Enter The coronavirus pandemic has been not only a health catastrophe, but an epic failure of national government. The novel coronavirus, by contrast, has hit the elderly the hardest. Every weekday morning except Wednesday, he got up at 6:30 a.m., drank a protein shake, then drove to McDonalds for more breakfast, before arriving at school at 7 a.m. for a weightlifting session. No contact sports are going to be permitted this fall, she said. For high school junior Kooper Davis, whose family lives 10 minutes west of the border, this meant no school and no football. Everything looks the same on either side of the Texas-New Mexico border in the great oil patch of the Permian Basin. Over the course of the fall semester, about a dozen of the 70 staff members in the Denver City school missed time for quarantine, mostly after testing positive themselves, forcing the district to find substitutes no easy task, but not insurmountable. He was an amazing big brother and had very close relationships with his younger siblings. As the hot Southwestern summer dragged on, Kooper Davis and his teammates placed faith in that possibility. They were among the strictest in the country. You cant state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublicas work. Cooper's family hopes to use his story to . Even if he was wrong or going in the wrong direction, he wasnt afraid to put his thoughts out there. It was a great class in general, she said: Those kids fed off each other. Its crazy to think that just down the road, theyre playing a football season theyre almost done with their football season. Travis Wade Collins passed away unexpectedly at his home on Sunday, February 26th 2023. No doubt, if my son had been in school on Monday this wouldnt have happened, he said. Good, she said, because Kooper would be out of the question.. No, I like it!. They mostly watched video lessons on their own, using an online curriculum called Edgenuity. Nationwide, meanwhile, President Bidens push to reopen schools was explicitly leaving out high schools, leaving millions of teenagers with the likelihood of remote learning through the end of the school year. Almost every weekend, wed be back on near-empty highways, staying in near-empty motels, subsisting on endless takeout chicken sandwiches whenever we couldnt find an outdoor place for a meal. Football Recruiting / New Mexico / Hobbs, NM / Hobbs High School / Kooper Davis. His parents encouraged him to aim for the Ivy League, but he knew its football was middling. Jennifer Espinoza got word from fellow teachers, one of whom asked her, Hey, did you have Connor Davis? The name meant nothing to her, but, she asked, did they mean Kooper Davis? Stringent guidelines for reopening schools in New Mexico meant students in Hobbs have experienced the pandemic differently than students across the border in Texas. Its crazy to think that just down the road, theyre playing a football season theyre almost done with their football season. He played basketball, too, but football had his heart. One thing that maybe our decision makers dont remember is that when youre in high school or youre a kid, thinking youre the only one dealing with something. Justin, who works for a company that services oil-field equipment and runs a lawn care business on the side, noticed the reaction his tall, athletic son was getting in . Its baffling to us to figure out why he didnt come to us., Suicide is ultimately an unfathomable act, but Justin said he was sure of one thing. He told me that he had been running through his last interactions with Kooper, over and over, searching for a warning sign, to no avail. James parents said there were no obvious signs that their son was struggling. The challenge was less the lack of money than the lack of people to administer it: the state education department has only a single behavorial health coordinator, Leslie Kelly, who was struck by the rising concern about youth suicide during the pandemic given that the problem had existed for years in New Mexico. Sam was lifting weights with another friend in the small workout room that his father had set up. Go deeper Andrew Solender Junior year was everything: He would be vying for the starting QB slot on varsity and taking a fistful of Advanced Placement courses. His parents also believed social isolation played a role in his death: I think the big question we all have is why, and we will never know the reason why, said Katrina. To send flowers Katrina Fuller in the field where her son died. Kooper Davis could only watch from 30 miles away from New Mexico while the Texas teams played and the New Mexico teams did not. Doctors are concerned about possible increases in childhood obesity no surprise with many kids housebound in stress-filled homes while addiction experts are warning of the long-term effects of endless hours of screen time when both schoolwork and downtime stimulation are delivered digitally. Kooper started heading off to quarterback camps and private training in Atlanta, New Orleans and Tucson, among other cities hoping to better his odds of getting to play in college, an. He is survived by his father and mother, Justin and Heather Davis, his biological mother Sarah, his sister Kynlee, sister Kharley, brother Kroy, and brother Kohen, brother Tayton and sister Emara, multiple grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, administrators, and coaches. If we do well, if we work hard, it is possible we could just be delaying them and they could be played later in the year and later into the season. The next day, a Monday evening, Kooper and his classmates held a demonstration for reopening school and school sports, one of several across the county that day. Even more startling was hearing from school administrators about how well the football season had gone the Denver City team made it to the second round of the playoffs and about the great event of the night prior: the holiday band concert. The best thing we can do is to get them back to classrooms. Some afternoons, hed head over to the church his family belongs to, Christian Center Church, which is led by Sams father, Jotty Kinney, who set up a small weight room for the boys to use. Kids have been paying a big price for the lockdowns and for some kids its just too much to handle. Its taken a lot of time and effort, but our kids are getting instruction face to face.. Davis planned to put together a highlight real of his games which hed use to attract attention. Hawaii, one of the states least affected by the pandemic, put its threshold at 360 cases over a 14-day period. how did kooper davis of hobbs die. Weve got districts 30 miles away doing it safely, associate superintendent Gene Strickland said. But Kooper hated virtual school. This toll has led a growing number of epidemiologists, pediatricians and other physicians to argue for reopening schools as broadly as possible, amid growing evidence that schools are not major venues for transmission of the virus. States, and frequently individual school districts sometimes even individual schools and sports leagues have been forced to grapple with emerging and occasionally conflicting science that has sought to decode the mysteries of a newly discovered virus. Its been hard to cope, period, said Jordyn Titus, a first-year student at Hobbs High School. For student-athletes aspiring to play in college, junior year is key. Participation in sports and a connection to school can have a profound protective effect, according to David Brent, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He was hoping his grades and his performance on the field would be enough to get him into a good college. I had an open relationship with my son, he said. Rigby. The school did not administer coronavirus tests on its own, but if a student or teacher tested positive locally, the school conducted contact tracing to determine if any other teacher or student had been exposed to them for 15 minutes or more, unmasked, within six feet. As the story points out, the junior year is critical for students hoping to get admission to a good school based on sports. He charmed classmates and teachers alike with his playful ebullience. The CDC found that the proportion of visits to the emergency room by adolescents between ages 12 and 17 that were mental-health-related increased 31% during the span of March to October 2020, compared with the same months in 2019. These contact sports are just too high-risk. 866-495-5172. The county had suffered 112 deaths attributed to COVID-19, which worked out to a per capita rate slightly lower than that in the three Texas counties abutting Lea. Watch popular content from the following creators: cl(@chelsleigh2020), mckayla(@mckayla..pierce), angelroseeee12(@roseeeeeeee_0), Lily DeSciscio(@lilymdesciscio), taylorholdridge99(@egdirdlohrolyat22) . (Perhaps the only indicator of youth distress that is falling reports of child abuse and neglect, which dropped about 40% early in the pandemic is nonetheless worrisome because experts suspect it is the reporting that is declining, not the frequency of the abuse.). Most notably, it gave local school districts leeway in deciding whether to open for in-person instruction in August, and in conservative West Texas, many districts seized the opportunity to do so, for all grades, all the way up through high school. Your email will not be used for any other purpose. It was hard not to be impressed by the ingenuity, the determination to try to make things work, even now. Karyme Beltran has also struggled with the pandemic restrictions at Hobbs High. Kooper Davis took his own life on December 07, 2020. I know my kid isnt the only one hurting, she wrote. This meant they would mostly just be lifting weights, never mind that this often meant having many players in the weight room at a time (albeit in four-player pods), seemingly a riskier proposition than a regular practice outdoors. I knew he was pretty brave, but didnt know he was that brave, Sam said later. Kooper was among the speakers, which surprised his friend Sam Kinney. A simple Google search will bring up plenty of others. Legacy invites you to offer condolences and . After initially barring any schools from reopening in August, the state released gating criteria for districts that wanted to resume in-person instruction in the fall. Justin and Heather told me how much comfort they were taking in the outpouring over Kooper, especially among his classmates. Kooper Davis had always thrived in school. He attended Mills Elementary school before moving to Roswell NM, where he graduated from Goddard High School in 1991. Kooper did not know him well, but went out to join friends who had gathered to mourn him. How much distress was invisible to parents? Just a few miles away in Texas, students were back in school and teams were playing a full season of games. I have no doubt that God is not done using Kooper, he said. In New Mexico, mental health experts say, the factors also include high rates of depression on Native American reservations, and rural isolation in general. To avoid dense crowds, the band had held three performances, with several hundred people attending each. The state, led by Democratic Gov. From Hobbs to the Texas towns of Seminole and Denver City is a half-hour drive next door, by the standards of the vast Southwestern plains. Whats going on with those other kids?. Check out Kooper Davis's high school sports home, including game updates while playing basketball at Hobbs High School. I fear for all the kids, he said. He had been away from Hobbs at the time, working an oil-field job in Odessa, Texas, and a co-worker he had shared a truck with later tested positive. But they said they were thinking of all the other kids in another way, too. Lujan Grisham announced in July that football and soccer would be prohibited for the fall season. But there was an implicit agreement that we were fortunate that our kids could keep playing, and we wouldnt do anything to screw it up. The result of the abdication of federal leadership in 2020 was an atomization of decision-making that affected the lives and well-being of millions of people. But New Mexico schools and team sports didnt start up in the fall thanks to strict state regulations: After initially barring any schools from reopening in August, the state released gating criteria for districts that wanted to resume in-person instruction in the fall. He isn't the only one that was crushed by sacrifices he should never have been forced to make. Some precautions were taken, such as umpires calling balls and strikes from behind the mound instead of behind the catcher at home plate. One of the few aspects of this terrible pandemic to be grateful for is that it has taken a vastly lesser toll on children and young adults than its major precursor of last century, the flu pandemic of 1918-1920. Kooper already had a highlight reel, and it included some nice-looking throws, but it was from his sophomore season on the junior varsity team. Kooper Davis hated online school and he really hated that there was no football his junior year. That is what teens are driven to do: to grow self-esteem and a strong sense of who they are. With school and so much else closed off to them, and daily life mostly limited to the home, the little bit of self-directedness they had before is gone. Even if New Mexicos overall numbers were holding steady, to those in Hobbs, three youth suicides plus a half-dozen other attempts by students in a matter of months in a population of 39,000 felt like its own epidemic. One of the more heartbreaking conversations that our healthcare workers share is about these last words when children apologize to their parents and grandparents for bringing COVID into their homes for getting them sick, she told the Los Angeles Times. In reading that, she had drawn a connection to American children who were being forced into a whole different way of life during the pandemic. If it would prevent another Kooper, then definitely, yes, she said. According to his toxicology report, Cooper died due to taking a synthetic pill laced with fentanyl. And unfortunately the Davis family is not alone even in Hobbs, New Mexico. Justin, as I would soon learn, is a large and taciturn man, but he was eager to talk, and urged me to come to New Mexico to learn more about what Kooper and his friends had been through. There were other challenges, such as the time in August when a player on the girls volleyball team tested positive and the school made the decision to shut down the team for two weeks, just in case another player had been exposed. Plenty of parents continue to worry for their childrens health amid the pandemic. I was there to meet with Coach Stevens, who had also been wracking his mind trying to think of clues he hadnt picked up from Kooper. Please pm me if you or anyone you know could use a helping hand.. Coach Stevens got the news from the school principal that afternoon. This didnt keep many large urban districts in the state from starting the school year with remote learning. Kooper was very involved in and loved being part of his church family as well as being a Christian. He had won over his ninth-grade English teacher, Jennifer Espinoza, with his willingness to engage on the. That may have an effect over time. Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations in memory of Kooper to be made to Christian Center Church. Hobbs wasnt even holding synchronous classes online for older high schoolers. Suicide is ultimately an unfathomable act, but Justin said he was sure of one thing. 877-845-6272. Davis, during an October demonstration to reopen schools In December, Davis took his own life; the third Hobbs teen to do so in the last three months of 2020 alone. I think the big question we all have is why, and we will never know the reason why, his mother, Katrina Fuller, told an Albuquerque TV talk show in July. Obituary. We need to be back on the field. He missed football so much that, on some Friday evenings, he headed across the state line to Texas to watch a game. Local governmental and educational officials the vast majority of whom arent epidemiologists or experts on indoor airflow have had to formulate policy under intense time pressure while being buffeted by impassioned constituencies on every side and facing the reality that any decision would impose costs on somebody. I asked if she thought school should have opened in the fall, and she hesitated. They allowed only for elementary-school instruction, and required a district to stay below an average of eight new cases per day per 100,000 residents over a two-week period. United Realty, LLC Happy Hump Day!! They were even considering sending Kooper and Heather to Atlanta to live near one of the coaches hed trained with. You know, marginalizing our teens for other people that are high-risk, what do you pick? Man, this sucks, he told his teammates. I arrived in Hobbs two days later, just in time for the memorial inside Christian Center Church. Its that years video that recruiters will look at, and that years grades that admissions officers will scrutinize. Heather Davis' son, Kooper, died in December of last year, Southwest News Service (SWNS) reports. And one weekend late afternoon in November, when it was below 30 degrees out, two dozen boys went to school to play touch football, the closest they had come to having a game. We would like to offer our sincere support to anyone coping with grief. The Fifth Circuit affirmed Davis and Glover's convictions and sentences. The next morning, Dec. 7, Kooper went to his Monday weightlifting session. Before the event broke up, someone encouraged all of Koopers classmates to get together on stage for a group photo. This has posed a conundrum from early in the pandemic: How much should children be prevented from doing outside the home, to keep them from contributing to community transmission of a highly contagious virus? More resources had belatedly started pouring into the state: a $10 million federal grant for school-based mental health services, plus $500,000 in CARES Act funds. The Texas Classroom Teachers Association had nowhere near the sway of unions in other states. The smiles were jarring in the context of a memorial service until one remembered the broader context: It was the first time they had all gotten to be together since March. In the large band hall, the band director showed me the dots he had taped on the floor to keep the 70-odd musicians spaced 7.5 feet apart even as they marched, and the cloth covers that one students grandmother had made, decorated with the schools mustang logo, to go over the tubas, to keep them from emitting moisture. His teammates would be allowed to practice only in small pods, which left them mostly doing just weightlifting sessions and agility drills. James Davis's passing at the age of 79 . Explore the latest videos from hashtags: #hobbsnm, #porterdavishomes . The stage was dominated by balloons in black and yellow, the Hobbs High colors, and large white letters and numbers, aglow with lights, that spelled KD 10, Koopers jersey number. Even with fall sports canceled, the Hobbs school district, with almost 10,000 students, was still hoping to open the new school year for as much in-person instruction as possible. Davis and Glover appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit claiming that the residual clause of 924 (c) (3)'s "crime of violence" definition was unconstitutionally vague. The only thing that I was able to find was in his journal, was that he had wrote that he was going mad from staying at home all the time and that he just wanted to be able to go to school and play outside with his friends. Kooper started heading off to quarterback camps and private training in Atlanta, New Orleans and Tucson, among other cities hoping to better his odds of getting to play in college, an aspiration that became more feasible as he sprouted to 6 feet, 4 inches tall, ideal for throwing over linemen, if only he could get his agility and coordination to catch up with his height. There would be no actual games. At the microphone, Kooper introduced himself, then said, I play football and basketball and those sports make up a big part of my life, and when Im not here every day doing something with those sports, honestly, I feel really lost in life. Two days later, the town learned of another life lost: an 18-year-old who had graduated from Hobbs High that spring took his life at a local park after receiving a medical discharge from the Navy. I get the fear level, but we see models that show it can be done. So many kids are turning to the wrong things to fill a void. In the same week as Lujan Grisham announced her reopening plan, I made another check of the coronavirus toll in Hobbs Lea County. New Mexicos response last year was the opposite. There are the frequent memorials of another sort, to the victims of vehicle accidents. If hes thirsty, give him water, and his interpretation of it: No matter who it is, no matter who the person is, if theyre in need, help them. And Kooper was a great student of the quarterback position; he had the intangibles, his coaches said. How is this life that they are living.. The Texas Education Agency was letting districts make the decision. When do we all protest and say this is enough, do we wait until our kids lose life completely? she wrote. Its trash, said one, Kevin Melissa. your email below for our complimentary daily grief messages. This had only been confirmed for her as she saw how poorly the remote learning was going: not only did most students leave their cameras off, some wouldnt even turn on their microphones. Theyre going to be taking care of us one day, and this is how were treating them? He noted that one student at the October protest had carried a sign that read, Im able to vote in your next election.. On the way out of the athletic building, Kooper swung by to see the basketball coach, Eddy Martinez, to tell him he thought he might be able to play with that team, too, if the schedule that the state had floated the previous week actually came to pass: a truncated football season in February, followed by a truncated basketball season. Because, I mean, were losing them. Kooper was born in Hobbs NM on August 9, 2003 and spent his childhood in Lovington before moving to Hobbs with his family, Father Justin Davis, Mother Heather Davis and his younger siblings, where he was an honors student, athlete and student leader. But the districts push to reopen was rebuffed by the state education department. The buses had condolence messages painted on the windows: We are here for you, read the writing on the bus from Portales. For Kooper, autumn brought no relief. Our sons, now 16 and 13, have had fully remote learning in their Baltimore public schools for nearly a year now. Share a memory of Kooper Davis. Kooper Davis's passing at the age of 17 on Monday, December 07, 2020 has been publicly announced by Chapel Of Hope in Hobbs, NM .Legacy invites you to offer condolences and share memories of Kooper in The next day, Coach Stevens gathered his players and assistant coaches in the team meeting room to discuss Koopers death.