Maya Washington’s dad worked at a desk job when she was a child, and she never knew anything else. But before his daughter was born, Gene Washington was a professional football player.

“What I discovered is that my dad has always had an appreciation for the arts, and part of the reason I ended up being an artist is ’cause he exposed me to opportunities to see shows, to take dance classes, so he’s always appreciated the arts,” Maya said. “Because his career happened before I was born, I missed out on the full understanding and appreciation of what an amazing athlete he is.”

Gene played college football for Michigan State and was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 1967 with the eighth overall pick.

The father-daughter combo were always somewhat close, but Gene didn’t talk about his football playing days much because by the time Maya was born, they were over. Gene is from Texas, but living in the midwest, he still saw his children deal with harsh reality for Black Americans — even after the civil rights movement.

A big reason for why his football-playing days stayed a mystery to Maya was due to the nature of free agency and the NFL at the time. Free agency wasn’t very fine tuned, and it benefited owners and tore down players by taking away their value. Gene fought this system after his first team, the Vikings, tried to give him a smaller contract than his first one.

Gene was traded in the subsequent year, and injuries that he had been working through towards the end of his time with Minnesota ended up derailing his career as a member of the Denver Broncos. Despite having a promising start and being one of the top picks in the nation, Gene only lasted six seasons in the NFL.

“They don’t give you advanced notice; they come and talk to you and say, ‘You have been traded to Denver,’ and that’s about the extent of it,” Gene said.

Thanks to the free agency problems, Gene wasn’t set for life by any means at the conclusion of his time in the NFL and turned to a new career with a family to look after.

This is one of the reasons that Maya hadn’t thought much about her father’s football career, but many years later she would get an idea that would help the two grow closer as father and daughter.

At a funeral for his Michigan State teammate Bubba Smith after Smith died in 2011, Gene and his teammates began reminiscing on some old football stories. It was nothing Maya had ever heard before.

“With all of the interviews she’s done with the teammates, she has a better understanding of how I fit with my teammates, and I was able to be a part of that,” Gene said. “I think the questions that I had going into this whole thing in terms of sharing, I feel much more open to sharing and making sure that she’s a part of my thinking about football, but before, I didn’t have that feeling that she understood fully some of the things that I was going through.”

Gene has a love of football, and Maya’s love is based in the arts; while both are vastly different, Maya found a way to combine the two as she sought out to better understand her father’s past.

Maya brought her documentary “Through the Banks of the Red Cedar” to Iowa State and tackled her father’s football years through the lens of a close family member.

In the documentary, Maya went through Gene’s whole life, from his role in the integration of college football all the way to now where he spends weekends watching what he grew up doing.

“I’m just so proud that that’s a legacy that he and his teammates and even his predecessors, ’cause we’re at Iowa State and we know that Jack Trice is a very important figure in that history and the shoulders upon which my dad and his generation stand on,” Maya said. “I have tremendous pride and appreciation for the sacrifices that they made and the contribution they made to a culture, to society and the way my dad’s hard work created opportunities for me and my siblings.”

Growing up in Texas was a challenge for Gene. His childhood came primarily before the civil rights movement, and with Texas being in the south, it was still segregated.

Duffy Daugherty, former Michigan State football coach, would host his own clinics in the south that Black football coaches could attend. In doing so, he was able to give a stepping stone to Black athletes and coaches in the south to hone their skills and become coaches and players at Michigan State.

The result was the first fully integrated college football team, and thanks to Smith’s father, who was a football coach at the time, Gene was added as a wide receiver for Michigan State.

Gene was on the team on a track and field scholarship — something he excelled in as a sprinter and hurdler — but his purpose at Michigan State was to play football.

“[Bubba] personally contacted me to tell me he was going to Michigan State,” Gene said. “In regard to making that decision, he also told me that he would put in a good word for me to Duffy, to encourage Duffy to bring me up there with him, to also go to Michigan State, and he did that.”

Smith would put in a word for Gene despite the two being competitors where they played before their days together at Michigan State.

With the first fully integrated college football team, Gene would help the Spartans rise to the top and become one to the top teams in the nation, eventually leading to being named the national champions by college football for two years in a row — Gene’s junior and senior season.

In 1967, Gene was drafted eighth in the NFL Draft while a couple of his teammates, Smith and running back Clinton Jones, were drafted first and second, respectively.

Jones was a big part of the documentary because not only did he spend all of his years at Michigan State with Gene, but he also was drafted onto the same Vikings team and stayed with them for the same duration that Gene did.

“It was overwhelming […] like a fantasy story,” Jones said. “We didn’t have all the hype that they have now.”

Jones said that Maya approached the idea for the documentary after hearing all the stories when the team came together to cover Smith’s life.

Jones was a big part of Gene’s life and became a big part of the documentary in turn.

“[The documentary is] not a sports story; it’s a human history story about a group of young men that came together,” Jones said.

Jones and Gene were with each other throughout the bulk of their sports careers, and both of them — although they both said that racial integration wasn’t something they were focusing on at the time — played a role in integrating college football.

As time has drawn on, the two have been given more opportunities within the Vikings organization to stay involved with the team, as they are both considered legends.

For Maya, the old stories gave her the opportunity to do what she loves as a way to connect to her dad and all the teammates that he was close with.

The start of the documentary hears Maya narrating and saying that she and Gene seem to sometimes speak different languages. Through her self-written, directed and produced documentary, the two became closer. While their two worlds are still different, through the documentary, they’ve begun to bridge the gap.

“Now that we’re on the other side of this project, we’re connecting through sports, but in our connecting through sports, my dad has, I think, perhaps developed a better appreciation for the filmmaking process,” Maya said. “The challenges that women filmmakers face, especially women indie filmmakers face, of getting projects made.

“It’s been really cool to sort of have our two languages meet.”