Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Isaiah Davis, a freshman at Homewood High School, runs during track and field practice at Waldrop Stadium.
Spring break was different this year for Isaiah Davis.
The Homewood High School freshman and his family left their Edgewood home for a trip to Uganda. It was the first trip back to the African nation where Davis, who was adopted as an orphan, was born.
“My experience has been great so far,” Davis said of his trip via text message, “but I do feel most at home in Homewood.”
It’s in Homewood where Davis is making a name for himself in cross-country and track and field. He was one of two ninth graders to finish in the top 20 in cross-country for the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s Class 6A, finishing 20th overall and as the top male finisher for Homewood High with a time of 16 minutes, 19.94 seconds.
The Patriot freshman ran a personal record time of 1 minute, 58.98 seconds in the 800-meter during the indoor track season at the Last Chance Invitational meet in Birmingham in January. That wound up being the fourth fastest time for a freshman in the nation.
Davis finished fifth overall, at 52.41, in the 400-meter at the Icebreaker Invitational indoor meet in Birmingham in January, and in early March he was the second overall freshman in the 800 at the New Balance Indoor Nationals in Boston, with a time of 2:00.15.
Kelly McNair, who coaches distance runners at Homewood High, said Davis is very talented, humble and has a lot of potential.
“Isaiah is extremely, extremely talented in the 400, 800, 1,600, 3,200 and 5K,” McNair said. “The talent lies in that he could race and be in our top three for all of those. If you are a strong 400 or 800 runner, you're not typically a strong distance guy, like in the 5K. He has the potential to excel across the board.”
The Homewood coach said sprinters typically have a “fast twitch” and distance runners display what she calls a “slow twitch.”
“Isaiah has both,” McNair said. “He just has the talent and the build to compete well from the 400 all the way up to the 5K, which is rare.”
So what’s his ceiling?
“That's a great question, a fantastic question,” McNair said. “I don't even know where his limit is, honestly. My priority with him is going to be to keep him healthy. I try not to overtrain him. I don't want to push too much mileage, too much speed work. He's responding well to what we're doing, so I'm gonna continue to hold back a little bit on training right now.
“He's a growing boy, and he's still growing,” she continued. “Because of that, I'm going to err on the side of caution when it comes to his mileage and his speed. I don't want to push him emotionally or mentally, for the same or different reasons that I don't want to push him physically.”
Uganda connection
Davis said he can scarcely remember a time when he didn’t compete as a runner.
“My kindergarten teacher told me I was really fast. I think that's when I started to build up running a little bit more,” he said. “I was in the top most of the time when I was little, running cross-country.”
When he was in kindergarten at Shades Mountain Christian School, he ran with twins Eli and Isaac Wharton, who also had been adopted from Uganda.
“I would stay with Eli and Isaac. Sometimes I could beat them,” Davis said. “We were always way ahead of everyone.”
Davis has two brothers: 13-year-old Nico, who was adopted from the Congo, and Benji, 11, who is his parents’ biological son. But he counts the Wharton twins of Hoover and Moses Caldwell of Meadow Brook as brothers from other adoptive mothers.
All of them were orphans in Uganda, and all are now ninth graders excelling in track and field in the Birmingham area — the Whartons at Bessemer Academy and Caldwell at Briarwood Christian School. “I’ve known them since I was little,” Davis said.
Davis said his stamina is what allows him to excel in distance races.
“I have some speed,” he said, “but I think stamina is what I found out I have a lot of.”
His mother, Claire Davis, said she and her husband, Joel, have different stories of realizing they wanted to adopt a child.
“I knew in college that I wanted to enter a helping profession, and I was really interested in adoption,” she said. “I began
my professional career working in adoption, and I worked with our Uganda program back in 2009.
“Joel and I ... we're Christians, and we also know that we're adopted, and we know what the Bible says about being adopted into God's family,” she said. “That always really stood out to us.”
Joel Davis remembers talking about adoption before he and Claire were married.
“We thought it would be something we would be interested in thinking about,” he said. “Especially after we were married, we were doing some trips to a boys’ home in Peru. Then I went on a trip to an orphanage in Haiti.
“I think we thought it would be something we did when we were older,” Joel said. “Through those trips, kind of, God pulled it to the forefront. … After that trip to Haiti, I came back and felt like this is something we should do. We should do it now. ”
At that point, they decided to start the process of adoption. Claire, a social worker with the Lifeline adoption agency, said she worked with the agency’s attorney in Uganda.
“I grew to love the culture and the people that I worked with over there, even though I'd never been,” she said.
The mother of three thought back to the first photo she received of her oldest son.
“His big, brown eyes,” she recalled. “He was a cute little guy. We had his picture for about a year before we were able to go over there and petition the court.”
Continuing to grow
While Isaiah is among Homewood’s leading distance runners, McNair is careful not to heap the heavy burden of team leadership on his young shoulders.
“Our seniors and our juniors, they are still leaders of our program,” she said. “Isaiah, his times may be typical of what our top runners would be doing, but he has not taken on that responsibility, and I don't want to expect him to.
“I do not put additional pressure on him to take that leadership role,” the coach said. “He'll evolve. Just be a student, be an athlete, continue to evolve, continue to work hard, continue to enjoy the sport.”
Davis knows he’ll run with the veterans during the Homewood team training sessions.
McNair said she hoped her talented freshman runner would train during his time abroad. Days into his return to Uganda, Davis had not yet trained but did have training on his itinerary.
“I'll train for the 1,600 and the 800, but I want to specialize in the 800,” he said. “When I get back, I'll train with my coaches and see if I can be ready to compete.”
Davis said his goal as a runner is “to reach my limit, my max performance and the fastest race I can do.”
When asked if he had done that yet, he said no.
“My times keep getting faster and faster,” he said. “Every race, I keep PRing [achieving a personal record].”
