Still, they expected him to go at some point, so about a month before the draft, his mom started making plans (she might have had a head start).
There were a few people over Friday night to watch the second and third rounds, just in case a team really wanted him. But that was a casual one since they didn’t necessarily expect it to happen. So it wasn’t a big disappointment, and they all just went to bed to get ready for the next day’s festivities.
“Nervous, hopeful,” Jalen recalled when asked how he felt as he called it a night on Friday. “But at the same time, I knew that it was going to be a possibility that I didn’t get picked, but I knew that I was confident that even if I didn’t, I would land somewhere and that’s all I really wanted.”
And Saturday was the day they were all thinking about anyway. Because, once Mom got to working on it, it was going to be a party.
“As soon as he gave me the green light, so maybe a month out,” Jenny Coker recalled when asked when she started planning. “When he was OK with doing it, I wanted to make sure he was comfortable with it, and then once he said let’s go for it, it was just like, OK, let’s get the list of people together.
“I was so amazed at how many people wanted to be a part of this with him. It was incredible. I mean, coaches throughout his life, friends, families of those friends, our family. I mean, a ton of people came in from out of town. It’s just like this village that has just watched him and his whole journey to that day and now obviously to be on the Panthers, but it was, it was amazing, it was amazing.”
When asked about the size of that village, Jalen said he thought maybe 50 or 60 people were there. He didn’t really notice since he was glued to the couch watching television coverage.
“Yeah, probably more like 100,” his mom said with a laugh.