March 22, 2022 • 26 mins
A child of a broken home, McDonald finds her calling — and her refuge — on the playing field. She grows up competing against her brother, cousins and other boys in the neighborhood, and no matter what the sport — basketball, volleyball, football, track — as the child of two talented athletes, McDonald can do it all. But she now shares for the first time how deceiving appearances could be: McDonald’s early athletic prowess hides from the public a childhood of shattered dreams, the ravages of drug abuse, and the abandonment of her father’s imprisonment.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heeart Radio. Previously on Payback. This is the biggest game
in the lives of these US players. We wanted better hotel,
better travel. We were asking for the chance to be
the best in the world, and they said no. Everyone
(00:22):
tried to put blocks up along the way. You know,
you guys should play little stadiums. You guys can't fill
a big stadium where like, yes we can. It got
really heated to the point of mia and myself basically
telling the federation they could go f themselves. It is,
you know, our job. We felt to create something better
(00:45):
for another group of players, to keep this movement going. No,
it's hot, Glenn mill Arizona scorching hot. You step outside,
I mean your fingers just hits the sun and it
just singes your finger. And we were those kids that
(01:08):
would drink out of the water hose all the time.
How did we not die of heat stroke? How do
we not die of dehydration? For Jessica McDonald, childhood and
Glendale looked much like it might for any upbeat kid
with a passion for sports. Basketball here track there even
a little football thrown in I signed up for everything,
everything possible, like you name it. I played it for
(01:30):
people who didn't know just well. It was a natural
athlete at home on a playing field. At least that's
how it looked. The only way that I was allowed
of the house growing up was stoop sport, and I
took advantage of that. Oh, I can go to the
park to go play football with my cousins, okay by,
(01:50):
But I wasn't allowed to go to friends houses. I
wasn't not doing anything it is. It's just a very
strict household. I used sport as this coping mechanism because
I hated being home behind closed doors. Reality was far darker.
They're Jesse's childhood was full of shattered dreams, a childhood
she has never fully talked about until now. Sports really
(02:15):
saved my life, literally saved me in every shape, way
or form that anybody can ever imagine. The beginning, I
was given the rare opportunity to see for myself from
the Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News, An Observer, McClatchy Studios, and
I Heart Radio. This is payback. I'm Alexandrea, and this
(02:37):
is part two a coping mechanism. We need to wear
the masks. Photos on the walls. Yeah, your house is
(03:06):
like a museum of it is my sister's me a
calendar with all the birthdays on it. You have to
so you can keep track of Yeah, I know that's
like actually will probably be there helpful for us to
get a picture of. Kevin McDonald is showing us around
his mother's house in Glendale. So this is the family tree,
(03:26):
so to speak. It's the spring and producer caught to
Stevens and I came here to get a sense of
the life Jessica McDonald left behind, Sybil Ring, Dammy, Stephanie, Laurie, Tracy,
my meet little Abbey. Kevin McDonald is Jessica's uncle on
her mom's side, one of eight maternal aunts and uncle's
(03:47):
jess has Is this you, Kevin, Yeah, that was my
senior pictures for high school. Yeah. Kevin is soft spoken.
He's fairly tall, sports long, thin, dreadlow loo similar to
Jessica's own taste, and has an athletic build that supports
his own history in sports and the family's legacy of
raising professional athletes. Spurs five. Tracy McDonald was probably eighth
(04:15):
grade right there was really young but oh my gosh,
and teams have won all of those. Jessica's mom, throughout
high school would get letters of intent from all of
these schools, and my mom always kept them. It's a
photo album about that, thick front and back pages, each
one with four or five letters in him. Jesse's mom,
(04:38):
Tracy McDonald, did not respond to our repeated attempts to
interview her for this podcast. I always was in Tracy
shadows for sports, but she was just so phenomenal. I mean,
she was just gifted. This is tracy sister, Lorie McDonald,
who was one year older. We didn't have all the
training and the clubs, and we didn't have that stuff.
It was just raw natural taling. Oh yeah. She always
(05:02):
bragged about her accolades and everything that she did in
high school. Here's how Jas remembers it. You know, I've
heard all the stories from all my aunt's, uncles, my mom,
even of course my grandmother. How just incredible of an
athlete she was at around five ft nine, Tracy will
cast more than just a physical shadow over this story.
(05:23):
There's McDonald shot. She's got like a dozen trophies surrounding her.
Medals and ribbons. Tracy started playing varsity sports and depression.
She was then only a woman on a voice soccer team.
She threw the football farther than our varsity quarterback. All Star.
In basketball, Tracy has the career high points McDonald. She
(05:47):
still holds that record. He has not been broken. It
was her junior year when she broke it, so she
still had a whole another year to go. She was
supposed to be the first woman in the NBA. Schools
across the country wanted her. It looks like some sort
of sportsmanship award. Tracy was just a fucking piece. She
was about to turn forty when the w NBA started
getting big, and I go just go walk on to
(06:09):
the Mercury and just going to the gym and shoot
around with them. They're gonna ask you to try out.
I'm telling you, she's still one of the best athletes
in Arizona, that girl. But Kevin also remembers Tracy's rebelliousness.
He told me Tracy was always close with their father,
just as grandfather, who was diagnosed with cancer while Tracy
was in high school. That's when Tracy began acting out.
(06:32):
My mom was a single mother, so my mom started
working the graveyard ship she worked at night. Lori McDonald
she told me that she and Tracy grew up incredibly
close and played on the same sports teams, So there
was no adult at our house at night, and every
guy within a five mile radius knew there was five
girls at that house unattended that were over the age
(06:55):
of fourteen. You see where this is going. At the
age of fifteen, Tracy became pregnant. In she had Brandon,
Jesse's older half brother. Two years later, still in high school,
Tracy had Jessica Marie McDonald on February. Tracy's promising athletic
(07:18):
career crumbled and her future in sports was replaced by
teen motherhood. At the end of the day, she taught
me sacrifice jess again. She had a kid, and she
thought that was it for her. She sacrificed not not
going to college, not taking her ticket to the next
level of sports in her education. For me, essentially, I
(07:42):
was able to find some of those old news clippings
which waxed on Tracy's athletic ability. A forward on Cactus
High Schools basketball team, Tracy averaged almost thirty points a
game during a summer tournament before her junior year. And
scored thirty nine points in a single game, which officials
thought was a tournament record. Her whole time in high
school to those years she was pregnant. Jesse's aunt Lorie
(08:04):
McDonald again, I was the manager for the boys soccer
team when Tracy was on the boys soccer team. She
was full blown, seven eight months pregnant, running up and
down that soccer field. I'm not surprised that Jessica is
who she is because that's basically her mother had her.
Mother fulfilled her potential. Watching my big sister, it was
(08:26):
one of the greatest times in my life to watch,
you know, and then to see Jessica do it all
over again. Kevin McDonald again, and that's actually Brandon and
Jessica when they were babies. Oh my gosh, so cute.
She's gonna be song bearss. We'll be right back. So
(08:49):
right now, we're driving to Circle K Park in southern Phoenix.
We're about to go meet Jessica's father. Vince Vincent Myers
is a complex man with the complex past. I haven't
met him. I've been able to find any pictures or anything.
So he's agreed to meet us and sent a location.
(09:10):
I mean I'm hoping that he shows up at this
point and we can hopefully get enough time with him
to ask him all of the questions I have, because
I've written down about a thousand just dosn't often mentioned
Vincent interviews, And as far as I can tell, we're
the first reporters to speak with him about his daughter.
I it be some nuts and run. He's so time,
(09:34):
you know, but it's pretty safe area now. Instead, show
up exactly as he said he would. They're in the park.
The afternoon sun carved shadows across the nearby South Mountain preserve,
a warm breeze blew through the palm trees, and children
raised around a big playground. You'll hear some of those
(09:55):
sounds in our conversation with him. He's pretty cool, not
to hear, no good a shot, getting quiet a whole
lot from when I was younger. In those younger days,
areas near here in South Phoenix were mostly known for
gang activity. It wasn't the sort of place Vince envisioned
ending up because in those younger days he was a
(10:18):
gifted athlete as well, and there's clearly something of a
rivalry over which side of the family gave Jess her
world class jeans at oh that comes the family, football, basketball, baseball, track,
anything they were dealing with sports played. I've heard stories
(10:39):
of Tracy as well, but it was nothing. I ain't
gonna bragg and then it was nothing like my my background.
It runs way down the line in my family. There's
some pride in that good natured rivalry. But in Vince's case,
I wonder if there might be something else there too,
That athleticism might be one of the few things he
(11:00):
feels he did give his daughter growing up, because he
also told me he knows how much he didn't give her.
I fell off into some bad habits, real bad, bad
enough to keep my keys wait from me, that's baton
thing I would regret. It's just not spending enough time
with my keys. When he was younger. This was twenty
(11:24):
six when Jess was born, eight years older than Tracy.
He told us that at the time he made money
dealing drugs. Jess told us that in the years after
everyone paid the price. My dad he was a drug
dealer growing up. He's a drug dealer before I was born,
and my father was in and out of the penitentiary
a lot throughout my life, so I don't really know him.
(11:45):
I had pictures of him. I could probably count on
one hand how many times I saw him from Dale
was born until I was about seventeen. According to arrest records,
a little over a year after Jess was born, this
was arrested there in mary Copa County and charged with
an array of narcotics violations. I did like five years.
(12:06):
I ain't been bad, but you know, when I was
out finding out missing my kids. You know, she might
not remember, but ucome to at a point that I
went to prison, and when I got out of prison,
we spent a little time. She knew who I was,
you know what, And I like it should have been.
(12:30):
Who knows that Fence and Tracy had a future together anyway,
But incarceration would answer that question for them and for Jess.
There were no father daughter bedtime stories with Fince, no
orange wedges on the sideline, not even weekend visits to
the state prison outside Phoenix. Like back, I'm like, what
are you doing with my mother? If you were, if
that was your job. Anyway, there were a lot of
(12:52):
times where I would see all my teammates, all their
parents are there on the sideline at games, whereas I
didn't have a single soul at times. Jess was six
when her father was given parole, but then says he
didn't exactly try to make up for lost time. We
still has been too much time because when I got
out of working all the time just to keep me occupied,
(13:14):
and I go back into the lifestyle and stuff. I
should have been in her life a little bit more.
As she was growing up, and with Jesse's father largely
out of the picture, Tracy shouldered the responsibilities of single
motherhood as new forces would begin to disrupt any semblance
of peace that might have existed at the time. Needless
(13:36):
to say, in the McDonald's house, all hell was breaking loose.
We're heading to at the house that Jessica grew up
in for part of the time when she was younger. Kevin,
Jessica's uncle, sent me this dress. It's been here since
(13:57):
she's been here. In the areas, probably she whached a lot.
Even from our conversations with Vince, it's I mean, he
was sketched out to meet in that park kind of
and was making sure that we were safe and everything.
But it didn't seem like an area to be worried about,
and so I wonder how this area kind of compares.
Kevin McDonald was always close with his older sister Tracy,
(14:19):
and he's only twelve years older than Jess. They all
lived together in the same house for the early years
of Jesse's life than this is it. Sometimes we even
shared rooms. You know, her and her brother were there,
I was there. It's it was like having a little
sister at home. At the time he was a teenager,
Kevin was a doting uncle. It turned sixteen, I got
(14:41):
my license. My new job was being a chauffeur for them,
go pick them up from practice, dropped them off at practice,
you know, so I was always running back and forth.
That was a big part of my childhood in high
school was those kids. That closeness also meant Kevin saw
parts of Jesse's home life the few others did. During
(15:04):
my year of reporting for this podcast, I reached out
to Tracy multiple times, but had little success. We did
briefly speak by phone one time, and even scheduled this
trip to Phoenix because she said she would meet with us.
Sorry box is full, but that was the last I've
heard from her. Jess and her half brother Brandon, have
(15:26):
different fathers. He would continue to live with their maternal grandmother,
but Jess and Tracy would eventually move into a new
place with Tracy's new boyfriend. So it was this part
of the house I think so yeah. According to Jess
and corroborated by other family members I spoke with, the
environment in this home was horrific. I watched my mom
(15:47):
get abused a lot. She got beat all the time
for the first fifteen years of my life. I'm like,
every other day, I just said, there, watcher, just get
beat by her boyfriend, and then no, she would reciprocate
that on me. We were unable to reach Tracy's boyfriend
at the time to get his side of what happened,
so we won't be naming him in this podcast. I
(16:09):
was scared. I was scared for my life, and you're
actually the first person I've ever told that too. It's
my mom. If I tell someone and she finds out,
I'm scared that something horrible is going to happen to
me from her. That's just how it always was, you know.
So I was always just as quiet kid. I was
always in the shell, never told anybody what was happening
(16:30):
at home, never told anybody. I was a scared little girl.
Jess says that the boyfriend never hit her and that
much of the abuse she received from her mother was verpal.
But as Tracy allegedly battled in her demons and endured
relentless physical abuse, the question of when she might suddenly
unleash that fury on her daughter onto jess throughout her
(16:51):
childhood were Jessica was young. I do remember one particular
time to get album mark on her base and we
did say something crazy. But absolutely I can only imagine,
you know, the physical and the mental and the verbal abuse.
Laurie McDonald again, I would not discount anything that Jessica
said about the physical abuse at all. I mean, it's
(17:14):
like a one in a million shot that Brandon and
Jessica didn't end up selling drugs on drugs in jail
on the street, just didn't really have a mom war
dad once just his father, Vince had made a more
stable life for himself, he became a slightly larger presence
in his daughter's life. Has told me that he never
(17:34):
understood the true conditions for jess at home until years later.
It was some instance, you know, when I used to
pick up sometimes she would be sad. I figured she
You know, she would tell me whenever was you know,
she feels like talking about it. But when she really
started really talking about it, I wanted to say, why
(17:57):
you didn't you know what she young and you know
she play was scared, frightened of a mama. You know what.
I never did push the issue because a figure she
had tailed me when she really wanted to too. My
biggest takeaway from the neighborhood where jess grew up is
(18:20):
that it's in the vicinity of a few big parks
just down the road from Jessica's old house. This looks
like it's a big field. There are basketball courts, a
big open field, and playground equipment. If you're a kid,
this is where you'd probably hang out. And jess says
that if her mother saw the value in anything at all,
(18:41):
it was sports. The only way that I was allowed
of the house growing up was do sport, and I
took advantage of that. Oh, I can go to the
park to go play football with my cousins, okay by,
but I wasn't allowed to go to friend's houses. I
wasn't not to do anything. It's it's just a very
strict household. I was allowed to just go play sport.
For Jess that outdoor space wasn't just a patch of grass,
(19:03):
it was a lifeline. People were like, if you knew
that you couldn't be a pro athlete, like, what would
it be on my god, I have no idea. I
might even be in prison for all I know. And
so thank God for spourth and God I had that
ability to play. That was my escape, that was all
I had, and so naturally jess played them all. We'll
(19:27):
be back after this. Jess would be hard pressed to
remember a time she wasn't an athlete like her mother
before her sport was where she found her idols. Jessica
had a group of six or seven cousins that were
all boys, all of my sisters. They all had kids
about the same time. During Jesse's childhood, sports were the
(19:49):
only thing in her life. Basketball, track, football, soccer, anything
that got her out of the house. When they were
all younger, they would go and hang out and play
at the parts or soccer or football or field hockey
or whatever we're doing. But they were always together. Jess's
uncle Kevin told us that even in a family of
star athletes, Jessica Speed always stood out. It was almost
(20:12):
this need to run faster and go further than just
about anyone around. One of my fondest memories of Jessica
and all of her cousins was when they very first
started running track. Kevin remembers the moment he first saw
it and that he was one of the few people
in the stands who understood what jess may have felt
like she was running from. Jessica was just this really
(20:35):
little girl, and then her cousins were all super athletics,
so whatever they did, people were always cheering for him.
So Jessica was like, I want people to cheer for me,
and they were like, where you're running next, we're gonna
cheer really loud for you, you know. And she gets
out there and they made all the little kids her age,
boys and girls line up. There was probably twenty thirty
of them, and she looked like she was scared out
(20:56):
there with her big old tank top on it, like
it didn't fit. And they fired the gun and they
were just going to run one lap around the track,
and all the kids took off and Jessica just left
the pack. And when she came up that straightaway, you know,
she's just running as hard as she came, and she
looked up and saw all of us just jumping up
and down yelling for her. She had the biggest smile
(21:18):
on her face and she started slowing down. We were like,
no kee, Randy. So she finished the race and then
immediately ran off the track, ran up the thing, and
then just go did you guys see me kick everybody's button?
From that moment, I was like, nobody will ever be
able to stop this girl and anything she does athletically.
I'm like, she beat boys and girls too much. Just
(21:39):
His mother played basketball and her father football, but when
it came to soccer, the biggest influence on Jess was
her half brother Brandon. He also started playing soccer as
a child and hasn't stopped yet. In two thou eight,
Brendan McDonald made it to Major League Soccer and a
girl from thirty five yards out for the Galaxy. Brendan
McDonald playing on the same l A Galaxy team as
(22:02):
David Beckham and Landon Donovan. Today he plays in Southeast Asia.
We were unable to connect with Brandon for this podcast,
but he and Jesseph remained close despite the physical distance
between their careers. My brother started soccer when he was five,
and that was all he played his whole life. That
was just like his sport. He was just good at
and I was there to just witness it all. Jess again.
(22:25):
Over the past year, I interviewed her for nearly ten
hours in her home, at soccer stadiums and on video calls,
and then I finally came to an off season and
my grandmother was kind of like, Okay, what's the next
sport that you want to play? And I was like,
you know, I let's try soccer. She's like, yeah, you
should blaze soccer like your brother Brandon. I'm like, okay,
you know, at the time, I didn't know my left
foot from right foot. To be honest, I knew the
(22:47):
game at that age. A basic knowledge of the game
and I drive to outrun everyone else was all Jess needed. Oh,
very shocked as she had developed on our first seen
of place soccer Jess's father then I think I've first
seen her play when she was seven night and I
wasn't a soccer fan until she started playing. Until I
(23:10):
started going to gang, I was like, oh man, this
is pretty interesting. She was very athletic, very she could
play both of anything. And do most anything. At the
time she was in middle school, jess was about five
ft five. Those who saw her play described her as
relentless on the field, we're on the court or any place.
(23:32):
She could compete in any sport. When Jessica started going
to that grade school that I went to, I have
two friends that I went to high school with and
they were like, we knew your niece before we knew you.
Another memory from Jesse's uncle, Kevin, and I was like,
what are you talking about. They were like, we went
to this grade school to help referee these games for
all these kids. So I had a tournament and there
(23:55):
was a girl playing on the boys team. So she
was in the seventh grade playing for the eighth grade
boy and was out there killing them. She was out
there outrebounding, hustling, chasing people down, blocking shots. He was like,
it was amazing. I was just tickled to death that
there's a little girl running guys off the court, you know.
I was just like, yeah, they won the championships. One afternoon,
(24:18):
when jess was about twelve, she tagged along with Brandon
to one of his soccer practices. He was playing at
the time for the Sereno Soccer Club, a powerhouse travel
team in the Phoenix area. Over the past four decades,
the boys and girls Sereno programs of one hundred and
fifty Arizona state championships and two national titles. Sereno has
become a household name and talent pool her top level
(24:40):
men's and women's college and professional coaches. Some thirty different
men and women who played for Sereno soccer teams have
gone on to play professionally. But for preteen Jess, killing
time at her brother's Sereno practices was mostly just a
way for her to get out of the house. One day,
she wandered over to a side field enrolled the ball.
The was about twenty yards out from the goal, well
(25:02):
past the top of the penalty box. Little did Jess
realize how much was about to change in her life.
She happened to be at soccer field one day and
she was just smashing balls into the net Less. Armstrong
was the director for the Serena Soccer Club at the time.
She looked very tall, compan up to the other kids,
and so somehow somebody communicated with her and asta if
(25:24):
she wanted to play. Suddenly, soccer was more than just
a temporary escape from home. It could be a way
out entirely. And on part three of Payback, I thought
my grandmother I wouldn't be where I am today. Thank
you guys for coming. This is a great day because
she got a game coming out. You'd have to be
blamed to not see Jess McDonald. Every single coach in
(25:46):
the country wanted Jess McDonald, and Lawrence was coming. He
was recruiting me. This is my dream school. My recollections
are mostly trying to find her. I'm thinking, oh gosh,
I know why the grandmother's involved. Guests don't have no
reading this stuff. But we don't choose appear in the
way we get. I'm Alexandrea. Payback is a production of
(26:07):
The Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News and Observer, McClatchy Studios, and
I Heart Radio. It's produced by Cotta Stevens, Casey Toth,
Julia Wall, and Davin Cockburn. The executive producer for iHeart
Radio is Sean ty Tone. For lots more on this
story and to support journalism like this, visit Charlotte Observer
dot com slash payback or News Observer dot com slash
(26:29):
Payback and for more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heeart Radio. Previously on Payback. This is the biggest game
in the lives of these US players. We wanted better hotel,
better travel. We were asking for the chance to be
the best in the world, and they said no. Everyone
(00:22):
tried to put blocks up along the way. You know,
you guys should play little stadiums. You guys can't fill
a big stadium where like, yes we can. It got
really heated to the point of mia and myself basically
telling the federation they could go f themselves. It is,
you know, our job. We felt to create something better
(00:45):
for another group of players, to keep this movement going. No,
it's hot, Glenn mill Arizona scorching hot. You step outside,
I mean your fingers just hits the sun and it
just singes your finger. And we were those kids that
(01:08):
would drink out of the water hose all the time.
How did we not die of heat stroke? How do
we not die of dehydration? For Jessica McDonald, childhood and
Glendale looked much like it might for any upbeat kid
with a passion for sports. Basketball here track there even
a little football thrown in I signed up for everything,
everything possible, like you name it. I played it for
(01:30):
people who didn't know just well. It was a natural
athlete at home on a playing field. At least that's
how it looked. The only way that I was allowed
of the house growing up was stoop sport, and I
took advantage of that. Oh, I can go to the
park to go play football with my cousins, okay by,
(01:50):
But I wasn't allowed to go to friends houses. I
wasn't not doing anything it is. It's just a very
strict household. I used sport as this coping mechanism because
I hated being home behind closed doors. Reality was far darker.
They're Jesse's childhood was full of shattered dreams, a childhood
she has never fully talked about until now. Sports really
(02:15):
saved my life, literally saved me in every shape, way
or form that anybody can ever imagine. The beginning, I
was given the rare opportunity to see for myself from
the Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News, An Observer, McClatchy Studios, and
I Heart Radio. This is payback. I'm Alexandrea, and this
(02:37):
is part two a coping mechanism. We need to wear
the masks. Photos on the walls. Yeah, your house is
(03:06):
like a museum of it is my sister's me a
calendar with all the birthdays on it. You have to
so you can keep track of Yeah, I know that's
like actually will probably be there helpful for us to
get a picture of. Kevin McDonald is showing us around
his mother's house in Glendale. So this is the family tree,
(03:26):
so to speak. It's the spring and producer caught to
Stevens and I came here to get a sense of
the life Jessica McDonald left behind, Sybil Ring, Dammy, Stephanie, Laurie, Tracy,
my meet little Abbey. Kevin McDonald is Jessica's uncle on
her mom's side, one of eight maternal aunts and uncle's
(03:47):
jess has Is this you, Kevin, Yeah, that was my
senior pictures for high school. Yeah. Kevin is soft spoken.
He's fairly tall, sports long, thin, dreadlow loo similar to
Jessica's own taste, and has an athletic build that supports
his own history in sports and the family's legacy of
raising professional athletes. Spurs five. Tracy McDonald was probably eighth
(04:15):
grade right there was really young but oh my gosh,
and teams have won all of those. Jessica's mom, throughout
high school would get letters of intent from all of
these schools, and my mom always kept them. It's a
photo album about that, thick front and back pages, each
one with four or five letters in him. Jesse's mom,
(04:38):
Tracy McDonald, did not respond to our repeated attempts to
interview her for this podcast. I always was in Tracy
shadows for sports, but she was just so phenomenal. I mean,
she was just gifted. This is tracy sister, Lorie McDonald,
who was one year older. We didn't have all the
training and the clubs, and we didn't have that stuff.
It was just raw natural taling. Oh yeah. She always
(05:02):
bragged about her accolades and everything that she did in
high school. Here's how Jas remembers it. You know, I've
heard all the stories from all my aunt's, uncles, my mom,
even of course my grandmother. How just incredible of an
athlete she was at around five ft nine, Tracy will
cast more than just a physical shadow over this story.
(05:23):
There's McDonald shot. She's got like a dozen trophies surrounding her.
Medals and ribbons. Tracy started playing varsity sports and depression.
She was then only a woman on a voice soccer team.
She threw the football farther than our varsity quarterback. All Star.
In basketball, Tracy has the career high points McDonald. She
(05:47):
still holds that record. He has not been broken. It
was her junior year when she broke it, so she
still had a whole another year to go. She was
supposed to be the first woman in the NBA. Schools
across the country wanted her. It looks like some sort
of sportsmanship award. Tracy was just a fucking piece. She
was about to turn forty when the w NBA started
getting big, and I go just go walk on to
(06:09):
the Mercury and just going to the gym and shoot
around with them. They're gonna ask you to try out.
I'm telling you, she's still one of the best athletes
in Arizona, that girl. But Kevin also remembers Tracy's rebelliousness.
He told me Tracy was always close with their father,
just as grandfather, who was diagnosed with cancer while Tracy
was in high school. That's when Tracy began acting out.
(06:32):
My mom was a single mother, so my mom started
working the graveyard ship she worked at night. Lori McDonald
she told me that she and Tracy grew up incredibly
close and played on the same sports teams, So there
was no adult at our house at night, and every
guy within a five mile radius knew there was five
girls at that house unattended that were over the age
(06:55):
of fourteen. You see where this is going. At the
age of fifteen, Tracy became pregnant. In she had Brandon,
Jesse's older half brother. Two years later, still in high school,
Tracy had Jessica Marie McDonald on February. Tracy's promising athletic
(07:18):
career crumbled and her future in sports was replaced by
teen motherhood. At the end of the day, she taught
me sacrifice jess again. She had a kid, and she
thought that was it for her. She sacrificed not not
going to college, not taking her ticket to the next
level of sports in her education. For me, essentially, I
(07:42):
was able to find some of those old news clippings
which waxed on Tracy's athletic ability. A forward on Cactus
High Schools basketball team, Tracy averaged almost thirty points a
game during a summer tournament before her junior year. And
scored thirty nine points in a single game, which officials
thought was a tournament record. Her whole time in high
school to those years she was pregnant. Jesse's aunt Lorie
(08:04):
McDonald again, I was the manager for the boys soccer
team when Tracy was on the boys soccer team. She
was full blown, seven eight months pregnant, running up and
down that soccer field. I'm not surprised that Jessica is
who she is because that's basically her mother had her.
Mother fulfilled her potential. Watching my big sister, it was
(08:26):
one of the greatest times in my life to watch,
you know, and then to see Jessica do it all
over again. Kevin McDonald again, and that's actually Brandon and
Jessica when they were babies. Oh my gosh, so cute.
She's gonna be song bearss. We'll be right back. So
(08:49):
right now, we're driving to Circle K Park in southern Phoenix.
We're about to go meet Jessica's father. Vince Vincent Myers
is a complex man with the complex past. I haven't
met him. I've been able to find any pictures or anything.
So he's agreed to meet us and sent a location.
(09:10):
I mean I'm hoping that he shows up at this
point and we can hopefully get enough time with him
to ask him all of the questions I have, because
I've written down about a thousand just dosn't often mentioned
Vincent interviews, And as far as I can tell, we're
the first reporters to speak with him about his daughter.
I it be some nuts and run. He's so time,
(09:34):
you know, but it's pretty safe area now. Instead, show
up exactly as he said he would. They're in the park.
The afternoon sun carved shadows across the nearby South Mountain preserve,
a warm breeze blew through the palm trees, and children
raised around a big playground. You'll hear some of those
(09:55):
sounds in our conversation with him. He's pretty cool, not
to hear, no good a shot, getting quiet a whole
lot from when I was younger. In those younger days,
areas near here in South Phoenix were mostly known for
gang activity. It wasn't the sort of place Vince envisioned
ending up because in those younger days he was a
(10:18):
gifted athlete as well, and there's clearly something of a
rivalry over which side of the family gave Jess her
world class jeans at oh that comes the family, football, basketball, baseball, track,
anything they were dealing with sports played. I've heard stories
(10:39):
of Tracy as well, but it was nothing. I ain't
gonna bragg and then it was nothing like my my background.
It runs way down the line in my family. There's
some pride in that good natured rivalry. But in Vince's case,
I wonder if there might be something else there too,
That athleticism might be one of the few things he
(11:00):
feels he did give his daughter growing up, because he
also told me he knows how much he didn't give her.
I fell off into some bad habits, real bad, bad
enough to keep my keys wait from me, that's baton
thing I would regret. It's just not spending enough time
with my keys. When he was younger. This was twenty
(11:24):
six when Jess was born, eight years older than Tracy.
He told us that at the time he made money
dealing drugs. Jess told us that in the years after
everyone paid the price. My dad he was a drug
dealer growing up. He's a drug dealer before I was born,
and my father was in and out of the penitentiary
a lot throughout my life, so I don't really know him.
(11:45):
I had pictures of him. I could probably count on
one hand how many times I saw him from Dale
was born until I was about seventeen. According to arrest records,
a little over a year after Jess was born, this
was arrested there in mary Copa County and charged with
an array of narcotics violations. I did like five years.
(12:06):
I ain't been bad, but you know, when I was
out finding out missing my kids. You know, she might
not remember, but ucome to at a point that I
went to prison, and when I got out of prison,
we spent a little time. She knew who I was,
you know what, And I like it should have been.
(12:30):
Who knows that Fence and Tracy had a future together anyway,
But incarceration would answer that question for them and for Jess.
There were no father daughter bedtime stories with Fince, no
orange wedges on the sideline, not even weekend visits to
the state prison outside Phoenix. Like back, I'm like, what
are you doing with my mother? If you were, if
that was your job. Anyway, there were a lot of
(12:52):
times where I would see all my teammates, all their
parents are there on the sideline at games, whereas I
didn't have a single soul at times. Jess was six
when her father was given parole, but then says he
didn't exactly try to make up for lost time. We
still has been too much time because when I got
out of working all the time just to keep me occupied,
(13:14):
and I go back into the lifestyle and stuff. I
should have been in her life a little bit more.
As she was growing up, and with Jesse's father largely
out of the picture, Tracy shouldered the responsibilities of single
motherhood as new forces would begin to disrupt any semblance
of peace that might have existed at the time. Needless
(13:36):
to say, in the McDonald's house, all hell was breaking loose.
We're heading to at the house that Jessica grew up
in for part of the time when she was younger. Kevin,
Jessica's uncle, sent me this dress. It's been here since
(13:57):
she's been here. In the areas, probably she whached a lot.
Even from our conversations with Vince, it's I mean, he
was sketched out to meet in that park kind of
and was making sure that we were safe and everything.
But it didn't seem like an area to be worried about,
and so I wonder how this area kind of compares.
Kevin McDonald was always close with his older sister Tracy,
(14:19):
and he's only twelve years older than Jess. They all
lived together in the same house for the early years
of Jesse's life than this is it. Sometimes we even
shared rooms. You know, her and her brother were there,
I was there. It's it was like having a little
sister at home. At the time he was a teenager,
Kevin was a doting uncle. It turned sixteen, I got
(14:41):
my license. My new job was being a chauffeur for them,
go pick them up from practice, dropped them off at practice,
you know, so I was always running back and forth.
That was a big part of my childhood in high
school was those kids. That closeness also meant Kevin saw
parts of Jesse's home life the few others did. During
(15:04):
my year of reporting for this podcast, I reached out
to Tracy multiple times, but had little success. We did
briefly speak by phone one time, and even scheduled this
trip to Phoenix because she said she would meet with us.
Sorry box is full, but that was the last I've
heard from her. Jess and her half brother Brandon, have
(15:26):
different fathers. He would continue to live with their maternal grandmother,
but Jess and Tracy would eventually move into a new
place with Tracy's new boyfriend. So it was this part
of the house I think so yeah. According to Jess
and corroborated by other family members I spoke with, the
environment in this home was horrific. I watched my mom
(15:47):
get abused a lot. She got beat all the time
for the first fifteen years of my life. I'm like,
every other day, I just said, there, watcher, just get
beat by her boyfriend, and then no, she would reciprocate
that on me. We were unable to reach Tracy's boyfriend
at the time to get his side of what happened,
so we won't be naming him in this podcast. I
(16:09):
was scared. I was scared for my life, and you're
actually the first person I've ever told that too. It's
my mom. If I tell someone and she finds out,
I'm scared that something horrible is going to happen to
me from her. That's just how it always was, you know.
So I was always just as quiet kid. I was
always in the shell, never told anybody what was happening
(16:30):
at home, never told anybody. I was a scared little girl.
Jess says that the boyfriend never hit her and that
much of the abuse she received from her mother was verpal.
But as Tracy allegedly battled in her demons and endured
relentless physical abuse, the question of when she might suddenly
unleash that fury on her daughter onto jess throughout her
(16:51):
childhood were Jessica was young. I do remember one particular
time to get album mark on her base and we
did say something crazy. But absolutely I can only imagine,
you know, the physical and the mental and the verbal abuse.
Laurie McDonald again, I would not discount anything that Jessica
said about the physical abuse at all. I mean, it's
(17:14):
like a one in a million shot that Brandon and
Jessica didn't end up selling drugs on drugs in jail
on the street, just didn't really have a mom war
dad once just his father, Vince had made a more
stable life for himself, he became a slightly larger presence
in his daughter's life. Has told me that he never
(17:34):
understood the true conditions for jess at home until years later.
It was some instance, you know, when I used to
pick up sometimes she would be sad. I figured she
You know, she would tell me whenever was you know,
she feels like talking about it. But when she really
started really talking about it, I wanted to say, why
(17:57):
you didn't you know what she young and you know
she play was scared, frightened of a mama. You know what.
I never did push the issue because a figure she
had tailed me when she really wanted to too. My
biggest takeaway from the neighborhood where jess grew up is
(18:20):
that it's in the vicinity of a few big parks
just down the road from Jessica's old house. This looks
like it's a big field. There are basketball courts, a
big open field, and playground equipment. If you're a kid,
this is where you'd probably hang out. And jess says
that if her mother saw the value in anything at all,
(18:41):
it was sports. The only way that I was allowed
of the house growing up was do sport, and I
took advantage of that. Oh, I can go to the
park to go play football with my cousins, okay by,
but I wasn't allowed to go to friend's houses. I
wasn't not to do anything. It's it's just a very
strict household. I was allowed to just go play sport.
For Jess that outdoor space wasn't just a patch of grass,
(19:03):
it was a lifeline. People were like, if you knew
that you couldn't be a pro athlete, like, what would
it be on my god, I have no idea. I
might even be in prison for all I know. And
so thank God for spourth and God I had that
ability to play. That was my escape, that was all
I had, and so naturally jess played them all. We'll
(19:27):
be back after this. Jess would be hard pressed to
remember a time she wasn't an athlete like her mother
before her sport was where she found her idols. Jessica
had a group of six or seven cousins that were
all boys, all of my sisters. They all had kids
about the same time. During Jesse's childhood, sports were the
(19:49):
only thing in her life. Basketball, track, football, soccer, anything
that got her out of the house. When they were
all younger, they would go and hang out and play
at the parts or soccer or football or field hockey
or whatever we're doing. But they were always together. Jess's
uncle Kevin told us that even in a family of
star athletes, Jessica Speed always stood out. It was almost
(20:12):
this need to run faster and go further than just
about anyone around. One of my fondest memories of Jessica
and all of her cousins was when they very first
started running track. Kevin remembers the moment he first saw
it and that he was one of the few people
in the stands who understood what jess may have felt
like she was running from. Jessica was just this really
(20:35):
little girl, and then her cousins were all super athletics,
so whatever they did, people were always cheering for him.
So Jessica was like, I want people to cheer for me,
and they were like, where you're running next, we're gonna
cheer really loud for you, you know. And she gets
out there and they made all the little kids her age,
boys and girls line up. There was probably twenty thirty
of them, and she looked like she was scared out
(20:56):
there with her big old tank top on it, like
it didn't fit. And they fired the gun and they
were just going to run one lap around the track,
and all the kids took off and Jessica just left
the pack. And when she came up that straightaway, you know,
she's just running as hard as she came, and she
looked up and saw all of us just jumping up
and down yelling for her. She had the biggest smile
(21:18):
on her face and she started slowing down. We were like,
no kee, Randy. So she finished the race and then
immediately ran off the track, ran up the thing, and
then just go did you guys see me kick everybody's button?
From that moment, I was like, nobody will ever be
able to stop this girl and anything she does athletically.
I'm like, she beat boys and girls too much. Just
(21:39):
His mother played basketball and her father football, but when
it came to soccer, the biggest influence on Jess was
her half brother Brandon. He also started playing soccer as
a child and hasn't stopped yet. In two thou eight,
Brendan McDonald made it to Major League Soccer and a
girl from thirty five yards out for the Galaxy. Brendan
McDonald playing on the same l A Galaxy team as
(22:02):
David Beckham and Landon Donovan. Today he plays in Southeast Asia.
We were unable to connect with Brandon for this podcast,
but he and Jesseph remained close despite the physical distance
between their careers. My brother started soccer when he was five,
and that was all he played his whole life. That
was just like his sport. He was just good at
and I was there to just witness it all. Jess again.
(22:25):
Over the past year, I interviewed her for nearly ten
hours in her home, at soccer stadiums and on video calls,
and then I finally came to an off season and
my grandmother was kind of like, Okay, what's the next
sport that you want to play? And I was like,
you know, I let's try soccer. She's like, yeah, you
should blaze soccer like your brother Brandon. I'm like, okay,
you know, at the time, I didn't know my left
foot from right foot. To be honest, I knew the
(22:47):
game at that age. A basic knowledge of the game
and I drive to outrun everyone else was all Jess needed. Oh,
very shocked as she had developed on our first seen
of place soccer Jess's father then I think I've first
seen her play when she was seven night and I
wasn't a soccer fan until she started playing. Until I
(23:10):
started going to gang, I was like, oh man, this
is pretty interesting. She was very athletic, very she could
play both of anything. And do most anything. At the
time she was in middle school, jess was about five
ft five. Those who saw her play described her as
relentless on the field, we're on the court or any place.
(23:32):
She could compete in any sport. When Jessica started going
to that grade school that I went to, I have
two friends that I went to high school with and
they were like, we knew your niece before we knew you.
Another memory from Jesse's uncle, Kevin, and I was like,
what are you talking about. They were like, we went
to this grade school to help referee these games for
all these kids. So I had a tournament and there
(23:55):
was a girl playing on the boys team. So she
was in the seventh grade playing for the eighth grade
boy and was out there killing them. She was out
there outrebounding, hustling, chasing people down, blocking shots. He was like,
it was amazing. I was just tickled to death that
there's a little girl running guys off the court, you know.
I was just like, yeah, they won the championships. One afternoon,
(24:18):
when jess was about twelve, she tagged along with Brandon
to one of his soccer practices. He was playing at
the time for the Sereno Soccer Club, a powerhouse travel
team in the Phoenix area. Over the past four decades,
the boys and girls Sereno programs of one hundred and
fifty Arizona state championships and two national titles. Sereno has
become a household name and talent pool her top level
(24:40):
men's and women's college and professional coaches. Some thirty different
men and women who played for Sereno soccer teams have
gone on to play professionally. But for preteen Jess, killing
time at her brother's Sereno practices was mostly just a
way for her to get out of the house. One day,
she wandered over to a side field enrolled the ball.
The was about twenty yards out from the goal, well
(25:02):
past the top of the penalty box. Little did Jess
realize how much was about to change in her life.
She happened to be at soccer field one day and
she was just smashing balls into the net Less. Armstrong
was the director for the Serena Soccer Club at the time.
She looked very tall, compan up to the other kids,
and so somehow somebody communicated with her and asta if
(25:24):
she wanted to play. Suddenly, soccer was more than just
a temporary escape from home. It could be a way
out entirely. And on part three of Payback, I thought
my grandmother I wouldn't be where I am today. Thank
you guys for coming. This is a great day because
she got a game coming out. You'd have to be
blamed to not see Jess McDonald. Every single coach in
(25:46):
the country wanted Jess McDonald, and Lawrence was coming. He
was recruiting me. This is my dream school. My recollections
are mostly trying to find her. I'm thinking, oh gosh,
I know why the grandmother's involved. Guests don't have no
reading this stuff. But we don't choose appear in the
way we get. I'm Alexandrea. Payback is a production of
(26:07):
The Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News and Observer, McClatchy Studios, and
I Heart Radio. It's produced by Cotta Stevens, Casey Toth,
Julia Wall, and Davin Cockburn. The executive producer for iHeart
Radio is Sean ty Tone. For lots more on this
story and to support journalism like this, visit Charlotte Observer
dot com slash payback or News Observer dot com slash
(26:29):
Payback and for more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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