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The Bradsher Beat
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
By Bethany Bradsher |
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Davis primed to blossom in
Greenville
By
Bethany Bradsher
©2010 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
One year
ago, Dominique Davis had this to say about his transfer to Fort Scott
Community College: “I’ve just got to take a step back to get where I’ve
got to go.”
Now on the
cusp of his second-chance Division I opportunity at East Carolina, Davis is
more likely now to call Fort Scott a step up in his maturation as a man and
a football player.
Sure, it’s a
community college in rural Kansas whose athletic offerings include meats
judging, livestock judging and rodeo. You can’t even sniff the big time from
there, and for most college football prospects it wouldn’t rate as a stop on
any career ladder.
But it did
have something that Davis desperately needed — a coach who believed in him.
And because of a year spent under the leadership of Jeff Sims and his staff,
Davis has become a Pirate who fully believes in his ability to lead a
football team.
When he
pursued Davis about transferring to Fort Scott from Boston College, Sims
knew about the academic troubles that had forced Davis to leave the ACC
school where he had earned a starting job. He knew that Sims had probably
made some bad decisions that contributed to his decline at BC.
But Fort
Scott offered a new start, and Sims had no intention of saddling his
quarterback with any past baggage.
“Dominique’s
a great kid who made a mistake at Boston College,” said Sims. “We showed
some confidence in him. The number one thing we did for Dominique while he
was here was we believed in Dominique.”
It didn’t
take many preseason workouts before Sims saw evidence of the qualities that
drew college recruiters when Davis was still a standout at Kathleen High
School in Lakeland, FL. He was a quick, intuitive, athletic quarterback with
a strong command of the offense.
Davis was
coming from a Boston College scheme that used the shotgun formation. His
move to Fort Scott gave him the chance to shine in an offense that kept him
out of the pocket, moving around the backfield.
“He’s
extremely accurate as a quarterback, and he does have the “it” factor,” Sims
said. “He knows how to rally the troops.”
To Sims, the
true test of Davis’s character came when he arrived in Fort Scott, Kansas,
put his head down, and worked hard to be the best Greyhound quarterback he
could be. He could have adopted a superior attitude, but he never mentioned
Boston College or his path that brought him to Fort Scott.
“Where he
gained a lot of my respect, never did I hear any excuses of what happened
before,” Sims said. “The day he was here, he acted like he had to make the
team, that he was a Greyhound. Dominique’s an extremely humble, quiet
person.”
The best
picture of Davis’s grace under pressure at Fort Scott came on October 31 of
last year, when the Greyhounds were facing two-time defending national
junior college champion Butler County Community College. The Grizzlies
scored late in the game to take a 10-7 lead.
On a
last-minute Greyhound drive, Davis first converted two fourth downs to keep
moving, then hit a wall when he was sacked on second down to put his offense
at 3rd and 17.
With the
odds against him, Davis called out a play to the sideline as the seconds
ticked away. He coolly aired out a pass that found its target at the 2-yard
line. Davis ran the ball in on a sneak to seal the 14-10 win and Fort
Scott's first Jayhawk Conference title since 1974.
“He beat a
team that, they don’t get beat,” Sims said. “He’s a quiet guy that does what
he’s supposed to do. He doesn’t rub his teammates the wrong way. He just
goes out and works.”
Fort Scott’s
greatest gift to Davis was giving him the confidence to bloom where he’s
planted, to see every stop as an opportunity. Now that Davis is transplanted
at East Carolina, Sims expects him to throw himself into his role with the
Pirates with the same gusto.
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