For future Georgia WR Dominick Blaylock, life, sports and family are so much more than a name -

In a way, every part of any catch Dominick Blaylock makes can be traced to his genes. That acceleration, that ability to change directions and still run faster? His mother sees that, and she sees her own genes at work. That hand-eye coordination, that ability to track a ball in the air and catch it without losing a step? That, she realizes, comes from Mookie.

When Dominick was an infant and still learning to walk, his older brothers would hold him up by the arms and walk him around. The day Dominick finally took his own steps, not yet a year old, he didn’t stop. He began to run, too.

“That’s not normal,” his mother, Janelle Woods, remembers thinking.

Dominick Blaylock was always going to be good at a sport. It ended up being football. But it could have been baseball. It could have been track. It may have basketball, because the genes were there, too. Dominick once got curious and pulled up highlights of his biological father on YouTube, but that was it, and only briefly. If Dominick ever saw or looked up the sad and sordid other stuff, he doesn’t say.

Athletic stardom may be in Dominick Blaylock’s genes, but character is shaped and formed after birth. His mother thought that. So did the man who stepped into a void and became, in every sense but biological, his father. They raised him. They centered him. They shielded him. And his older brothers showed Dominick the path he’s taking now.

This is a story about genes, family, and a last name. A last name that Dominick Blaylock and his brothers did not give up, did not run from, did not hide and did not consider a big deal — except when asked about it, as Dominick was recently, as the five-star receiver prospect from Walton High School in Marietta, Ga., prepared to sign a letter-of-intent to play at Georgia.

L-R: John Woods, Dominick Blaylock, Ashton Woods, Janelle Woods, Daron Blaylock and Zack Blaylock. (John Woods & Family)

“Me and my brothers really helped the last name come back, I guess,” Dominick Blaylock said. “We’re just trying to make the name, I guess, good again.”

Janelle Woods grew up in Colorado, her parents both the children of immigrants from what was then Czechoslovakia. Her father was a musician but also an athlete, good enough to be offered a football scholarship. Instead, he chose track at Peru State in Nebraska. His five children all went into sports: Two sons went into basketball, two went into football and then his daughter, Janelle, became a three-sport star in basketball, volleyball and track.

“Athletics was always in our family,” she said.

Janelle would go to Oklahoma to play volleyball. That’s where she met Mookie Blaylock, the star point guard who led the Sooners to the 1988 national championship game. He was known for his quick hands, court speed and defense. The New Jersey Nets picked him 12th overall in the 1989 NBA Draft, then traded him three years later to the Atlanta Hawks, where he and Janelle would make their new life.

Mookie Blaylock was a big enough deal that in 1989, a grunge rock band in Seattle named itself after him. It even played a gig as “Mookie Blaylock,” before being urged to change its name. It did, to Pearl Jam.

And about 26 years ago, a couple in Nashville, Tenn., named their newborn Markus Lynn Betts, but attached the nickname Mookie in part because they liked watching the Hawks’ point guard. This year, Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts was named the American League MVP.

Mookie Blaylock, meanwhile, married Janelle and had twin sons, Daron and Zack. Seven years later, they had Dominick.

How much has Janelle told Dominick about everything that happened with Mookie? She answers straightforwardly, as she does for all these questions. Guarded and carefully, but also acknowledging that much is already public record.

“He knows enough that he needs to know,” she said. “John and I are very open and fair about it all.”

Memories begin, or at least take hold, when you’re 4 to 5 years old. So Dominick doesn’t remember living with Mookie, who was removed from the house when Dominick was around 2. Alcohol was Mookie’s demon. He was arrested seven times on DUI charges between 1995 and 2015, six of them after his basketball career ended, according to Sports Illustrated. That story detailed the day in 2013 when Blaylock was accused of causing a head-on car crash that killed Monica Murphy, a mother of five. Blaylock eventually was sentenced to three years in prison in the case.

By the time all this happened, however, Mookie was long since gone from Dominick’s life.

“I rarely saw him,” Dominick said. “I’ve met him. But it’s once every now and then.”

Mookie has come to a few of Dominick’s high school games, including one this year at the Georgia Dome. But when he refers to him, Dominick calls him “Mookie Dad.” Who is just “Dad”?

That’s John.

It took a few misses before Janelle and John Woods finally connected. They had the same real estate agent, but they only found that out later. Their paths only crossed through a mutual friend, who introduced them in passing. But it wasn’t until they saw each other at a party that they really talked. They hit it off. Sports, not surprisingly, was a connecting theme.

John Woods played football at Tennessee Tech and had a brother who played football at Georgia Tech. John would go on to a successful business career — he is the CEO of Southport Capital, a financial planning firm — but athletics remained a passion. He’s now the owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, the Double-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds.

When he married Janelle, he didn’t have any children of his own. He did bring a Labrador retriever into the marriage. He showed no reluctance to marry into a family with three children, whose biological father was dealing with alcoholism. Instead …

“John dove in headfirst and has loved every minute of it,” Janelle said. “And has been truly — he has saved my boys from having to be raised alone without a father.”

Dominick had just turned 3 when his mother re-married. His new stepfather tried to get his biological father re-involved, but after 18 months, they moved on. From then on, John was the only father Dominick knew.

Here’s the thing about Dominick: He’s quiet. Shyness may be something else he inherited from Mookie, whose NBA teammate Sam Bowie told SI could sit in a room for hours and not say a word. During a 20-minute interview, most of Dominick’s answers were one or two sentences. So it bears noting that the longest answer he gave was about his parents, John and Janelle:

“They’ve done a lot for me. And I’m very thankful for them, and for my stepdad coming into my life. He’s done a lot for me. Without him, I’m not where I would be today. I’m just very thankful for them.”

Daron, one of his older brothers, is the more loquacious Blaylock. When asked about John — who preferred not to be quoted in this story — Daron pointed out that he and his twin brother Zack weren’t even into sports until John came along, despite Mookie’s and Janelle’s backgrounds. It was John who took them, at age 8, to their first football tryouts.

“Me and my brother, we had no idea what was going on,” Daron said. “They just said: ‘Y’all just run at each other and see what happens.’ ”

A decade later, after a childhood devoted to athletics, the twin brothers were signed by Kentucky’s football program. Both were defensive backs, though Daron moved to outside linebacker for his final two years, and Zack eventually transferred to Kennesaw State. They were not stars, but they got their degrees and are gainfully employed in the Atlanta area. Their bios at Kentucky said this about their lineage: “Son of Janelle Woods and John Woods … Also son of Mookie Blaylock, who played 13 years in the NBA with New Jersey, Atlanta and Golden State.”

Daron has more of a relationship with his biological father, who has since been released from prison and could not be reached to comment for this story. They’ve played golf a few times. They speak on the phone. But John is the one who, as Daron put it, basically raised the three boys, along with Ashton Woods, whom Janelle and John had a few years after being married. (And is now a budding football prospect himself.)

“It’s crazy how selfless that is for him to come in, marry a mom of three, really raise us as if we were his own kids. Every time I think about it, I’m just like, ‘Wow,’ ” Daron said. “It takes a phenomenal person to be able to do what he does. I mean business-wise, how successful he is. Family-wise, how he’s always there. He’s always had our backs no matter what, and he’s there in a heartbeat.”

There’s a similar sense of awe when Daron talks about his mom.

Janelle Woods (middle) with Dominick (right) with Georgia football legend Herschel Walker. (John Woods & Family)

“Raising three boys on her own, and honestly putting us before her every second of her life,” Daron said. “I always count my blessings every day just to be able to realize the people I have around me. I look up to my mom a lot. She has sacrificed a lot. And honestly, we wouldn’t be anywhere where we are now if it wasn’t for her either. The way that I carry myself, the way all my brothers carry themselves, a lot of it is from our mom.

“My brothers are mama’s boys. They really look up to her.”

It was little league ball, when Dominick was still in elementary school, when Daron realized his younger brother, for all the family’s athletic genes, had something more.

“I saw him make a one-handed snag and run it in for a touchdown on defense,” Daron said. “I said, ‘Wow, this kid is something else.’ ”

The three Blaylock boys — Daron, Zack and Dominick — shared the same genes, but circumstance may have helped the youngest. He had an entire childhood of John’s influence on his athletic life, starting in football as young as possible. Woods brought him to camps, to competitions, even coached him.

“He helped me develop as a football player and as a man,” Dominick said.

Janelle also thinks the birth order may have something to do with their athletic development. Because Dominick was always trying to keep up with his older brothers, it pushed him. She saw the same dynamic growing up as the second-to-youngest out of five children. She and her younger brother were more athletic.

“I think that has a lot to do with being pushed, and trying to keep up. And surviving,” she added with a laugh.

Dominick could have been very good at baseball, too. A natural, to use his mother’s word.

“To watch him play shortstop and center field, it was such an art,” she said. “But Dominick, he just loves football.”

(John Woods & Family)

The one sport Dominick never really tried: basketball.

“I went to some practices, but then after that, I was like, ‘Nah, it’s not my sport,’ ” Dominick said. “It ran in the family, I guess. But … yeah.”

Georgia offered Dominick a scholarship more than two years ago. He didn’t need long to accept. As of this week, he is rated the nation’s No. 34 overall prospect by 247Sports and the nation’s sixth-best receiver prospect.

Asked who he thinks he resembles, Dominick mentions that he’s always liked watching Terry Godwin and Mecole Hardman, two other smallish (Dominick is listed at 6 feet) but fast slot-type receivers.

Daron compares his younger brother to two other receivers: the speed of Randall Cobb, who was leaving Kentucky as the brothers were arriving, and the smile and attitude of Odell Beckham Jr.

“He goes out there, he knows he can do what he can do. And all you see is that smile on his face,” Daron said. “It’s a good mixture. He’s a great athlete and does what he needs to do on the field. But also doesn’t really ruffle a lot of feathers.”

But the goal for Dominick Blaylock, ultimately, is to make his own name.

There is one main reason he’s not known as Dominick Woods. It was the wish of John Woods, who wanted Janelle’s first three boys to have the same last name. But it didn’t stop there.

Mookie Blaylock’s middle name is O’Shea, and he passed that name on to Daron, Zack and Dominick. When Ashton — John and Janelle’s son — was born, John made a request.

“My first three boys, I love them like my own, and they all share the same middle name,” John said, according to Janelle. “I want Ashton to have the same middle name, so they’re all bonded together.”

So they are now. And now a Blaylock once again could be a big figure on the sports scene in Georgia, and there will be more stories like this, talking about the connection. The good. The sordid.

But Daron has another way of looking at it.

“I mean, a last name’s a last name. I like to more focus on the first name,” he said. “Dominick’s the brother, where he’s going to shape the Blaylock name because of him, my stepdad and my mom. It’s not going to be so much as everything about Mookie. I remember when we were growing up, going up through the recruitment thing, the question they would always ask is about Mookie.

“But it’s really cool to see how Dominick is making a name for himself.”

(Top photo courtesy by John Woods & family)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57lmppcWxjZH9xfZdoaGtnYWx8qLHOq56imV2bvLDAwZqjpWWimrCzwcitoKefXZm8rrXNopqkZZKhrrq4zpyiZp6RoratxYympqijmZp6uLvOnapo