He was a kid who had everything, and this is where were at, said Justin. 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. The boys and their parents wore their masks inside the motels; at games, the parents spread out in the bleachers or on the sidelines. The schools in Denver City, population 5,000, had shut down amid the coronavirus lockdowns in the spring of 2020, but there wasnt really any question about whether the 1,700-student district would reopen schools in the fall. Man, this sucks, he told his teammates. Doctors are still uncertain whether children who survived that syndrome will experience long-term heart issues or other health problems. He was hoping his grades and his performance on the field would be enough to get him into a good college. The Texas Education Agency was letting districts make the decision. Junior year was everything: He would be vying for the starting QB slot on varsity and taking a fistful of Advanced Placement courses. Heather Davis' son, Kooper, died in December of last year, Southwest News Service (SWNS) reports. So honestly when do we stand up for our kids?? Weve got districts 30 miles away doing it safely, associate superintendent Gene Strickland said. Allow us that opportunity.. The team in Seminole, 20 miles south, needed to cancel some games as the result of player quarantines, but Denver City managed to get through the fall without any cancellations, though there were some weeks where the roster got thin. They held theirs at the high school football stadium, a hulking edifice that can seat 15,000. Just a few miles away in Texas, students were back in school and teams were playing a full season of games. 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. In New Mexico, mental health experts say, the factors also include high rates of depression on Native American reservations, and rural isolation in general. Shivering in the parking lot, Fuller told me about Landon, who had just wanted to be everyones friend. He was the sort, she said, who always went over to any kid sitting by themselves on the playground. 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. We have official accounts for ProPublica on. For Hobbs and the rest of Lea County, population 70,000, that meant no more than five new cases per day in the whole county. This is, after all, the region that produced Friday Night Lights.. All of our moods changed, she said. This proved a godsend, a way for the boys to keep being active outdoors and around other kids, doing something they loved to do. Do we fear everyone coming back and possibly getting COVID, or do we fear losing another student more?. 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. For a while, Kooper went to do some of his schoolwork at the Starbucks near the local Walmart, just to get out of the house, but then it closed down again when state restrictions tightened further. Its crazy to think that just down the road, theyre playing a football season theyre almost done with their football season. He would, in general, be getting to enjoy the experience of being Kooper Davis, a well-liked kid in a small city where the admiration flowed even from the youngsters he helped out at church, one of whom, a 9-year-old boy, was overheard gleefully reporting to his father that Kooper Davis knew his name. The event was in gross violation of the state rules on indoor gatherings, which were supposed to be capped at 40 people, but no sheriffs deputy was about to intervene on this day. I know Ive still got another year, but time goes faster than you really think., He continued, I just believe we should be here at school and we should be here playing football. Davis planned to put together a highlight real of his games which hed use to attract attention. No contact sports are going to be permitted this fall, she said. In Prince Georges County, Maryland, a Washington, D.C., suburb where school buildings have remained closed, seven teenagers were charged with murder in just the first five weeks of this year. He isn't the only one that was crushed by sacrifices he should never have been forced to make. How come 10, 15 miles away, these kids can compete, can live a somewhat normal life?. He was a straight-A student and the quarterback for the Hobbs high school football team. He could think of nothing, other than the fact that he had noticed that one of Koopers grades had slipped below his norm. There are the pump jacks scattered across the plains, nodding up and down with metronomic regularity. 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. (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.). For my older son, the baseball meant frequent traveling to tournaments out of state, in Virginia and Pennsylvania. The football coach, Ken Stevens, could sense the morale plunging. Students could choose a virtual option, but only a few dozen of Denver Citys 492 high school students took it. Kooper Davis hated online school and he really hated that there was no football his junior year. 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. After repeatedly broken promises for his sports teams and school life to return in any shape whatsoever, high-school junior and promising athlete Kooper Davis of Hobbs also died by suicide. 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. Making it especially tough, he said, was the nearby contrast. 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. But at some point in ways that werent evident to those around him, Kooper was overwhelmed. Football went forward, too. But, he said, the current generation of kids are the people that are going to be running our country one day. Like Texas, we have to learn to live with it, he said. Kooper Davis Student at Carson-Newman College Selmer, Tennessee, United States. Travis Wade Collins passed away unexpectedly at his home on Sunday, February 26th 2023. The initial response is not as difficult as something thats stressful, but over time, the anhedonia, the loss of pleasure, is going to drive you down a lot more., Even before the coronavirus arrived, teen mental health was a cause for growing concern. Im glad we care about this now, but our state was high pre-pandemic, Kelly said. Martinez said hed be glad to have Kooper and that he was welcome to join one of their four-person practice pods that very day. 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. 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. 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. Football at the teenage level differs from baseball in a crucial respect: It is based almost entirely around high schools, without a parallel universe of clubs and tournaments. These are kids without mental health issues, with good families, kids that are loved, she said. Messages run for up to one year and you 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. No, they said. joe and the juice tunacado ingredients; pickleball courts brentwood; tornado damage in princeton, ky; marshall county inmate roster; hanging on y ligaments. 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. Its crazy to think that just down the road, theyre playing a football season theyre almost done with their football season. I want him to come in from football practice and tell me how practice went. Watch popular content from the following creators: cl(@chelsleigh2020), mckayla(@mckayla..pierce), angelroseeee12(@roseeeeeeee_0), Lily DeSciscio(@lilymdesciscio), taylorholdridge99(@egdirdlohrolyat22) . I knew he was pretty brave, but didnt know he was that brave, Sam said later. 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. In the same week as Lujan Grisham announced her reopening plan, I made another check of the coronavirus toll in Hobbs Lea County. Sports could start a few weeks after that, with masks and without fans. He was one of the most driven people I have known. He described Koopers protective loyalty, how he once ran in from the outfield of a church softball game to confront someone who was having words with Heather. The Davises were sufficiently attuned to the mental health challenges of the pandemic that they held regular family visits with a therapist, and Kooper had gotten a couple of solo sessions as well before he and the therapist decided that was no longer necessary. The best explanation for this is that the only thing Cooper has left in life is Brand. For them, the primary release from the hours staring at the laptop screen would be sports, and for us, the answer was clear: My wife and I would let them play. His arm strength had improved in the past year, so much so that his best friend Sam Kinney, a wide receiver, jokingly complained about the passes starting to hurt. Kooper was among the speakers, which surprised his friend Sam Kinney. But when he heard the name, Stevens was stunned. Karyme Beltran has also struggled with the pandemic restrictions at Hobbs High. She specifically tells him that there is nothing left for him there . Meals cooked by friends covered the island in the kitchen. Lt. Koopers father, Justin, during an altar call at church in February. For more ways to keep up, be sure to check out the rest of our newsletters. He called you., When the service ended, people stayed on for a while to talk and hug each other. (For example, yesterday can be changed to last week, and Portland, Ore. to Portland or here.), You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. 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. The closures have also inhibited young peoples striving for independence, youth mental health experts say. Seth Titus lost two friends to suicide only months apart. 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. The state, led by Democratic Gov. There are the frequent memorials of another sort, to the victims of vehicle accidents. A four-person band with two backup singers played Another in the Fire, a stirring song by the Australian worship band Hillsong United: There was another in the fire/ Standing next to me/ There was another in the waters/ Holding back the seas, Stevens was one of several coaches and trainers who spoke via a recorded feed played on the big screen over the stage. There would be no actual games. Kooper Davis went to meet Jesus on Monday, December 7, 2020. As the story points out, the junior year is critical for students hoping to get admission to a good school based on sports. Ive heard it all, Fuller said. He was a straight-A student and the quarterback for the Hobbs high school football team. Researchers and mental health professionals had come to the conclusion that, as David Brent, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatry professor, put it to me, One thing thats protective against it is connection to school and family and peers. And the psychological stress that the pandemic has produced for so many Americans of all ages is unlike so many more acute crises that we might experience in life, said Nick Allen, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oregon. That earlier pandemics victims tended to be in the prime of life, with mortality peaking around age 28. Kooper Davis took his own life on December 07, 2020. Posted on . They eagerly did so, several dozen of them bunched together, beaming for the camera. All Rights Reserved. Since Im a junior, college is starting to cross my mind, and without this essential year of learning, I feel completely unprepared for college. I have no doubt that God is not done using Kooper, he said. Read the full story. Despite the cold, two dozen kids, most in their early teens, had come out to the parking lot and were now doing various kickboxing exercises spaced apart and with masks on under the guidance of some martial arts instructors. When you put most of your things into achieving scholastic, and achieving athletic, and those things arent available to you, your whole life, every goal you wanted to achieve is being taken away from you, he said. Whats going on with those other kids?. He was at a loss over what he and Heather might have missed. I had an open relationship with my son, he said. Its honestly ridiculous. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations in memory of Kooper to be made to Christian Center Church. He liked his teachers, and they liked him. On Friday nights, high schools still played football, with fans in the stands. And now, after the death of a boy that many of them saw as linked to those restrictions, they were effectively, saying, screw it. Theres too much hurt, Espinoza said as I headed out of her house after our conversation. Not only would New Mexico remain one of a handful of states to bar high school sports, but practices would now be limited to just four players per coach. Of the nearly 500,000 deaths in the U.S. analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of early March, 252 were among those 18 or younger five hundredths of a percent of the total. Still, the news of an 11-year-old taking his life after riding his bike to a field near his house had the power to shock in Hobbs. Hobbs Municipal Schools had an enrollment of about 10,000 students last year, but are down around 10%, loosing around 1,200 students this year, according to enrollment numbers compiled by Hobbs Assistant Superintendent for Data and Assessment Rene Cantu. 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. And there are the astonishingly deluxe high school football stadiums. Instead, he set his sights on Stanford, which excelled in sports and academics, and which he had visited for another football camp. For Kooper, autumn brought no relief. Michelle Lujan Grisham, took one of the most aggressive lockdown stances in the country, and issued stringent guidelines for school reopening, so stringent that Hobbs was allowed to bring back only a sliver of its students for in-person instruction. As the school year started, she had been among the majority of teachers who were willing to return to classrooms. 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. On the way back, hed pick up some Burger King breakfast for his two younger sisters, ages 11 and 5. Suicide is ultimately an unfathomable act, but Justin said he was sure of one thing. Its baffling to us to figure out why he didnt come to us.. They had tried to make things as nice as possible in those weeks, with an online birthday party for the two kids, and an Easter egg hunt. It was hard not to be impressed by the ingenuity, the determination to try to make things work, even now. The futures they had been working toward arent options anymore.. On Oct. 9, Heather went on Facebook and posted a plea for reopening. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. Artesia loves you, said the bus from Artesia. We are sad to announce that on December 7, 2020 we had to say goodbye to Kooper Davis of Hobbs, New Mexico. All weve been doing is trying to sell hope and belief to these kids that its going to happen, but at some point, theyre going to quit believing in you.. You cant go to sporting events, you cant see your friends, you cant go to parties. He spoke at the event, telling people I just believe we should be here at school and we should be here playing football. 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. Melanie Blanchard, Jason Scott, and Donna Sanchez, are here at our office and ready to help you buy your ( View post) Feb 15