THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2011
SPORTS from KNILE on page 8 named a preseason All-American by multiple publications over the summer after bursting onto the national scene with a 1,322yard, 13-touchdown sophomore season in 2010, a campaign that earned him first-team All-SEC honors. He was poised to improve on the big year in 2011, putting up impressive numbers in the weight room during the offseason. His 4.29 40-yard dash ranked third on the team, while his 415-pound bench press was the best of any Razorbacks nonlineman. He closed his Facebook and Twitter accounts during the
told him he’d need to fill out paperwork and produce his Social Security number in order to get a job. Less than two hours and a trip to Walmart later, Davis was back with the mandatory slippers to cover his shoes, working the broiler in the kitchen. He needed a driver’s license and a car to get to work, though. He was granted a hardship license, then bought a 1996 Ford Probe from a neighbor for $500. The car didn’t run. The power steering was broken and it needed a new compressor and alternator. “I got those cheap from a junkyard and got it running,” Davis said.
“The death of my father kept me going to keep at it” KNILE DAVIS summer to avoid distractions. “I did everything I could to prepare myself for the season,” Davis said. “It just didn’t work in my favor. It doesn’t work like we planned it all the time.” The injury meant another grueling recovery from another setback. He had only just arrived in the spotlight. Growing Up Early The stressed-out manager at Whataburger didn’t have much time to talk to insistent teenage Knile Davis over the din of the busy restaurant in Missouri City, Texas. Davis, 14, wanted work. His mother had lost a job and he decided to look for his own employment. “Don’t worry about me,” he told his mom. “I’m going to take care of myself.” He stopped by Whataburger after school, but the restaurant was too packed and understaffed for the manager to slow down and talk to Davis. He hurriedly
Davis used the money from Whataburger to pay for gas for the Probe, football equipment and haircuts, things his mom couldn’t afford. She couldn’t take Knile, her other son Kobe and her daughter Raegan backto-school shopping, so Knile bought his own clothes. The same thoughts ran through Gardner’s head, again and again. “Why couldn’t this have happened to me when they were younger? They probably wouldn’t have remembered this.” “They were aware of everything and it hurt my heart,” Gardner said. Davis’ job was a blessing for her, though. It took some of the stress off her when she was between jobs. “It tore me up, but he had to do that,” she said. Gardner’s other children never asked for much growing up. ‘Oh, no. That’s OK, mom,’ they would answer when she asked if they wanted something extra. “Knile always wanted to have stuff,” Gardner said. “Most of his
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childhood he had everything he needed and most of things he wanted.” He was no longer the little kid. He became a good saver. “A lot of times, we’d just be talking and he’d say, ‘Well, we need money for that,’” Gardner said. “Knile would say, ‘Well, I have the money.’ I’d ask, ‘How’d you get the money for that?’ ‘Well, I saved it.’” Chasing the Dream Warren Morgan looked for them in the stands of every small-town Louisiana gym at every high school basketball game he played in 1984. His family was never there. Morgan was a starting forward for the high school varsity basketball team in the southern Louisiana town of Crowley. The self-proclaimed “Rice Capital of America” is barely a speck on the map, with a population of less than 12,000 people. An 8-year-old Davis with his stepfather Warren Morgan. Morgan’s parents separated through with football all along? when he was growing up. Nei- “Dad.” “The main thing my dad al- You just need to relax, give yourther showed up to watch him on ways told me was just, ‘Never self a chance to heal and see what the hardwood. “He didn’t have a lot of sup- quit. Chase the dream,’” Davis happens. Don’t give up like that,’” Gardner said. port from home,” said Gardner, said. Morgan helped motivate DaMorgan’s deteriorating health who married him in 2006. “I think he had that chance to turn vis to recover from a broken col- was a motivating factor in Davis’ it around for another kid and he larbone his junior season of high decision to stick it out and go school and a broken right ankle through another recovery. tried to do that.” “With his stepfather being Gardner had been separated his senior year. Despite the injufrom Kevin Davis, Knile’s bio- ries, Davis was considered one sick, I think it made a difference logical father, since Knile was 6 of the top players in the nation, because he knew how much they years old. She met Morgan at a ranked the No. 17 running back put in, how much they had invested in it,” Gardner said. benefit volleyball game later that in the country by Rivals.com. “He always defeated the chalMorgan’s motto to each of his year. Morgan and Davis quickly lenges he had,” said Ronald John- children before they left for colformed a bond. Both were tough, son, one of Davis’ high school lege was simple. football and track coaches. “For “Don’t go up there and get rugged and competitive. “Knile idolized Warren in so the size and speed he was as a whipped,” he told them. Davis started working to remany ways and when Warren high school athlete, you could cover. Morgan couldn’t. said something it was like law,” tell he was something special.” While schools like Texas “We were all kind of in deGardner said. “He wanted so bad to live up to whatever Warren ex- A&M and LSU backed off in nial about the fact that he was their recruitment of Davis, Ar- dying,” Gardner said. “We all pected.” The two were insepara- kansas stayed on the Fort Bend just wanted God to do a mirable. When Davis reached high Marshall High School product, cle. We wanted him to heal. We school, they lifted weights in the earning his verbal commitment thought that chemo would work. We prayed that, we thought that family’s garage and ran bleachers in September 2008. After Davis broke his left and we believed that. We beat nearby Rice Stadium in Houston, less than half an hour from ankle in the second game of his lieved that up until the very end senior season, the Razorbacks’ when they told us, ‘There’s not a their home in Missouri City. To Davis, Morgan became coaching staff encouraged him lot we can do. It’s time for him to to graduate a semester early, so go home and use the hospice at he could enroll at the UA and go the home.’” through rehab with the trainers When Morgan went home and strength and conditioning and hospice was set up, Davis staff in the spring. and his siblings came back. MorDavis attended his regular gan couldn’t walk anymore, but classes during the day and took the kids wheeled him around additional courses at night to at- the neighborhood on a heart-totain the credits required to grad- heart walk. uate early. After they left, his condition “That was a lot for a kid his declined. He was less responsive. age,” Gardner said. Getting him to eat was a The family waited anxiously chore and his weight dropped to for Davis’ final grades to be post- around 100 pounds. ed, erupting with excitement Davis and his siblings were when they learned he fulfilled present the early August 2009 the necessary requirements to afternoon Morgan died, holding graduate early. his hand, laughing and listenOnce on campus in Fayette- ing to some of his favorite Barville in the spring of 2009, Da- ry White songs, including Never, vis quickly rehabbed his ankle Never Gonna Give You Up. and went through spring pracAny doubts Davis had about tice. That’s when he got the news his football future were erased. Morgan had been diagnosed “The death of my father kept with Stage 4 lung cancer. me going to keep at it,” Davis His mind on the health of his said. stepfather, Davis competed for He remembered the long reps in a crowded backfield dur- nights spent with Morgan. The ing spring practice until he re- runs to the top of Rice Stadium. broke the ankle, an injury sus- The weightlifting sessions in the tained largely because the screws garage. inserted after the first injury Don’t quit. Chase the dream. were too small. It was then – after three maComeback, Part V jor injuries in an 18-month span – that Davis considered quitDavis’ August phone call to ting football. He started thinking Gardner was calm and meaabout how his long-term health sured. might be affected by his injuries. “Mom. I broke my ankle,” he “It was just crazy,” Davis said. said evenly. “A lot of stuff hit me at one time. More than two years had I hurt my ankle again and I was passed since he broke his left anlike, ‘Man, I’ve just got tough kle the second time, 16 months luck with this game.’” since he broke his collarbone in Morgan and Gardner inter- a spring practice between his vened. freshman and sophomore sea“We would tell him, ‘Man, sons. do you realize all that you have “His reaction to this injury done? All that you’ve been was totally different than that first time,” Gardner said. “He whined and complained about it then. He was down about it. I didn’t think about it at that moment in August, but in hindsight I was thinking, ‘He’s a real man now.’ He handled it so well.” Shortly after surgery, Davis asked Matt Summers, Arkansas’ head trainer, when he could work on his upper body. “Whenever you want to,” Summers said. Davis was quickly back in the weightroom. “I was just tired of sitting down, laying down in bed.” He started working out in a pool in September. He runs on a treadmill that puts reduced
Photo Courtesy: REGINA GARDNER weight on his ankle. Gardner got a call from him in mid-September. “I just ran the other day,” he said. “What?” she exclaimed. She told him she was worried he was pushing too hard. “The doctors told me I could put pressure on it because I don’t have to wear the boot all the time,” he said. “The only time I put the boot on is when I feel a little fatigued.” “Knile, I wish you would just slow down.” “Nah, I’ve got to do these things.” That same week, he told her he was back to 90 percent in terms of upper-body weightlifting. Prior to the injury, he was listed as a possible first-round 2012 NFL Draft choice by ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper. Now, “durability is becoming an issue” for Davis, Kiper wrote in mid-September. “I have strong bones, the doctor said I just run hard,” Davis said. “I’ll be in crazy positions when I break my bones. On this particular injury … anybody’s ankle would have broken in that situation.” To rebuild his draft stock, Davis will have to come back next season and prove he’s still an elite running back while staying healthy. “It’s not my first rodeo,” he said. “I knew I was going to be laying down, losing some muscle mass, things like that. I also know you can come back from this and be faster and stronger than you’ve ever been. I look at it that way. “There’s always a next time.” Waiting for that next time while watching from the sidelines this season has been agonizing, though. He was still relegated to propping his left leg on a tricycle and scooting around when the Hogs’ opened the season Sept. 3 against Missouri State. He wanted to watch the game from the sideline at Razorback Stadium, but the tricycle wheels didn’t roll well on the turf. Fellow junior running back Dennis Johnson was struggling to get over a hamstring injury at the time and was also inactive for the game. He walked by Davis inside the Broyles Athletic Center before the game and stopped to try to persuade his teammate to join him on the sideline. “C’mon Knile,” Johnson said. “You going to go out there with me?” He convinced Davis to change into his game jersey. Davis rolled his tricycle down the ramp leading to the bottom floor of the building and the exits to the field. He stopped short of the exit, though, watching the pregame festivities through the window that stretches from sideline to sideline along the bottom of the facility. At the same time, the rest of the team was getting pumped up by the main exit, readying to run onto the field and through the large Arkansas “A” in front of a crowd of more than 70,000 Hog fans. Moments later, the team charged onto the field, fireworks exploding overhead, band playing the fight song and the crowd at a crescendo. Davis stayed behind, watching silently through the glass with an expressionless gaze.