Mark Stoops has instilled toughness and grit in all of his football teams at Kentucky, but running back commit, Re’Mahn (Ray) Davis, has had that instilled in him from an early age.
Growing up in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, Davis quickly realized at a young age that life would not be easy. With a father and mother in and out of incarceration, he and his siblings bounced from home to home of family and family friends.
By the time he was 8, he was part of California’s foster care system. At one point, Davis was separated from his sibling and was forced into a homeless shelter. With the help of a high school teacher and his wife, they offered Davis a place to stay until he was able to move back in with a grandmother.
Then at a youth basketball tournament, Davis met Lora Banks the mother of one of his youth basketball teammates. Davis first asked for a ride, but little did he know the Banks family would change his life.
“He didn’t live anywhere and he didn’t have a quarter in his pocket and he got his meals at school,” Banks told Vanderbilt reporter Chad Bishop.
Banks and her husband Greg Ley soon found themselves inviting Davis over dinner when he “just happened to be in the neighborhood”. This soon led to applying for temporary guardianship of Davis, and even his educational rights holder.
Given an important stake in Davis’s future, Banks wanted what was best for him. Davis did not have a shortage of athletic gifts, which led to a family friend suggesting to look at Trinity-Pawling, a boarding school in Pawling, New York.
Shortly after, Banks and Davis made the trip to New York for an on-site interview with the Dean of Trinity-Pawling, where Davis was accepted on the spot. After rushing for 462 yards and five touchdowns for Trinity-Pauley in 2017, Davis began to be recruited by the likes of Syracuse and Boston College.
After a post-graduate year to improve his academic standing, Davis committed to Temple University. After a solid start to his college career, Davis began searching for a better fit athletically and academically, ending up at Vanderbilt.
From a homeless child in San Francisco to one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the country, Davis preserved through adversity and is thankful for it.
“I don’t think I’d be the man I am today without those experiences. It just made me look at the bigger picture of life,” Davis said. “There’s always a lot of people going through way worse things than me.”
Now, Davis is set to be RB1 for the Kentucky Wildcats with the goal of making it to the NFL. His ‘why’?
“I don’t really do it for me. I do it for all the other kids who are in the system… That’s the biggest thing for me. If I do make it, I hope to be a success story, not for me or my family, but for those kids and the less fortunate.”
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