Saturday afternoon, Shady Spring senior Gavin Davis sat in quiet reflection in the back of the media room at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
Moments earlier, Davis and his teammates had secured the Class AAA boys basketball state championship with a wild 58-55 overtime win over No. 1 seed Fairmont Senior.
After the emotions of the victory had calmed, Davis reflected on a journey that almost never happened.
“It is so surreal. I still don’t believe it’s real right now, I am in shock,” Davis said quietly. “It is just a different feeling considering where I have come from and what I deal with every day. It has been a long, long 18 years of living. Waking up in the middle of the night, changing my pump.”
“Definitely my faith got me to this point,” Davis continued. “I had to put my trust in God and what he had planned for me. I trusted everything and it has got me to this point. I have worked so hard for this.”
Years back, Davis was no different than any other youngster with dreams of sports success and possibly playing at the next level.
Turns out, while he held similar dreams and aspirations, Davis was very different in regards to his overall health.
At the age of seven years old, Davis received some news that would change his life forever.
“He had been sick and started having some medical complications,” his mother Jennifer Davis said. “It was thought to be the flu at first. We took him to the doctor and they checked his blood sugar and they immediately sent him to Charleston Area Medical Center. They caught it there.”
Being diagnosed with childhood diabetes was not the only problem facing Davis. The Tiger senior was also sensitive to carbohydrates and the insulin used to regulate his blood sugar.
“He was so carb sensitive, so they were concerned that when he developed, he probably wouldn’t be able to play athletics at this level,” his dad Chris Davis said.
In people with diabetes, the pancreas either produces little or no insulin, or the cells do not respond to the insulin that is produced.
Davis’ mom basically became his pancreas over the years.
“Back then, it was all finger sticks to check his blood sugar,” Jennifer Davis said. “His fingers were getting poked about 14 times per day just to stay on it. I would check his blood sugar every couple of hours. I checked his blood sugar at midnight, set the alarm, then check it at 2 a.m, 4 a.m. and 6 a.m.”
“I did that for the first year until we could get a monitor,” Jennifer went on to say. “The lows are the scariest, so when he was sleeping, I would check it every two hours.”
Normal blood sugar levels run between 70 mg/dL and 100 mg/dL. There was nothing normal in regards to Davis’s blood sugar levels.
“Sometimes it can drop so quickly. He can be 400 and 40, all in one hour,” Jennifer said. “Since he is carb sensitive and insulin sensitive, he is just all over the place.”
Baseball and basketball were his sports prior to eighth grade, but monitoring his blood sugar levels were a challenge while he was playing.
“Even then, his blood sugar would drop so quickly. One of our things was trying to keep him from those lows,” Chris said. “We were always warned if he gets too low and he goes unconscious, he was going to die. That was always the scary part. There have been some really close calls.”
One of the scary episodes happened on the basketball court in the early days after the diagnosis.
“In elementary school playing in the county tournament, he was stumbling, so we thought he was a little low, but he said he couldn’t see,” Chris said. “Jennifer said go get him. I took off. He heard my voice and he started going towards my voice. We didn’t know if he was too low or too high.”
Davis plays wearing a continuous glucose monitor that sends readings to a watch worn by both parents. While that helps, there are still nervous moments.
“There have been a lot of close calls at night,” Chris said. “A lot of close, close calls where he couldn’t feel his legs and he couldn’t feel his arms. We had to put stuff in his mouth. We have icing that we rub on the inside of his lips and gums so it absorbs.”
“You have these devices called a Glucagon where you have to break it, mix it and inject it in the thigh. We have had to do some emergency stuff when he got down in the 20’s.”
While baseball and basketball were his original sports favorites, that all changed in eighth grade when he wanted to play football.
“There were some very serious reservations, but momma loves football. Mom wanted him to play football and it turned out it was his best sport,” Chris said.
Monitoring his blood sugar levels on the football field provided a new and difficult challenge.
“In football, we have a bag on the sideline, but you can’t always get good connection,” Chris said. “So, we don’t know his number all of the time in football. Football is the worry part.”
Then there was the serious incident in high school football that left him lying in the field unable to move.
“There was a collision. When they hit, I just thought he was knocked unconscious,” Chris recalled. “When I made it to the sideline, I was told to get on the field. When I get out there he is just regaining consciousness, but he can’t feel anything from the neck down. We didn’t know if it was low blood sugar. I told him to squeeze my hand, but there was no movement. That is when he was put in the ambulance.”
With preparations being made to fly him either to Morgantown or Charleston, feeling started coming back in Davis’ body.
“It actually ended up being a stinger per se. I say God intervened,” Chris said. “They are gauging him on the flight and Gavin starting feeling everything. Within three hours he goes from a neck brace and heart monitors to saying he wants to stand. He stands up beside of me and we started praising God. It was unbelievable. We were going nuts in that hospital.”
This past February, Davis signed a National Letter of Intent to play football for Glenville State University.
“I love football and everything about it,” Gavin said. “Basketball ain’t my sport, I am just here to have fun. I just play basketball on the side.”
Basketball may not be his main sport any longer, but he still roams the hardwood with incredible passion.
Playing a reserve role over the last three years behind a talented group of Shady Spring seniors, Davis talked about how that group influenced his career and helped them win the state title Saturday.
“The last three years was rough. Braden (Chapman) in your face yelling and-1. Cole (Chapman) telling you to pick your eyeballs up when he hits a three and trash talks you,” Gavin recalled. “Jaedan (Holstein) pinning you off the backboard. It was rough. They beat on you. I truly give them all the credit for this state championship. They prepared us for this moment.”
The toughness for Davis was on display Saturday at a crucial stretch of the game with Shady Spring down two points with under a minute to play in regulation.
“I slipped and fell and hurt my ankle. I had to come out because my ankle was hurting, but I have come back from way worse,” Gavin said. “I told coach to put me back in. They need me out there. As soon as he put me in, we ran that out of bounds play and we scored to tie the game. The next possession, I came down and took a charge.”
The bucket with 37 seconds to play, ultimately sent the game to overtime where Shady Spring outscored the Polar Bears to win the state championship.
“The day before regionals, I had my pump ripped off and I had to go home and get a new pump. Just things like that wear on you. I would be lying if I didn’t say it has gotten to me and got me down. Why me? But, then it all comes together. God uses me as an example. No matter what you go through, what happens to you or how you grew up, you can still be as successful as you want to be.”
The sports dreams started with basketball and although he will play football in college, it all came full circle, in a way, when Davis was also named to the AAA all-tournament team Saturday.
“It is crazy to think that a juice box has literally saved that boy’s life dozens of times. People see them as juice boxes, we see them as life savers,” both parents explained. “There is so many times that we just put it in his mouth and prayed to God for him to start drinking. Now they put our football player on the all-tournament team.”
