Berkeley Superior alumnus with a promising journalism occupation dies at 22
Brandon Bailey, a Berkeley High alumnus who graduated from Sacramento State University in May perhaps, died very last weekend in the vicinity of Sacramento. He was 22.
Bailey died Sunday in a jet ski incident on Folsom Lake throughout a household outing, according to his mother, Tanisha Wilder. The Placer County Coroner’s place of work is continue to investigating the cause of Bailey’s dying.
To good friends, family, and mentors, Bailey represented the greatest of Berkeley, a younger person with a vivid potential as a athletics journalist. Bailey, who mates referred to as “B,” normally spoke about his Berkeley roots.
“What he was performing now was just the warm-up for every thing that I know was coming,” stated Matts Benson, who became friends with Bailey on the basketball courtroom at Willard Center Faculty in Berkeley.
A recipient of Berkeley High’s Scholar Athlete Tutorial Accomplishment Award in 2016, Bailey was a standout middle linebacker on the football team. In college or university, he channeled his passion for soccer into reporting, becoming a member of The Point out Hornet as a sportswriter in 2020.
He rose through the ranks at The Hornet, finally landing his desire beat: soccer. Bailey profiled star players and covered the Hornets’ rise to victory in the Large Sky Championship. In his closing semester, he started off a podcast known as “Acquire Your Shot” with Jordan Parker, editor-in-chief of the Hornet, and co-edited the paper’s athletics segment.
On Might 20, Bailey grew to become the 1st individual in his family to graduate from higher education, going for walks across the phase at Sacramento Condition, a resource of immense satisfaction for him and his spouse and children. He experienced just started out his initially expert reporting work covering the San Francisco Giants.
Shortly after graduating, Bailey posted a photograph of himself on Instagram, clad in a graduation cap and Berkeley sweatshirt, posing for a image on Guy West Bridge in Sacramento. The caption browse, “Imma be a legend out of my metropolis just give me some time 💫.”
His sudden loss of life shook family members and buddies, prompting an outpouring of adore for Bailey.
“All of this fills my coronary heart, and I’m so grateful for the effect that my son, so youthful, has built on so several people. And it is also what’s hurting me the most simply because I really feel so cheated. He experienced so a lot far more to give,” reported Wilder, keeping back tears.
Wilder explained her son, who the loved ones identified as “BB,” as experienced from a younger age, a job product to all 4 of his siblings, like his older brothers. He spoiled his youngest sister, demonstrating her how a younger man need to treat her, buying her provides on Valentine’s Day, “all these minimal title-manufacturer purses,” and getting her to get her nails performed, Wilder mentioned.
Developing up, Bailey and his more mature brother, Marcé Stewart, ended up connected at the hip. “Everywhere I went, he went,” Stewart said. When Stewart dropped his way after superior university, it was Bailey who assisted get his older brother again on keep track of. “He was so trustworthy and it was brutal at times,” Stewart reported. Bailey would prod him, ‘What are you accomplishing with your daily life? You’re meant to be doing additional.’
A childhood friend and significant college football teammate, Yusuf Bey, was struck by Bailey’s loss of life.
“Brandon, Lil B, if you’re listening to me, my boy,” said Bey, addressing his close friend Thursday early morning. “In Berkeley, we’re going to skip you, we’re heading to continue to keep your memory alive, we’re going to retain your legacy heading. I adore you, brother.”
Parker wrote on Twitter: “The State Hornet household has shed one particular of its very best, and the ache and damage that I feel can never ever be absolutely fixed. This loved ones can hardly ever be complete all over again because our brother Brandon was taken as well soon.”
I have spent the last couple of times imagining about @brandonbailey_b and what he intended to me, most of the time my thoughts went blank or it was like I was looking for some great handful of sentences but there is no phrase or phrases to entirely describe how a lot this hurts. pic.twitter.com/pFjvpDyElg
— Jordan Parker (@jparkerwrites) July 5, 2022
Bailey’s mantra: ‘heart in excess of height’
Standing at 5 ft 6 inches and 138 kilos in significant school, Bailey’s opponents on the area and the courtroom towered around him. (Even at 5 yrs previous, Bailey was turned absent from the youth football league for a 12 months mainly because of his modest stature, his mother remembers.) But his perform ethic and passion propelled him to athletic results, inevitably earning him a starting placement on the soccer team his senior yr, earning all-meeting accolades.
“Brandon’s mantra was coronary heart about top,” stated David Perry, who coached Bailey on the Berkeley Substantial football crew his junior and senior years.
It was an tactic to athletics that all of his coaches saw in him, even as a younger kid.
Bailey produced the basketball group as a sixth-grader, Mentor Amarú Moses claimed, irrespective of his dimensions but “because of the sum of coronary heart and hard work and the all round joy that he brought to his teammates and to the recreation.”
As a mentor, “you seem for the tallest, the swiftest, the greatest, the strongest. And what I enjoy about Brandon is he conquer all individuals odds,” Perry reported.
In 2016, Bailey, a center linebacker on the soccer staff, was unanimously voted 1st-staff all-league and attained Berkeley High’s Scholar Athlete Tutorial Achievement Award. His father, Clifton Bailey, was a regular presence at his son’s game titles, cheering enthusiastically from the sidelines.
Bey, his teammate, remembers a “legendary” interception that Bailey created in a recreation versus rival Bishop O’Dowd. The group would go on to get all-meeting in its most productive period of the time.
Encouraged by former San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Bailey was just one of the players who led the Berkeley Superior football team to kneel all through the nationwide anthem to protest law enforcement brutality, a instant documented by Vice Information.
“We’re kneeling down to stand up for Black oppression and police brutality. And with us locking arms, it exhibits that we’re accomplishing it as a workforce, and we’re united in what we’re executing,” Bailey, then a junior in significant college, explained in the movie, detailing why he required to kneel with his teammates.
Following graduating higher university in 2017, Bailey won a Higher Hopes Scholarship just before matriculating to Sacramento Condition.
A budding sporting activities journalist
Bailey spent the summer months just before his freshman calendar year at Sacramento State on the Berkeley Large football field. Hoping to wander on to the staff and play for the Hornets, Bailey qualified with Mentor Perry all summer time, doing drills and sharpening his match.
Though he didn’t wind up on the team, Bailey observed a way to integrate the activity he liked into a career. He majored in journalism, signing up for the masthead at The Condition Hornet, and immediately earned a track record as just one of the Hornet’s most committed writers.
Compliment Bailey, and he would flip it close to to be about you, claimed Magaly Muñoz, running editor of State Hornet. “He would say, ‘I’m only as terrific as the men and women all over me who I encompass myself with. I’m only as great as my editors.”
“We would say, ‘Brandon, you can halt becoming humble for 5 minutes. Just just take the praise, bro.’ And he would not.”
After graduating, Bailey said his get the job done at the newspaper built him drop in love with journalism. According to his buddy, Bey, he envisioned a upcoming in which he would vacation the environment, and his household reported he desired to become a sporting activities analyst.
Inside of a couple months, he landed his initially gig masking the San Francisco Giants for an on the internet magazine, 4. Sports activities Media.
“Who would’ve realized this young dude from Berkeley, CA would make it this much,” Bailey posted on his Instagram following graduation. “First-Era school graduate with a B.A. in journalism. Supplying all the praise and glory to God for keeping me grounded and having me by this journey.”
Bailey’s Celebration of Daily life will be held at 11 a.m. on July 12 at the Covenant Worship Center at 2618 San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley.
