ProPublica published a story today that is legitimately heartbreaking. AddThis Utility Frame. Lost hope. Some players stopped showing up. Man, this sucks, he told his teammates. Two days later, the town learned of another life lost: an 18-year-old who had graduated from Hobbs High that spring took his life at a local park after receiving a medical discharge from the Navy. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact. Heather came to the stage with Koopers sisters. If we do well, if we work hard, it is possible we could just be delaying them and they could be played later in the year and later into the season. Weve got districts 30 miles away doing it safely, associate superintendent Gene Strickland said. The overall per-capita case numbers in Lea County were slightly higher than the three counties across the border, while the case numbers in Texas were slightly higher than in New Mexico. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. How come 10, 15 miles away, these kids can compete, can live a somewhat normal life?. My biggest fear is, you pull the rug on these kids, he said. The school did not administer coronavirus tests on its own, but if a student or teacher tested positive locally, the school conducted contact tracing to determine if any other teacher or student had been exposed to them for 15 minutes or more, unmasked, within six feet. Like others in Hobbs, he was not unprepared for such calls: There had been at least six suicide attempts by Hobbs students during the pandemic, according to district officials. Junior year was everything: He would be vying for the starting QB slot on varsity and taking a fistful of Advanced Placement courses. Clockwise from top left: Cutter Cruz, Colton Graham, Easton Kuykendall and Caleb Hedrick. Almost every weekend, wed be back on near-empty highways, staying in near-empty motels, subsisting on endless takeout chicken sandwiches whenever we couldnt find an outdoor place for a meal. From Hobbs to the Texas towns of Seminole and Denver City is a half-hour drive next door, by the standards of the vast Southwestern plains. The students wore masks and sat spaced apart on the stands, holding signs that said Let Us Play and SOS Save Our Students. They had the tacit support of their coaches and many of their parents, some of whom had helped shoot a testimonial video that was going to be shown on the scoreboard screen. So that was the only thing that I can imagine what was going through his head at that time. Obituary. And Im willing to keep my teammate and classmates in line, minding whatever rules, just so I can be back here doing the stuff I love.. All Rights Reserved. New Mexico has consistently had one of the highest youth suicide rates in the country its roughly twice the national average and preliminary state statistics would later show the 2020 rate as unchanged. In prior pandemics where the technology was not available for remote work or remote schooling, lockdowns and social isolation were not as extreme and did not last as long as what weve lived through this past year. Kooper already had a highlight reel, and it included some nice-looking throws, but it was from his sophomore season on the junior varsity team. The next day, a Monday evening, Kooper and his classmates held a demonstration for reopening school and school sports, one of several across the county that day. The day after that, Wednesday, a fleet of empty school buses arrived at the high school from other towns, one from as far as Clovis, 130 miles away. how did kooper davis of hobbs die hanging on y ligaments hanging on y ligaments. 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. Its crazy to think that just down the road, theyre playing a football season theyre almost done with their football season. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations in memory of Kooper to be made to Christian Center Church. 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. Christian Center Church4024 W. College Lane, Hobbs NM 88240Tel: 1-575-392-5166, 2023 Chapel of Hope. Later that day, he put up another Facebook post, his first since the one in October: With these tough times going around, I know there are many of those in need, and I want to give back to my community, he wrote. Stringent guidelines for reopening schools in New Mexico meant students in Hobbs have experienced the pandemic differently than students across the border in Texas. Its hard to be positive.. This was a problem, because he loved both of them. But the video wouldnt load right, so several students went onto the field to give impromptu speeches before the 175 or so people who were gathered there. The CDC found that the proportion of visits to the emergency room by adolescents between ages 12 and 17 that were mental-health-related increased 31% during the span of March to October 2020, compared with the same months in 2019. Like Texas, we have to learn to live with it, he said. A lot are stuck in environments they didnt choose. No, I like it!. He asked, Are you sure you got the name right? The principal said he thought he had, but that hed double-check with the schools designated police officer. For high school junior Kooper Davis that made all the difference in the world. This meant they would mostly just be lifting weights, never mind that this often meant having many players in the weight room at a time (albeit in four-player pods), seemingly a riskier proposition than a regular practice outdoors. At about 1 p.m., Kooper had texted Sam on Snapchat: Love you, bro. Love you, too, Sam wrote back. For more information about canonical metadata, You cant edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. But at some point in ways that werent evident to those around him, Kooper was overwhelmed. This proved a godsend, a way for the boys to keep being active outdoors and around other kids, doing something they loved to do. I get the fear level, but we see models that show it can be done. 2017-2023 Tribute Archive. You are free to republish it so long as you do the following: Heather Davis comforts Madasyn Culver after a youth church service in Hobbs, New Mexico in late February. Kids have been paying a big price for the lockdowns and for some kids its just too much to handle. It had happened while Heather was at the grocery store picking up baby formula and something for dinner. I arrived in Hobbs two days later, just in time for the memorial inside Christian Center Church. He was a straight-A student and the quarterback for the Hobbs high school football team. ), Statewide in New Mexico, the restrictions resulted in zero high schools or middle schools reopening anywhere in the state. Thats what you think when youre 16: Nobody is dealing with what Im dealing with. Not to mention, he said, that the closures have simply given kids too many empty hours. There were many kids in the audience, and some were wearing raspberry-colored shirts with Kooper 10 written on them. That was what the kids heard from the adults in charge, and they tried to believe it. Kooper Davis went to meet Jesus on Monday, December 7, 2020. 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 school capped attendance at its field, and required people to register for tickets online. And it was so hard for someone of Landons age to grasp time; the six weeks of closure seemed like forever. But they said they were thinking of all the other kids in another way, too. 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.. She had been writing and calling elected officials and state bureaucrats and finally, with the help of the local state senator, Gay Kernan, had gotten the state to provide some training for local teachers in recognizing youth mental health troubles. For my older son, the baseball meant frequent traveling to tournaments out of state, in Virginia and Pennsylvania. I want him to tickle the babies while I go eat, she said. Celebrating the life of Kooper Davis Be the first to share your favorite memory, photo or story of Kooper. Weve got districts 30 miles away doing it safely, associate superintendent Gene Strickland said. Kooper often said that suddenly the two biggest loves of his life . Her grandfather recently died of COVID-19. Hobbs High School Hobbs, NM Football. He spoke at the event, telling people I just believe we should be here at school and we should be here playing football. There were other challenges, such as the time in August when a player on the girls volleyball team tested positive and the school made the decision to shut down the team for two weeks, just in case another player had been exposed. 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. I dont know who it is, but you need to help them. She talked about Justins love for his son: Thats his boy. (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.). If normally lighthearted Kooper, despite a loving family and natural gifts, had been struggling so much, what about all the others? They mostly watched video lessons on their own, using an online curriculum called Edgenuity. Our sons, now 16 and 13, have had fully remote learning in their Baltimore public schools for nearly a year now. 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. No products in the cart. I reached Justin Davis on the phone that Saturday, after learning of Koopers death from a mother in northwestern New Mexico whose daughter had also struggled with the absence of school and sports. Davis, who lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, says she lost her son to suicide just weeks after. Texass response to the coronavirus was freewheeling. When I entered her bungalow, Espinoza, a friendly woman in her 40s, said that I should feel welcome to take my mask off, because she had already been through a serious case of COVID-19, several weeks earlier. If you like our stories, mind sharing this with a friend? Hawaii, one of the states least affected by the pandemic, put its threshold at 360 cases over a 14-day period. Kooper was very involved in and loved being part of his church family as well as being a Christian. You cant state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublicas work. Lets respect the ones who wanna stay home and respect the ones who are ready to go back!!. I have no doubt that God is not done using Kooper, he said. The district, which offered daily and weekly tallies of cases on its website, determined that the vast share of transmissions seemed to be happening outside school, as research was finding to be the case in other places, too. Koopers grandmother, Cindi Federico, with Koopers 6-month-old brother, Kroy, and his cousin, Izaiah Chamberlain, 9. To avoid dense crowds, the band had held three performances, with several hundred people attending each. The football coach, Ken Stevens, could sense the morale plunging. But there was an implicit agreement that we were fortunate that our kids could keep playing, and we wouldnt do anything to screw it up. If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. But he knew he needed to work on his agility, which is one reason he took the practices so seriously. Legacy invites you to offer condolences and . 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. There are the brown highway signs alerting travelers to historical markers tucked away in the nearby scrub. After initially barring any schools from reopening in August, the state released gating criteria for districts that wanted to resume in-person instruction in the fall. They would come out with amazing answers. Kooper and Sam Kinney ribbed her about her tendency to lose her phone and took daily attendance for her. Kooper Davis came across the border once with a friend to see a game in Levelland, northeast of Denver City, and another time with his father, Justin, to see a game in Seminole. Junior year is key for students, like Kooper, hoping to play football in college. Definitive explanations were, of course, impossible to come by. Ive blamed myself., She had done a lot of reading on youth suicide since Landons death, and had learned that rates were especially high in indigenous communities, like the Aboriginal community of Australia. They were among the strictest in the country. . The novel coronavirus, by contrast, has hit the elderly the hardest. how did kooper davis of hobbs die david buckner obituary chattanooga tn david buckner obituary chattanooga tn. Posted on . Koopers father and his stepmother Heather, who had been together since Kooper was nine, had considered transferring him to a school in Texas, as other families were doing. Its okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. The closures have also inhibited young peoples striving for independence, youth mental health experts say. This would have entailed sending Kooper to live with Heathers brother. She began by reading some lines Kooper had written in his journal, including his paraphrase of a verse of Scripture, If your enemy is hurting give him food. The median age for COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S. is about 80. 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. Malena Moreno and her boyfriend, Pedro Gavin Garcia, were friends of Koopers from Lovington, New Mexico, where Kooper lived until he was 12. I found an empty space to stand in the back. Kooper was among the speakers, which surprised his friend Sam Kinney. Whats going on with those other kids?. From the citys eastern edge to the Texas line is barely more than two miles. The Texas Education Agency was letting districts make the decision. Just a few miles away in Texas, students were back in school and teams were playing a full season of games. So that was the only thing that I can imagine what was going through his head at that time., Hobbs is heavily conservative. Share a memory of Kooper Davis. In addition to the CDC reporton the rising share of visits to emergency rooms by teenagers in distress, a University of Wisconsin survey of more than 3,000 high school athletes during the summer found that more than two-thirds reported high levels of anxiety and depression, 37% higher than past studies. 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 county had suffered 112 deaths attributed to COVID-19, which worked out to a per capita rate slightly lower than that in the three Texas counties abutting Lea. He started playing organized football at age 5 and could not get enough of it. The CDC has also recorded about 2,000 cases of an inflammatory syndrome that has afflicted some children after they contracted the virus, resulting in about 30 additional deaths. Allow us that opportunity., Kooper Davis had always thrived in school. And Fuller told me about the difficult weeks of the initial lockdown in the spring, when both she and her husband were feeling the stress of a loss of income. It had been a terrible month, and it had left her uncertain about the best course for the Hobbs schools and sports teams. On the way out of the athletic building, Kooper swung by to see the basketball coach, Eddy Martinez, to tell him he thought he might be able to play with that team, too, if the schedule that the state had floated the previous week actually came to pass: a truncated football season in February, followed by a truncated basketball season. He was an amazing big brother and had very close relationships with his younger siblings. We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language. In the same week as Lujan Grisham announced her reopening plan, I made another check of the coronavirus toll in Hobbs Lea County. He joked about Kooper letting one of his sisters sleep in one of his shirts, his willingness to dress up as a baby during the church skit for the little kids, and how Kooper was the only one of the young people he knew who would actually call him on the phone sometimes, just to talk. can stop at any time. Local governmental and educational officials the vast majority of whom arent epidemiologists or experts on indoor airflow have had to formulate policy under intense time pressure while being buffeted by impassioned constituencies on every side and facing the reality that any decision would impose costs on somebody. Already a member? New Mexico as a whole had lost 3,145 people, two-hundredths of a percentage point higher than Texas in per capita terms. Rigby. In late April, six weeks into the springs pandemic lockdowns, the community had been stunned by the suicide of an 11-year-old boy, Landon Fuller, an outgoing kid who loved going to school and had, his mother said, struggled with the initial lockdowns. If hes thirsty, give him water, and his interpretation of it: No matter who it is, no matter who the person is, if theyre in need, help them. The challenge was less the lack of money than the lack of people to administer it: the state education department has only a single behavorial health coordinator, Leslie Kelly, who was struck by the rising concern about youth suicide during the pandemic given that the problem had existed for years in New Mexico. High school football practice has resumed, with some restrictions, in Hobbs. That is what teens are driven to do: to grow self-esteem and a strong sense of who they are. With school and so much else closed off to them, and daily life mostly limited to the home, the little bit of self-directedness they had before is gone. Kooper Davis Student at Carson-Newman College Selmer, Tennessee, United States. Man, this sucks, he told his teammates. Katrina Fuller in the field where her son died. Whatever it takes, said Rick Martinez, the principal. . Or to put it more broadly: How much of normal youth should they be asked to sacrifice? Abe died on Nov. 30, at 49, before she could see him. There always seems like theres something new to cry about.. NBC. New Mexicos response last year was the opposite. She said she had started hearing from many other families around the country whose kids were struggling, including a mother whod discovered her 6-year-olds plans for how to end her own life. Football went forward, too. 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. Funeral Home website by. That may have an effect over time. Do we fear everyone coming back and possibly getting COVID, or do we fear losing another student more?. Making it especially tough, he said, was the nearby contrast. Kooper Davis went to meet Jesus on Monday, December 7, 2020. The adults encouraged the players to speak about what they were feeling, not to hold things in. 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. 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. Kooper was despondent. Last summer the town was in the news when a despondent 11-year-old who had loved school and sports had killed himself. KOOPER DAVIS OBITUARY. When he is finally able to return she is on her death-bed, surrounded by her own family. Participation in sports and a connection to school can have a profound protective effect, according to David Brent, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh. James parents said there were no obvious signs that their son was struggling. In the pandemic year of 2020, though, the two sides of the state line might as well have been in different hemispheres. After I chatted with Sam, I walked with his father back to his office.