When Teri Steer-Cantwell gave her Hall of Fame speech at Southern Methodist, she looked to her 10-year-old son in the crowd and gave him advice on his future.

"I know you've been brainwashed to go to Mizzou," she recounted, "but I hope you have an open mind to everywhere."

At the time, Teri had no idea what her son, Jackson Cantwell, would accomplish. Growing up in small-town Crete, Nebraska, Teri received support to leave home, pursuing a professional career in shot put, and now over two decades later, her son ponders the same idea with football.

"Yes, it would be great if he goes to Mizzou," Teri added. "It'd be good for us from a standpoint that it's close, but we want it to be the right fit. It's really only temporary. You're there three to four years, five, depending on what happens. And maybe you decide to stay, maybe you don't."

Jackson, the No. 1 ranked recruit in the 2026 class from Nixa (Mo.) R 2, narrowed his recruitment down to Georgia, Miami (FL), Michigan, Missouri, Ohio State and Oregon. But with his father, Christian Cantwell, being a Missouri track and field alumnus, Jackson has always held a close connection to the Tigers.

"Because (Christian) grew up like that," said Teri of her husband, a product of Eldon, Missouri. "If you're from someplace, you go there and you help it better. It doesn't matter what school they are."

Jackson wore Missouri apparel every day until middle school. He spent the first eight years of his life running around the Tigers' campus, playing kickball with Ben Askren and the wrestling team and following runners on the track with his toy push cart.

"I didn't really realize how unique it was at that point," Jackson said. "Like how most kids did not have this type of stuff around them."

But as Jackson rose to the top of the sport, more opportunities emerged to write his own story, feeling the support of his parents to choose the best school for him, similar to what Teri received in her own decision. Jackson also recognized his father pulling back the reins on a push to attend his alma mater.

"He was die hard like, 'If you don't go to Mizzou, I'll disown you,'" Teri laughed. "Now, he's just, 'You can't go to Kansas, or I'll disown you.'"

Luckily for Christian, there's no inkling the Jayhawks will rejoin his son's recruitment.

In the early 2010s, a playpen laid in the corner of the indoor track and field facility in the Hearnes Center. The walls kept Jackson at bay from bustling practices, but as he started to take notice of his surroundings, his infant self attempted to crawl out and get better looks at the athletes working out.

"The throwing side, and you say nature versus nurture," Teri said, "I feel like Jackson was just around it so young that you just wonder what he picked up that you aren't even aware of."

As he got older, Jackson spent more days immersed in Missouri athletics. He picked up javelin balls -- smaller than the ones used in shot put -- and started to show off the technique he learned from watching athletes practice over the years.

Columbia looked to be home for good, as Christian and Teri built a home within city limits. But with their address falling into the Harrisburg R-VIII School District, Jackson went through the admission process to attend Columbia (Mo.) Tolton Catholic, where he would've gone to school if his family hadn't moved to Nixa.

Seeing a job within her company open in Springfield, Missouri, Teri never thought she'd be able to pull Christian away from Columbia. But as he planned retirement from professional shot put, Christian agreed to make the move, meaning a new chapter for all three Cantwells.

And by the time Jackson reached middle school, he traded in his everyday Missouri gear for that of Nixa, immersing himself within the community right away.

"Nixa has been a fantastic place to him," Teri said, "We don't need to put Jackson on the map, so to speak, but you want to put Nixa, you want Nixa to be known."

Once Jackson was around 8 years old, he joined Blue Thunder, a track and field club in Columbia. His parents made sure to try him out in different events, giving him a taste of the sport as a whole, but Jackson naturally gravitated toward shot put.

"Nobody knew what was coming," Teri said. "You're just living life, going you got an 8-year-old kid."

With two parents amassing decades in the weight room, Jackson didn't take to lifting right away. Christian and Teri were hesitant to even let their son begin that form of training at 11 years old, when other kids around Jackson started to flock to the opportunity.

"There were times he was in the weight room and would try things," Teri said, "and we're like, 'Oh my goodness.' You could tell he was very strong for a young little kid. He tried one time something, and then I was like, 'Wow.' I don't remember the amount. I just remember we're like, 'Whew, that's probably not normal.'"

It wasn't until Jackson's freshman season when his parents recognized their son's future in athletics. As the family took trips to see colleges across the country, it learned how Jackson's measurables in height and weight combined with athletic feats mirrored what schools promoted of their professional talent.

Growing up with two Olympians as parents, Jackson inherited that size and talent, but he also learned to mold it, knowing the process doesn't end with what he already possessed. The mental side clicked, too, and it became present on the field and in the classroom.

"He does not get that from either my husband or myself," Teri laughed. "He does things where I don't know that it's photographic memory, but he can see stuff and just remembers it."

With more recruits enrolling in January, this spring could be Jackson's last competing in shot put, a sport he's broken numerous records and earned national recognition. The Cantwell family always planned for Jackson to enroll at a college in the summer after his senior year of high school.

"His ultimate goal is to make the NFL," Teri said. "You have to put all your eggs in that basket, and anything you take away from that is sometimes tough. ... This could possibly be his last season (of track and field)."

Heading into this summer, shot put remained such a central focus for Jackson that he planned his football official visits around his competition schedule. In the final weekend of May, he'll be at Missouri right after competing in the MSHSAA State Championships in Jefferson City, and he'll close out his schedule June 20-22 in Oregon, where he'll compete in the 2025 Nike Outdoor Nationals.

During his eighth grade track and field season, Jackson was approached by the Nixa football coaches about a position change. In middle school, he towered over his peers as a big-bodied tight end and halfback, but at the high school level, coach John Perry thought it would behoove Jackson to move over one spot on the line of scrimmage.

The conversation came at the right time since Jackson considered playing football for only one more season. He loved basketball, a sport he stopped playing as of this past winter, even more so than track and field.

Growing up in a household where she learned to trust her superiors, Teri raised Jackson to follow the coaches' decision.

"He was going to put all his eggs into playing basketball and track," Teri said. "And I remember my husband saying, 'Jackson, that's good, but I just want you to hear, you're 6-foot-6, you're pretty big, right? I don't know if that's an elite basketball player, but I think you're going to find out you could possibly be an elite football player.'"

Perry, a native of Mississippi, moved to Nixa when Jackson was in the seventh grade. At the time, he didn't know anything about Jackson's athletic lineage; he just kept hearing rumblings about a massive tight end on the junior high fields.

"It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that he needed to be on the offensive line," Perry said. "When you put him in left tackle, his athleticism for a left tackle is great, so that was a no brainer to me."

"I wish I'd played tight end for a little bit longer," Jackson added, "but I think he ended up being correct."

Jackson started his freshman season with the ninth grade team, but after early season injuries to the offensive tackles, he got the call for meaning varsity snaps. He received an offer from Kansas State three weeks later and kept rolling. Perry admitted Jackson wasn't a five-star right away, taking time to mold Jackson into the dominant force of today.

"Sometimes he gets put in this box of genetics," Perry said. "Nobody sees how much time, effort and energy he puts into doing what he does. He eats differently, he sleeps differently, he works out differently, he practices differently. People don't see that. What they see is the 500-pound bench the other day.

"They throw that off to genetics, Mom and Dad, this and that, 6-foot-8. There are people that are 6-foot-8 in prison. He did win the parent lottery. ... But he does a lot of things right that sometimes he doesn't get enough credit for."

Going into ninth grade, Jackson attended a football camp in Bixby, Oklahoma, featuring 300-400 offensive linemen across the region. He was long, lanky and awkward, and nothing went right the first half of the day.

"He just really didn't get it," Perry said.

But after each rep, Jackson turned his eyes to the next set of linemen. He picked up on what his peers did to win each drill, and during the second half of the event, he lowered his stance, got more explosive off the line and wore his opponents out.

"That's where I first thought that he has a unique ability of learning on the run, learning really fast, picking up things really fast," Perry said, "and that's not stopped since."

Jackson became a sponge for football knowledge as well as his opponents. He wanted to know everything, digging into the offers to find the level of player he matched up against, on top of conducting individual scouting reports.

"He had a 33 on the ACT in the eighth grade," Perry said. "He picks up on things so fast. It is a huge transition from high school terminology and scheme to a collegiate terminology and scheme, but I really don't think that he will skip a beat."

Still eager to get the ball in hands, Jackson shared NFL and college clips with Perry where offensive linemen got touches this past season, joking with his coach about how he could do the same for Nixa.

"He may still want to play tight end and catch the ball," Perry said. "That desire is still there, but I think now he knows, hindsight being 20/20, that it was the best place in the world for him to be, because he's an NFL left tackle."

Even in the national spotlight, Jackson always embraced Nixa first. No other teammate will achieve his prospect status, but humility masked the identity of a five-star in southwest Missouri. He rooted on his teammates and took a role in shining a light on Nixa.

"The thing that everybody thought about Nixa was Jason Bourne," said Perry of the fictional action character. "So I started calling him, a long time ago, Jacktown, because I believe it won't be Jason Bourne, it'll be Jackson Cantwell that is the first name that is thought of when you think about Nixa in the future."

While Jackson won't be expected to star in an action thriller, he does hold high expectations for himself. But when it comes to where he will play at the next level, Jackson doesn't have that answer yet.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited to be done with the whole recruiting thing to begin with, just get to lock in somewhere," Jackson said. "But I don't know what that place is yet. So it's going to be interesting to see exactly how that goes. I'm just excited to go figure it out."

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