saw it. Her son was able to develop his own identity in the game apart from his father. She thinks it wasn’t by accident that he chose defense and linebacker, as Hill-Eley coached on the offense.
Still, “he always played well when his dad came,” Barclift said.
Credit: Donald Hill-Eley
Credit: Donald Hill-Eley
When Eley arrived at Tech in January 2021 as a grad transfer from Maryland, Hill-Eley was head coach at Alabama State, another HBCU school at the FCS level. They were geographically closer, but there was still little chance that Hill-Eley could watch his son play in person. But, seven games into the season, he was fired.
Then-coach Geoff Collins invited Hill-Eley to finish the season with Tech as an analyst. At first, he couldn’t understand the firing. But he came to see the dismissal as a way for him finally to be able to watch his son play.
“Now when I look back on it, I wasn’t fired,” Hill-Eley said. “I was given time to be able to have one of the most enjoyable moments of my life, to raise my child and to be able to give him something where I can fist-bump him and say, ‘Son, I love you. Go out there and have a great day.’”
It looked like their shared time might end with the 2021 season. Hill-Eley was planning to become an assistant coach and special-education teacher at Alexander High. Fate had better plans. Mike Gregory, an analyst at Tech, left in June to take a coaching job at IMG Academy. Collins asked Hill-Eley if he would like the job. Hill-Eley said he was going to take about a $30,000 pay cut from the job awaiting him at Alexander.
“But I was like, I’m not going to miss this opportunity and pass it up,” he said.
It has proved the wisest of decisions. As Eley has developed into one of the top linebackers in the ACC, his father is finally able to enjoy all of it. Eley is the only FBS player since at least 2000 to hit the following benchmarks through seven games – 71 tackles, 9.5 tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks, three forced fumbles and two fumble recoveries. His play is a significant reason for Tech’s vast improvement on defense.
Linebackers coach Jason Semore credits Eley’s excellent practice habits (“he practices really, really hard,” Semore said) and the instincts he’s developed as a sixth-year senior.
“There’s probably 15, 20 plays in a game where the ball’s snapped, he knows what play is coming,” Semore said.
“(The 2021 season) was probably the most we’ve been together in a football season till now, and he’s in the building every day with me,” Eley said. “It’s just a blessing to have him here. It’s just funny how God works.”
Beyond that, the two are able to share the sort of time that they had missed not just because of football, but because they were separated geographically. They share lunch in Hill-Eley’s office daily. On Sunday nights, Eley often goes to dinner at his father’s home in South Fulton, joining his stepmother, Kelley, and his brother, Jacob, a freshman at Westlake High. Hill-Eley calls them priceless moments for the two of them.
“Just some good old-fashioned father-son time,” Hill-Eley said. “Not really dealing with anything but, ‘Hey, man, how’s life?’”
After Collins’ firing, interim coach Brent Key promoted Hill-Eley to running backs coach.
“It’s the most ironic thing,” Hill-Eley said. “I’m coaching running backs, so we’re in practice, I get to see him all the time. You know how hard it is to tell one of the running backs, ‘You’ve got to knock the hell out of No. 2,’ knowing that’s your child?”
There are more pleasurable moments. Eley said he doesn’t necessarily go looking for his dad after he makes a big play.
“But it does feel good when you do something good and you’re like, ‘Oh, my dad is here,’” he said.
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