A Family Effort: Jankes All In for Frisco

There’s the family you’re born into and the family you make for yourself – and in the case of Jadon and Jaxon Janke, they’ve got the best of both worlds.

The youngest of seven children, the two come from a tremendously athletic family. That physical talent led them to their “found family” in Jackrabbit Nation, and over their collegiate careers, they’ve managed to blend the two families into one unparalleled support system, along for the ride in the twins’ journey to the top with Jackrabbit Football.

With Jadon’s and Jaxon’s return to the FCS National Championship with the Jackrabbits just around the corner, we saw the perfect opportunity to look back on the boys’ time at SDSU and the years of grit and discipline that got them where they are today – and when looking back on a person’s journey, there’s no better source for an inside scoop than their parents.

We caught up with Fred and Linda Janke, the people who have shaped the upstanding and talented men their sons are today.

The twins grew up living and breathing sports. From track to basketball to football, Jadon and Jaxon set their sights on just about every form of athletics and managed to tackle them all. It was perhaps Jadon’s and Jaxon’s avid love of sports that kept them out of mischief – well, out of most mischief. (Linda admits to purposely cutting one of the boys’ hair into a rat-tail style in their early years so that she could determine from the back which twin was running away from her.)

It was a fair strategy, since it sounds as if the brothers were always running: running into trouble (like sneaking a friendly opossum into the family home on one memorable occasion), running in pursuit of endless new hobbies (like involvement with youth group and teaching themselves to play the guitar), and running on the football field, forever in the grip of their insatiable need for speed.

When polling the fans behind Jackrabbit Nation, there’s an easy consensus that Jaxon and Jadon have been “ones to watch” for the past six years at State, but Fred and Linda have had a front row seat to the twins’ games since they were children.

From an early age, Jaxon and Jadon enjoyed playing football with their family at home, Linda acting as cheerleader for her troupe of children while Fred coached the twins on the routes he wanted them to run with each play. Fred jokes that, to this day, if Coach Jimmy Rogers needed him to step in and walk the boys through their running routes, he could easily do so at a moment’s notice.

Jadon’s and Jaxon’s obvious gift for football only grew with practice, and the twins became notorious for their impressively aggressive tactics. When asked about favorite past games, an infamous incident during an elementary school game comes to mind for Fred and Linda. Jadon slammed into the opposing team’s running back with a booming thunderclap of a hit, loud enough that every head in the stands turned at the sound. Afterward, Fred had jokingly dubbed it “the hit of the game.” Not to be outdone, in the following week’s game, Jaxon collided with the opposing running back with such ferocity that the player was launched into a row of parents perched in lawn chairs on the sidelines. Jaxon eagerly asked Fred, “How about that, Dad? Was that the hit of the game?”

Looking back on the incident, Fred and Linda can only laugh at their sons’ competitive nature. “That’s how they’ve always been,” Fred explains.

Without a doubt, Jaxon and Jadon can be described as “all in” when it comes to football.

Not only do the two shine in their physical performance, but they’ve also been unfailingly dedicated to the strategy behind the game. In the twins’ years of playing for Madison High, Fred and Linda recorded every game on VHS tapes. Immediately after each matchup, the boys would return home, set up camp in front of the television, and take notes as they relived the night’s plays.

With such diligence on and off the field, the Jankes were ready and eager to take on college football when they arrived at State. Still, Fred admits that watching Jadon and Jaxon play for the Jackrabbits was an entirely new experience. “When they first started playing here, I was just in awe and overwhelmed by the atmosphere,” Fred remembers. “Over the years, we’ve become more accustomed to everything. It’s always nerve-wracking to watch them play, but it’s been such great times. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

To this day, Linda is admittedly a bit more nervous watching the twins compete, wary of the pressure that playing at a collegiate level can bring. Above all else, she wants fans in the stands to bear in mind that her sons, as well as every student-athlete on the field, are just kids, striving to do their best in a high-action and high-stakes game. She’s a firm believer in the power of positivity to help offset the pressure. “The word ‘fumble’ is not in our vocabulary,” Linda insists.

Jadon’s and Jaxon’s mother is often on the move herself during the games. In her process of pacing away anxiety and seeking out the warmest spots in the stadium to watch her sons, Linda has met countless members of Jackrabbit Nation, spanning generations. In recent months, she made the acquaintance of two elderly fans in their 80s, bedecked with rabbit ears and covered in yellow and blue, and became fast friends with the women, taking in several games together and even exchanging Christmas ornaments with her new stadium buddies.

Linda’s newest (or perhaps oldest) fellow football fans are only one example in a long list of ways that the SDSU community has embraced the Jankes – as well as how the Jackrabbits’ success has taken the whole country by storm. At most games, Linda is a walking testimony for the tight-knit nature of the Jackrabbit family: her custom earrings, each marked with one of the twins’ jersey numbers, come from relatives in Alaska; she always wears a homemade crocheted headband and scarf, crafted by the grandmother of a former Jacks player; a string of yellow and blue beads intermixed with letters spelling out her sons’ names hangs from Linda’s neck, a token given to each Jackrabbit footballer’s mother.

Yet being part of the yellow and blue community goes far beyond wearing the university colors or donning Jacks merch in solidarity with the team. Most of all, being a Jackrabbit means showing up for one another, much like a family does. It’s those acts of brotherhood and loyalty that show Fred and Linda that their sons are precisely where they’re meant to be. The Janke family as a whole have been immersed in the SDSU culture of support and generosity.

That culture looks like members of the Jackrabbit Football coaching staff, who showed up for the twins’ grandfather’s funeral in October 2023; it looks like fans from Washington, reaching out across state lines and asking the brothers to connect with their sixteen-year-old relative, a loyal Jacks fan in Omaha recovering from a traumatic brain injury – without hesitation, Jaxon and Jadon sent the boy well wishes and signed photos; that culture looks like droves of alumni and friends trekking to Frisco, Texas, this week, dropping everything to take in a historic game, fiddle in hand.

That kind of unity and compassion is what Fred and Linda describe as their favorite part of being Jackrabbits.

The Jankes credit the entire community for the generosity that allows the football team to excel and for the tight-knit atmosphere the brothers found at SDSU. To Fred and Linda, Jadon and Jaxon have grown immensely, both personally and athletically, during their time at State. Their home life and strong family values positioned them for success leading up to their time as collegiate student-athletes, and, when they arrived at SDSU, Jackrabbit Nation picked up where their parents had left off. Fred and Linda are the picture of proud parents today, in awe and grateful at the chance to see their sons shine in the national spotlight for a second consecutive year.

“Going to Frisco and winning the national championship last year was everything we’d hoped for,” Fred says. “In the boys’ high school years, we wanted everyone else to see what the Madison fans saw with them. It was a dream come true to have that national exposure with the Jackrabbits and for everyone else to see what we’ve been able to enjoy their whole lives.”

If you find yourself in the stands at Toyota Stadium on January 7, you might spot a distinctive couple of adopted Jackrabbits, one nervously pacing the stadium and bedecked with jewelry bearing #1 and #10 while the other traces out mental running routes, picturing the days when his sons’ home field was their own backyard.

With the winningest football team in program records, Jaxon and Jadon Janke will have a second chance at another dream come true, with two overlapping families cheering them on: a family of nine they were born into and a family of thousands they were born to represent in a historic chapter of Jackrabbit Football.