Second of an 11-part series. Coming next: wide receivers.
Ray Davis talked with a purpose, like someone who knows where he is headed.
No doubts in his mind.
Only certainty.
Like somebody who’s been through so much to get to this point, failure isn’t even a possibility, let alone an option.
The Kentucky running back grew up in foster care and spent time homeless, with parents in and out of prison, in the Hayes Valley area of San Francisco.
That was followed by multiple high schools and three colleges.
It’s all part of a journey that has taken him this far, to the doorstep of the 2024 NFL Draft, a script that would make for a heartwarming Hollywood film.
“Statistically, I’m the 1 percent who made it out of the situation I was unfortunately in, but I made it,” the projected Day 2 draft pick said at February’s scouting combine. “I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing it for a lot of other kids who are in that situation, if not a worse situation. To know that I can provide a platform and be a speaker for those kids who don’t have it, that’s the reason I keep going every day, that’s the reason I keep fighting.”
The 24-year-old Davis is the long shot of long shots.
By the age of 8, he was in foster care.
When he was 14, he was living in a homeless shelter with 12 other siblings.
He offered to stay behind when room opened up with a foster family for two of them, according to The Athletic.
Davis was able to graduate from eighth grade after a pair of former teachers, Ben and Alexa Klaus, took him in for a brief period.
Then Lora Banks, the mother of a basketball teammate of his, grew close to him.
She became his educational rights holder after initially becoming his temporary guardian.
Ultimately, Davis landed at boarding school Trinity-Pawling in Pawling, N.Y., at the age of 15, with help from Banks.
It was around that time that his father, Raymond Davis, had begun to get his life in order and get involved in his son’s life again.
The elder Davis was awarded custody of his son, which enabled Ray to move across the country.
It was there when his athletic career began to take off.
He played multiple sports — basketball, baseball, and track and field — but football, the sport his father excelled at as a Galileo High School Sports Hall of Famer, was his calling.
He didn’t have enough credits to qualify for college, so he did a prep year at Blair Academy (N.J.), and scored 35 touchdowns that season.
From there, Davis wound up at Temple for two seasons, Vanderbilt for two more and this past year at Kentucky.
The 5-foot-8, 211-pound back produced at each stop, and compiled career-bests in rushing yards (1,129), receiving yards (323) and total touchdowns (21) for the Wildcats.
He excelled in the best conference in the country, raising his stock.
“He didn’t test all that well, but he’s a terrific football player,” NFL draft guru Tony Pauline of Sportskeeda.com told The Post in a phone interview. “He’s not the tallest guy in the world, but he’s a hard-charging interior ball-carrier. He’s got an aggressive style, catches the ball well out of the backfield. I think he’s going to be a very nice complementary back. … He’s also a tough north-south ball carrier, breaks a lot of tackles, he’s got good short-area quickness. I think [his pass-catching ability] is an element to his game that makes him more attractive.”
These days, life is good.
His father is a major part of his life.
He is expected to get drafted.
But that doesn’t mean Davis doesn’t think about what it took for him to get there.
He wouldn’t be on the cusp of this dream without everything that preceded it.
He would also like to be an example for the less fortunate, too.
“I would love to be a great running back, but at the end of the day, I just want to be a name that you remember,” he said. “I want to be able to be somebody that every day when you wake up and you look at that story, and there’s a kid that’s sitting there that wants to play collegiate football, play basketball or play any sport, and they may not have the resources and they may not have the academic piece a part of it, but they have the fight and the courage because somebody else did it.
“I want to be known as somebody who continued to fight, who tried to defeat the system, who bet on himself, who against all odds didn’t fold, didn’t crack under pressure and he attacked it head on. That’s how I attack life.”
