Lavel Davis Jr. remembered getting a phone call from his grandmother after she had heard that Tony Elliott had been named the new football coach at the University of Virginia.
“My grandma, she called me, she was like, it’s meant to be,” said Davis, speaking to reporters on the day that Elliott was officially welcomed to Grounds as the new coach, back on Dec. 13.
Davis, a freshman All-America in 2020, after pulling down 20 catches for 518 yards and scoring five TDs, was then still recovering from an ACL injury that had forced him to sit out the 2021 season.
Another ACL injury that he’d suffered in high school in South Carolina had taken him off the recruiting radar of his home-state Clemson Tigers when Elliott was an assistant there.
But Elliott, standup guy that he is, kept up with Davis even after the program had stopped recruiting the wideout, checking in with him regularly to see how Davis was doing in his recovery, and wishing him the best in his efforts to land at a college program.
Davis noted that what Elliott had done there had stood out to him.
The 6’7” future star would end up at Virginia because wideouts coach Marques Hagans, who had been recruiting him, insisted to then-UVA head coach Bronco Mendenhall that the program needed Davis, a standout student in addition to what he had showed to coaches on the football field.
That loyalty from Hagans is why Davis committed to Virginia, and the loyalty from Elliott is why he stayed around as a number of his teammates headed for the transfer portal after Mendenhall stepped down last December.
“I’m really just putting my trust into Coach Elliott, whatever process that he has, that he delivers, and he goes through, I feel like that’d be the best for the best for Virginia,” Davis said in December.
The 2021 season was tough for Davis because of the grueling rehab from the ACL injury, but in an April interview, he was looking forward to the chance to get back out on the field.
“This season, I can really show my talent, really show that I’m one of the greats in college, one of the great receivers in the country,” Davis said.
Hagans, who has been an assistant coach at his alma mater under three head coaches – Mike London, Mendenhall and now Elliott – noted in a related interview in April Davis’s growth as a person during the rehab year.
“I think he grew as a teammate, because last year he spent without football, and so who he became as a teammate, who he became as a person, I think was his biggest opportunity for growth,” said Hagans, who also played quarterback and wideout at Virginia, and then three years in the NFL at wide receiver.
Hagans said he was encouraging Davis to “focus on the little things, focus on the appreciation of being able to play the game again, and just knowing that he’s not going to get 365 days back in 15 practices, he’s got to focus on a little things, take it in stride.”
“There’s a lot of football to be played in the spring and a lot of football to be played in 2022,” Hagans said.
The sad news is that there is no more football in 2022, or ever again, for Lavel Davis Jr.
Davis was among three UVA Football players shot and killed on Sunday night.
Davis and teammates D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler all died in the mass shooting, and a fourth football student-athlete, Mike Hollins, is in stable condition after surgery for his gunshot wound.
A fifth student, who has not been identified, is in critical condition, according to University of Virginia President Jim Ryan.
The suspect in the shootings is a former UVA football player, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr.
Jones was arrested without incident in Henrico County, and faces three second-degree murder charges, with additional charges pending.
Not that the football part of this story matters much, if at all, but just on the record, Jones, a walk-on, never got on the field in his lone season with the football program, in 2018.
Davis, as mentioned, in addition to being a light off the field, was a budding star on it.
Davis was on the sidelines for Virginia’s 37-7 loss to Pitt on Saturday after having to sit out the 31-28 loss to North Carolina a week ago following an injury in practice that had landed him in concussion protocol.
Perry, a 6’3”, 230-pound linebacker from Miami, was a fourth-year student who had two tackles in a season-high 26 snaps in the Pitt game
Chandler, a third-year wideout from Huntersville, N.C., was redshirting this season after transferring from Wisconsin, where he had played his first two years at the college level.
Hollins, a fourth-year tailback from Baton Rouge, started the Pitt game, rushing for 29 yards on nine carries, after putting up a team-high 75 yards on 16 carries in the loss to UNC last week.
But again, the football stuff doesn’t matter now.
Just wanted to share this story about Lavel because I think it says a little something about who he was as a person, and also about who Tony Elliott and Marques Hagans are as people and mentors.
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Chris Graham
