‘An icon in this city.’ Cheryl Jackson-Newsom leaves legacy beyond basketball

It was more than 35 years ago but it might as well have been yesterday.

Keesh Brewer was 14 years old, a talented young basketball player with a promising future. He was the best player on his team at Douglass Park, often competing against older players.

But one night, in front of a packed gym, his coach, Cheryl Jackson-Newsom, sent him to the bench. Brewer was not playing hard enough. In front of the whole gym, he cried. Jackson-Newsom, steadfast on her standards, did not send him back into the game.

Cheryl Jackson-Newsom with her Douglass Park teams at the Dust Bowl.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m the best player on this team,’” Brewer remembered. “‘You are really willing to lose this game?’ It broke me. But it also helped build me and that moment stuck with me my whole life.”

There are multiple generations of basketball players, boys and girls, who learned life lessons through Jackson-Newsom. In her role as manager for more than 30 years with the Indy Parks Department, Jackson-Newsom mentored and developed hundreds of young people who walked through the doors at Douglass, Thatcher and Municipal Gardens.

“A pioneer in basketball,” Brewer said of Jackson-Newsom. “A real staple in the city. Around here, she’s a legend. I feel honored to have been coached by her and have her in my life.”

Jackson-Newsom, 61, died on Feb. 6 after five-year cancer battle. In the weeks before she passed, a steady stream of visitors dropped by to see the coach and mentor who was known for her tough love and relentless spirit. People of all ages who played for her, from their 50s to girls in sixth grade, wanted to share a few laughs and thank Jackson-Newsom for the impact she had in their lives.

“It was revolving door,” said her husband, Darryl Newsom. “She was on medication. She had to take morphine. But she wouldn’t hit the button because she wanted to be alert enough to talk and laugh with the people who came to see her.”

Toughness. That quality came to define Jackson-Newsom throughout her life.

From Northwest to junior college to Jayhawk

Cheryl Jackson-Newsom with her Gardens Sparks team.

Jackson-Newsom could make a bank shot with the best of them. Lutheran coach Remus Woods, who worked with her for Indy Parks, outlawed bank shots during their “HORSE” games.

“She could make a shot off the glass from anywhere,” Woods said with a laugh. “Anywhere. She would kill us in HORSE. We finally said, ‘That’s it, no banks.’”

Before she was a coach and mentor, Cheryl Jackson was a player. A serious player. Ron Rutland Jr., a star player at Pike in the 1980s and Hall of Famer at the University of Indianapolis, remembers picking up Jackson last minute for a 2-on-2 tournament at the RCA Dome when they realized they could add a third player.

“We won the tournament,” Rutland said. “Cheryl could play.”

She starred at Northwest in the still early days of Indiana High School Athletic Association girls’ basketball, earning All-City honors as a junior in 1981-82 for the Space Pioneers. As a 5-7 guard, she averaged 13.8 points, 9.0 rebound and 4.1 steals. As a senior, Jackson averaged 15.7 points and 2.9 steals. An informal poll of city and county coaches by the IndyStar in 1982 named Jackson the best player in Indianapolis.

“She’s an outstanding player,” Northwest coach Jim Albright said before her senior season. “She’s quick, can jump real well and can score. People might not think she’s as good as she is because she’ll only average about 15 points this year. But that’s because she’s so unselfish and because we have so many good players around her.”

Jackson scored 920 points her final three years of high school before playing at Seward County (Kan.) Community College. In Liberal, Kan., a community of 19,000 near the Oklahoma border in the southwest corner of the state, Jackson thrived. She set the school’s scoring record, averaging 21.0 points, six rebounds, three assists and four steals in 1984-85.

After Seward County, which later retired her No. 11 jersey in a ceremony that brought her to tears, Jackson started out at Kansas State before transferring to Kansas, where she played for legendary coach Marian Washington. On the 1987-88 team – the same year Danny Manning and the Miracles led KU to the national championship – Jackson averaged 5.1 points per game on a 22-win team that reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

In her two years in Lawrence, Kan., Jackson-Newsom made friends for life.

“We were roommates, teammates, best friends,” said Evette Ott, a teammate of Jackson’s at Kansas. “I was from Michigan so when we’d come home, I’d drop her off and I’d stay there for a couple weeks with her family. She was very competitive, always driven to be the best player she could be and in the classroom. She was a great teammate, and we had a great team. We stayed very close. We call it our ‘Jayhawk sisterhood.’”

Many of the qualities Jackson-Newsom would become known for later as a coach and leader in Indianapolis were put on display by Washington during her time as a player at Kansas. Loyalty was near the top of the list.

“It wasn’t just about going to college to just be an athlete for coach Washington,” Ott said. “We always had one of the highest graduation rates. She would call players back and offer them a year or two more so they could get their Master’s degree. She was a fierce woman and a leader by example. Everything she taught us was lessons about life through basketball.”

Ott remained close with Jackson-Newsom long after their playing days were over. Jackson-Newsom told her often how much she loved coaching and teaching kids.

“Tough love, but love,” Ott said of Jackson-Newsom’s style. “That’s how coach Washington was, too. Cheryl loved them but she was going to be tough and stern when she needed to be. She was a great woman who truly loved what she was doing. She had a passion for it.”

Cheryl Jackson-Newsom showing off her ballhandling skills in front of the kids at Municipal Gardens.

Ott said many of her Kansas teammates plan to attend the celebration of life on Feb. 27 at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. Washington, 79, won 560 games in her 31 seasons at Kansas. Washington called Jackson-Newsom “the kind of player every coach hopes for and the kind of person every community needs.”

“Cheryl was an outstanding athlete – competitive, focused and determined,” Washington wrote in a text message. “But what made her truly special wasn’t just how she played the game. It was how she lived her life. She always had that smile … that steady uplifting presence. She encouraged her teammates. She believed in others. She made people better, not just as players, but as people.”

Washington went to write that Jackson-Newsom’s family – husband Darryl and children Jalen and Cherrelle – “was her pride and purpose. Her family was her championship.”

“Cancer may have challenged her body, but it never touched her spirit,” Washington wrote. “She fought with courage. She fought with grace. And through it all, she never forsook her faith. God was always in her life, not just in words, but in how she lived, how she endured, and how she trusted it. What Cheryl built in this world cannot be taken away. Her legacy lives on in her children, her family, her teammates, and in every life she touched.”

‘Definitely left her mark’

Jalen Newsom (left), Kalyn Ervin, Mark Zackery and Cherrelle Newsom (back).

Darryl Newsom married Cheryl on June 1, 1996. He also married into the coaching world on that day, too, because of Cheryl.

“I got into by default,” Darryl said. “She would run the house leagues for the community centers and she would have a team and other staff members would have a team. I could always tell the players who played for her. There was this calmness and leadership about them and they played together. You wouldn’t see too much selfishness in her players.”

The 2017 Ben Davis and Crispus Attucks state championship teams were loaded with kids who played for Cheryl, including her son Jalen for the Giants, along with teammates Josh Brewer, Datrion Harper and Kyle Finch. Nike Sibande, Alex Cooley and Derrick Briscoe were former Jackson-Newsom players on the Attucks’ team.

Mark Zackery IV and Dawand Jones, who went to be two-star players in football and basketball at Ben Davis, were two more of her players.

“Mrs. Cheryl had a huge impact on my basketball career by teaching me the game while also challenging me and pushing me to improve,” Zackery said. “From around ages 6 to 10, I went to evening workouts at Municipal Gardens. She always saw the potential in the players she coached, and she especially did in me. She would tell me to come at a different time when the older kids were working out, which helped me improve my game and fundamentals at a faster rate.”

Zackery said the confidence he had built by the time he started high school started in those workouts.

“By teaching me the fundamentals and encouraging me not to shy away from the moments, she helped shape my confidence as an athlete,” he said. “Because of the lessons she instilled in me, I was able to play varsity as a freshman in two sports, and I can confidently say that a major source of the success came from the workouts she put me through.”

Jackson-Newsom coached in high school, too. She was an assistant for the Ben Davis’ girls for several years under Joe Lentz and Stan Benge. Prior to that, she was an assistant at Arlington, head coach at Metropolitan for three years and a head coach at Lynhurst Middle School.

In 2021, Jackson-Newsom was diagnosed with kidney cancer. She had one kidney removed. The cancer returned, however, in her liver. It spread to both sides of her stomach in recent months. On the first Sunday of February, her hospital room was packed with friends and family as she was able to receive communion.

“She definitely left her mark,” Darryl said.

Keesh Brewer is living proof. He is the dean of students at Phalen Academy and has been a mentor for 25 years. At a time in his life when he needed a strong voice, Jackson-Newsom was there for him and so many others.

“She was like a second mom to me,” said Brewer, who was a standout player at Cathedral. “She helped me define who I am and there are a lot of people like me who feel the same. She really is an icon in this city – a huge loss because of who she was. They need to build her a statue.”

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649. Get IndyStar’s high school coverage sent directly to your inbox with the High School Sports newsletter. And be sure to subscribe to our new IndyStarTV: Preps YouTube channel.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Cheryl Jackson-Newsom was coach, mentor in city basketball community