Riding with Coach: A remembrance of Duane Davis

This was the mid-1980s. I don’t remember the specific year. I do remember that I was a young, nervous and aspiring sportswriter. My assignment was to write an article on Duane Davis, the baseball and basketball coach at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park. “Davis was a tough one,’’ my newspaper colleagues warned me. “He hates articles about himself,” they said. “He’d rather talk about his athletes.” Good luck with that, they clucked with a snicker.

I prepared my questions in my steno/reporters’ notebook. The list started with your basic sportswriter questions; there were others about his athletic/coaching background. Other than the admonitions from my jaded colleagues, I really did not know what to expect. I called Coach Davis at home to arrange the interview. OK. Arrive at promptly 12:30 in the afternoon at the FDR parking lot. Hmm. That’s odd. I’m gonna interview this guy in the parking lot? I arrived at the appointed time. Coach Davis was there. He ordered me to get in the passenger seat of his car. The interview would take place during his lunch break, and during his lunch break he would be going to the bank. The interview would last exactly as long as it took Coach Davis to drive to the bank, do his banking (while I waited in the car) and drive back to FDR.

I started in with my questions. His answers were directed as much at his windshield as at me. He never took his eyes off the road. His answers started out short, staccato, not giving up much. My body shifted as we careened around the curves along South Cross Road. The usual sportswriter/coach talk. Inane questions. Clipped answers. When I started asking about his own athletic background, the answers became a bit more expansive. On the return trip from the bank, we were pretty much having a conversation more than an interview. I was feeling good about this. I was filling up my notebook. I was going to be able to write a decent story.

We got back to the high school. As instructed, the interview ceased at that moment. We shook hands. He went back to his day. I went back to mine. I wrote the article. It is a long-ago press clipping that I never saved and have certainly forgotten about – until I heard that Coach Davis, sister of Athletic Director Tim Murray’s secretary Janet Davis, passed away earlier this month. Coach Davis had a long and storied career, at both FDR and at Mount St. Mary College. He touched the lives of thousands of athletes he coached and taught. I never got to know Coach Davis all that well after that drive to the bank that afternoon, but I got the sense that he was a tough guy who cared deeply about the boys that he coached and who he helped to transform into better and fine young men.

Coach Davis did not call after the article was published. This is good. In the newspaper business, the only post-article calls you get are for things that you screwed up. No feedback is great feedback. Coach Davis never mentioned his opinion of the article. Like most old-school, taskmaster coaches, I would later learn that Coach Davis parses out praise in tiny morsels.

However, in ensuing years when he would call in results to the newspaper, he would address me by name. When I would cover his team’s games, he would give me that firm handshake, direct eye contact, and he would remember my name. I’d like to think that was the old coach’s way of saying that I did all right by him on that long-ago ride to and from the bank.