On my final day in Hobbs, I made the short drive across the Texas border to Denver City. 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. But they said they were thinking of all the other kids in another way, too. 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. If any of yall know anyone unable to leave their homes, I am willing to wait in line and pick up their groceries for them, or even run simple errands. 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. 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. After I chatted with Sam, I walked with his father back to his office. I arrived in Hobbs two days later, just in time for the memorial inside Christian Center Church. On the way back, hed pick up some Burger King breakfast for his two younger sisters, ages 11 and 5. They didnt want to talk., But then she herself had gotten the virus she wasnt sure where and its severity had hit home, even before her partners death. All of our moods changed, she said. 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. And there are the astonishingly deluxe high school football stadiums. 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. Kooper had always gotten straight As, despite a tendency to leave big assignments to the last minute. As many of these experts have noted, the cost of restrictions on youth has gone beyond academics. I fear for all the kids, he said. Kooper Davis could only watch from 30 miles away from New Mexico while the Texas teams played and the New Mexico teams did not. 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. He started playing organized football at age 5 and could not get enough of it. Its baffling to us to figure out why he didnt come to us.. It had happened while Heather was at the grocery store picking up baby formula and something for dinner. Consequently, Davis and Glover petitioned the Supreme Court of . The Texas Education Agency was letting districts make the decision. They allowed only for elementary-school instruction, and required a district to stay below an average of eight new cases per day per 100,000 residents over a two-week period. The closures have also inhibited young peoples striving for independence, youth mental health experts say. 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 result of the abdication of federal leadership in 2020 was an atomization of decision-making that affected the lives and well-being of millions of people. Recently, Fuller told me, she had received an envelope in the mail from the New Mexico education department. Our sons, now 16 and 13, have had fully remote learning in their Baltimore public schools for nearly a year now. I want him to tickle the babies while I go eat, she said. Kooper was despondent. So that was the only thing that I can imagine what was going through his head at that time., Hobbs is heavily conservative. 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. So many kids are turning to the wrong things to fill a void. The best explanation for this is that the only thing Cooper has left in life is Brand. Everything looks the same on either side of the Texas-New Mexico border in the great oil patch of the Permian Basin. Speaking about the same . There always seems like theres something new to cry about.. And Kooper was a great student of the quarterback position; he had the intangibles, his coaches said. But at some point in ways that werent evident to those around him, Kooper was overwhelmed. The smiles were jarring in the context of a memorial service until one remembered the broader context: It was the first time they had all gotten to be together since March. Is Biden leaving wiggle room in his decision to run for re-election? He charmed classmates and teachers alike with his playful ebullience. He was an amazing big brother and had very close relationships with his younger siblings. Coach Stevens got the news from the school principal that afternoon. Its not necessarily that youre experiencing abuse, though some may be. New Mexicos response last year was the opposite. Lets respect the ones who wanna stay home and respect the ones who are ready to go back!!. Junior year is key for students, like Kooper, hoping to play football in college. 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. He was thinking about Stanford because it was a top academic school with a good football team. New Mexicos response last year was the opposite. 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. The futures they had been working toward arent options anymore.. The people of Hobbs had for months been barred from letting their kids go to school or letting them play football and soccer. This confounded Hobbs school officials, especially because they could see open schools across the border in Texas. The next morning, I met Katrina Fuller, the mother of 11-year-old Landon, in the windswept parking lot of a strip mall. He attended Mills Elementary school before moving to Roswell NM, where he graduated from Goddard High School in 1991. Explore the latest videos from hashtags: #hobbsnm, #porterdavishomes . Obituary. In New Mexico, mental health experts say, the factors also include high rates of depression on Native American reservations, and rural isolation in general. This had only been confirmed for her as she saw how poorly the remote learning was going: not only did most students leave their cameras off, some wouldnt even turn on their microphones. 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. Frogxit: Harry and Meghan get what they asked for, Knock it down: Albuquerque tries novel approach to crime fighting, California high-speed rail costs going up and projected ridership going down, When you go after the Queen Consort, you'd best not miss, California's drought situation has improved dramatically, Not so fast: CA NOT going to shutter nasty old Diablo Canyon nuke plant, Don't expect Biden to drop by East Palestine. You cant republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. His teammates would be allowed to practice only in small pods, which left them mostly doing just weightlifting sessions and agility drills. Kooper Davis had always thrived in school. The football coach, Ken Stevens, could sense the morale plunging. That was the last he heard from his friend. Anyone who fit that definition had to quarantine at home, initially for two weeks, eventually only for 10 days, in line with CDC guidelines. 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. The city of Hobbs, population just under 40,000, sits on the New Mexico side, as tight to the border as a wide receivers toes on a sideline catch. In many parts of the country, particularly cities and towns dominated by Democrats, concerns about virus spread by children has resulted in all sorts of measures: closures of playgrounds, requirements that kids older than 2 wear masks outdoors, rigid restrictions on campus life at colleges that reopened. 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. Doctors are still uncertain whether children who survived that syndrome will experience long-term heart issues or other health problems. Through the entirety of the movie his primary drive is to return to Earth to be with his daughter. And then Kooper had died, a week later. At about 1 p.m., Kooper had texted Sam on Snapchat: Love you, bro. Love you, too, Sam wrote back. Before the event broke up, someone encouraged all of Koopers classmates to get together on stage for a group photo. Its okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. . 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. 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. Were losing their leadership. October 20, 2021. Davis planned to put together a highlight real of his games which hed use to attract attention. Texass response to the coronavirus was freewheeling. Go deeper Andrew Solender Kooper Davis went to meet Jesus on Monday, December 7, 2020. 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. As he left, he told Sam, in typically unabashed fashion, Love you. Love you, too, Sam responded. 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. But Kooper hated virtual school. The younger one would ask why he couldnt get McDonalds, which she preferred, on the way back, and hed explain that traffic made it easier for him to do them in this order. He told me that he had been running through his last interactions with Kooper, over and over, searching for a warning sign, to no avail. 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. I cant see them, I cant even hear them, she said. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact. 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., Mental health experts struggle to identify a precedent for the challenge this pandemic is producing for many Americans. Plenty of parents continue to worry for their childrens health amid the pandemic. He would be in school if he wasnt dead, she said. As the pandemic carried through the summer, worrisome signals started appearing across the country. That earlier pandemics victims tended to be in the prime of life, with mortality peaking around age 28. If you like our stories, mind sharing this with a friend? How much distress was invisible to parents? On Friday nights, high schools still played football, with fans in the stands. Messages run for up to one year and you Recommend Kooper's obituary to your friends. Katrina, a prenatal educator, had been trying for months to draw attention to the mental health needs of Hobbs young people. He grinned. There are the brown highway signs alerting travelers to historical markers tucked away in the nearby scrub. It has been a difficult balance to strike, on both a societal and family level. I dont care how good a kid you are, if you have so much time on your hands, youre going to find mischief., He told me how dearly he hoped the state stuck to its plan for a football season, truncated though it was. She took the coronavirus seriously, she said. And these were the grades that colleges were going to be looking at. (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. 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. Suicide is ultimately an unfathomable act, but Justin said he was sure of one thing. These are kids without mental health issues, with good families, kids that are loved, she said. 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. After being in Denver City, things seemed emptier than ever at the Hobbs high school complex in normal times, the center of communal life in Hobbs. It was startling to pull into the high school parking lot and see dozens of teenagers strolling out of the school building, wearing masks and carrying backpacks, on their way to lunch. Texass response to the coronavirus was freewheeling. Legacy invites you to offer condolences and . Find service information, send flowers, and leave memories and thoughts in the Guestbook for your loved one. He liked his teachers, and they liked him. But New Mexico schools and team sports didnt start up in the fall thanks to strict state regulations: 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. Hawaii, one of the states least affected by the pandemic, put its threshold at 360 cases over a 14-day period. It has, instead, been left largely up to parents to monitor their children for signs of declining mental health as they determine whether to allow their kids to return to college or summer camp, to have a friend over, to go to the mall. 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. It was hard not to be impressed by the ingenuity, the determination to try to make things work, even now. 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. James Davis's passing at the age of 79 . If we could have them all week, this is the best place for them to be.. For Kooper, autumn brought no relief. Its crazy to think that just down the road, theyre playing a football season theyre almost done with their football season. Most notably, it gave local school districts leeway in deciding whether to open for in-person instruction in August, and in conservative West Texas, many districts seized the opportunity to do so, for all grades, all the way up through high school. ProPublica published a story today that is legitimately heartbreaking. Well, were introducing them to a new society here, and theyre rejecting it.. Like Texas, we have to learn to live with it, he said. All Rights Reserved. Help them. Kooper did not know him well, but went out to join friends who had gathered to mourn him. 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. It had been a terrible month, and it had left her uncertain about the best course for the Hobbs schools and sports teams. This didnt keep many large urban districts in the state from starting the school year with remote learning. On some Tuesdays and Thursdays, hed head to school for an afternoon session with the other quarterbacks, learning how to read defensive coverage. United Realty, LLC Happy Hump Day!! 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. 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. Koopers friend Zailor Lopez has noticed a change in her friends: I feel like the pandemic has kind of brought on a lot of anxiety for us kids.. Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you. Theyve got so much time on their hands, he said. Koopers teammates on the Hobbs High School football team. That may have an effect over time. You cant state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublicas work. In the large band hall, the band director showed me the dots he had taped on the floor to keep the 70-odd musicians spaced 7.5 feet apart even as they marched, and the cloth covers that one students grandmother had made, decorated with the schools mustang logo, to go over the tubas, to keep them from emitting moisture. He called you., When the service ended, people stayed on for a while to talk and hug each other. People looked at us, like, Who is this kid and why is he not playing?. To avoid dense crowds, the band had held three performances, with several hundred people attending each. In New Mexico, Gov. 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. 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. 877-845-6272. The school capped attendance at its field, and required people to register for tickets online. Kooper Davis hated online school and he really hated that there was no football his junior year. 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. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. He was hoping his grades and his performance on the field would be enough to get him into a good college. He didnt text you or put it on Snap. Kooper was very involved in and loved being part of his church family as well as being a Christian. Even more startling was hearing from school administrators about how well the football season had gone the Denver City team made it to the second round of the playoffs and about the great event of the night prior: the holiday band concert. The parking lot was jammed with oversized pickups, and the sanctuary was standing room only. For high school junior Kooper Davis, whose family lives 10 minutes west of the border, this meant no school and no football. From the citys eastern edge to the Texas line is barely more than two miles. Allow us that opportunity., Kooper Davis had always thrived in school. Check out Kooper Davis's high school sports home, including game updates while playing basketball at Hobbs High School. 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. There were signs that mental health was on his mind. Katrina Fuller in the field where her son died. 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. 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. No contact sports are going to be permitted this fall, she said. Justin and Heather Davis with Kooper, then a first-year student. 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. I found an empty space to stand in the back. Numerous factors had affected these outcomes, needless to say. Theyre going to be taking care of us one day, and this is how were treating them? He noted that one student at the October protest had carried a sign that read, Im able to vote in your next election.. 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. Its honestly ridiculous. well-documented fall-off in student academic performance, deaths by suicide in the 10-to-24 age group, If youre republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our. For high school junior Kooper Davis that made all the difference in the world. He played basketball, too, but football had his heart. Doctors are concerned about possible increases in childhood obesity no surprise with many kids housebound in stress-filled homes while addiction experts are warning of the long-term effects of endless hours of screen time when both schoolwork and downtime stimulation are delivered digitally. 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. This was a problem, because he loved both of them. You cant go to sporting events, you cant see your friends, you cant go to parties. Other tolls would be harder to assess, in a year of so much damage done, in so many ways. Good, she said, because Kooper would be out of the question.. 866-495-5172. They allowed only for elementary-school instruction, and required a district to stay below an average of eight new cases per day per 100,000 residents over a two-week period. your email below for our complimentary daily grief messages. The median age for COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S. is about 80. But the districts push to reopen was rebuffed by the state education department. Travis Wade Collins passed away unexpectedly at his home on Sunday, February 26th 2023. The parents ran the political gamut: liberals from Baltimore, conservatives from rural towns in Pennsylvania. She specifically tells him that there is nothing left for him there . We have official accounts for ProPublica on. how did kooper davis of hobbs die steve dunn katu salary steve dunn katu salary. So honestly when do we stand up for our kids?? On Friday nights, high schools still played football, with fans in the stands. 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.. 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. But he knew he needed to work on his agility, which is one reason he took the practices so seriously. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Justin and Heather told me how much comfort they were taking in the outpouring over Kooper, especially among his classmates. The best thing we can do is to get them back to classrooms. 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. March 8, 2021: Due to an inconsistency in data provided by the National Governors Association, an earlier version of this article misrepresented three states COVID-19 case thresholds for reopening schools. how did kooper davis of hobbs die david buckner obituary chattanooga tn david buckner obituary chattanooga tn.