LOST AND FOUND Jail stint helps former Bishop Moore star get back on track
down as low as them,” Donovan Winter said. “I thought they were friends. I didn’t really know. … I didn’t even listen to my parents. It was the stupidest thing. … It hurts to just talk about it.”
His parents warned him to stay focused on school and were wary of a new girlfriend.
Donovan Winter recalled them saying, “‘This is a huge opportunity for you and don’t mess it up.’ It’s upsetting because I should have [taken] their advice. … I should have taken the Bishop Moore football team’s advice. They tried to help me, too. … I was so brainwashed and these people I called my friends, honestly, they’re nothing like friends. They just brought me down.”
Winter took no one’s advice and two weeks before he got arrested, he disappeared. He fell into a crowd that, at first, put him on a pedestal, and eventually he lost complete concern for everything else that really mattered in his life.
His grades dipped to the point that Bishop Moore officials were concerned that he would not graduate. But it got worse. He was eventually kicked out of school. Michigan State coaches had no choice but to pull his scholarship offer.
For several weeks, his parents had no idea where he was. Winter said he was holed up with his girlfriend and a few others at a house out near Geneva in east Orange County. He was smoking marijuana, doing other things he said he shouldn’t have been doing and just watching time go by.
Blaise and Angie Winter realized the severity of the situation when Bishop Moore officials called to say their son had not been going to school. They tried to reach out to him, but they couldn’t find him.
“The day after we arrived home from the official visit to Michigan State, the 15th of January, I had gone to the doctor … in Jacksonville,” Blaise Winter said of a trip he makes often to check on a brain tumor that was discovered late last year. “My wife and I got into an auto wreck up there and we returned home a day or two later than we thought we were going to, and the school was on the phone saying, ‘Where’s your son? He hasn’t been here for a few days.’
“Our response was, ‘What?’ … and then [they said,] … ‘He hasn’t been here, actually, a lot in January since the second semester started.’ ”
They tried to call their son and they hunted for him, but they could not find him.
A little more than a week passed and finally they spotted Donovan Winter driving his truck. When he spotted his parents, his father said Donovan “took off like a bullet.”
“Eventually we corner him on a side road and Angie and I are trying to talk to him through the window and his girlfriend is in the car and all he is saying is, ‘Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I’m going to California.’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ and then he darts off,” Blaise Winter recalled. “... We just said, ‘Let him go. There’s nothing we can do.’ ”
Most people expected the young Winter to sign his National Letter of Intent to play at Michigan State on National Signing Day — Feb. 1. However, his parents, Bishop Moore coaches and Michigan State coaches all knew there was no way he was signing with the Spartans.
Winter’s brush with the law and his absence from the signing day ceremony made national news. While most assumed he wasn’t signing because he was in jail, Winter’s arrest really was the final step. The end of a destructive path of confusion the 18-year-old Winter had chosen.
While Winter’s parents couldn’t connect with him, his girlfriend’s parents somehow found a way to bring her home. His decision to go visit her with a friend led to his arrest.
Winter was accused of trespassing at his girlfriend’s home. He was also found to be in possession of a firearm belonging to the girl’s father, so when police found Winter, he was arrested and charged with armed burglary of a dwelling and grand theft.
“It was horrible. It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever been in in my life. I was in a situation where I was in jail and I didn’t even do anything,” said Winter, who said the person accompanying him to the girl’s house stole the gun and put it in Winter’s truck.
“I had a whole group of people that messed me up. I was just hanging around the wrong people and it was horrible and I admit that I was wrong and everything for that. If I could do anything to change it, I would.”
Winter eventually got his charges reduced. He was ordered to pay fines and is on probation. He stresses his eight months of bad judgment are behind him.
His father said social media proved to be a toxic gateway to his son’s poor choices.
“He wanted so many good things and … in a matter of days, just a few weeks, it was like looking into the eyes of someone I had never met in my life,” Blaise Winter said of his son.
“... We knew. It was just a matter of time and every night we’d lay in bed thinking that we were going to get a call that either he had hurt somebody else or he was in jail.”
Blaise and Angie Winter were hoping their son didn’t hurt himself or anyone else. They made a decision when Donovan Winter called to say, “‘I’m in jail. I need help.’ ”
His parents could have immediately posted bail, but instead they left him in jail, where he stayed for 40 days in jail.
It was his mother’s idea and his father agreed with the plan.
Donovan Winter said he’s not bitter. He had plenty of time to think about what had transpired during an eight-month flirtation with disaster that started almost from the moment he committed to Michigan State on June 20.
While incarcerated, he barely ate at first and when he finally did start eating, it wasn’t enough to keep the weight on a kid who was 6-foot-4, 240 pounds at the pinnacle of his senior season. He dropped all the way down to 198 pounds, but he has quickly bounced back and hit his training regimen full-throttle.
After missing so much time in school, he had to work to earn his high school diploma, which he earned from an alternative school, Econ River High School, and then he found sanctuary in Fort Scott , where head coach Kale Pick has given him a chance to resurrect his life and football career.
“I realized when I was in jail, you know, [ I thought,] ‘What the hell am I doing to myself,’ ” Winter said. “My parents left me in there because they wanted to teach me a lesson. I realized I messed up and I should be in here and I should pay my consequences.
“Even people in jail were asking me, ‘What the hell did you do? … Jail helped me a lot to understand I messed up.”
Donovan Winter has made it a point to reach out and apologize to those he has hurt. He struggled to fight back tears when he was asked what he would say if he ever speaks with Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio again.
“I’m gonna say I’m sorry for what I did to him. I’m sorry for what I did to the Spartans and sorry for what I did to all the people out there,” Winter said. “Honestly, it’s the worst decision of my life. If I could change it, I would. I know I’m crying right now, and I’m sorry … but I love the whole Spartan nation and I’m so sorry this happened.
“Even if I’m not with you, I’ll still be a Spartan at heart, even if I’m at a different school.”
While Donovan Winter appears to be back on track, the experience has shaken his father.
Blaise Winter was a former NFL defensive lineman who played 102 games during a 10-year career with the Colts, Chargers and Packers. He moved his family to Orlando to be UCF’s defensive line coach under George O’Leary in 2012. Now he can’t wait to leave a town that he said devastated his family.
Winter has spent most of his post-NFL career working as a motivational speaker and his inability to stop his son’s downhill skid has been especially painful.
“I feel responsible and I live with this incredible, heavy heart,” Blaise Winter said. “... I really felt my methods and my dedication would really amount to something with my son.”
But the Winter family vows not to stay down for long. After sharing their story, Donovan Winter is focusing on his football training and his family is giving him extensive support.
“I still have hope,” Blaise Winter said. “... I live in the light of hope and I do believe that he will come out of this better than ever.”