HONORING KECIA

Columbus volleyball classic tournament has been renamed

The Columbus Volleyball Classic Tournament has officially been renamed the Kecia Davis Memorial Volleyball Tournament.

This change comes after former Columbus volleyball, basketball and track coach, Kecia Davis, died after her battle with cancer.

Davis coached in Columbus from 1992-2006 and touched countless lives during her time as the bench boss here in Columbus. On Saturday morning at the Marley Giddens Gym in Columbus former and current players of the Columbus Lady Cards gathered to honor the memory of Kecia Davis.

“She is the reason I am a volleyball coach today,” current Lady Cards Head Coach Kayley Johns said.

Linda Kobersky spoke at this event, and she spoke about many fond memories of Coach Kecia Davis while fighting back tears in the process. She talked about how Davis was basically a second mom for the girls on the team.

She had a kind heart and was always checking in on her players and making sure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing on the court, in the classroom and even at home. Yes, Davis was the coach that would do bed checks on her players the night before a tournament, but she wanted to make sure her team was rested and ready to go.

Kobersky also talked about how strict of a coach Kecia Davis was which every single one of her players talked about how strict Coach Davis’s rules were.

With rules like, no chewing gum in the gym, no dark sodas, no cursing and fingernails had to be a certain length. Punishments were severe for breaking these rules too, if caught chewing gum players had to clean the gym floors and locker room, if caught cursing players had to do pushups for every letter of the curse word that they said.

As for the fingernails, Davis came equipped with a nail clipper keychain to help fix that problem on the spot. She was strict but Coach Davis always had her players’ best interest at heart, she never enforced these rules to be a tyrant, she did it because she cared.

“She was tough, had extremely high expectations, but believed in all of us no matter what,” Johns said. “She would not allow us to ever give up, she had some crazy hard consequences and strict rules, but we all greatly loved and respected her.”

The sentiment that Davis was loved and respected by her former players and colleagues was apparent. Davis took the approach of hate me now love me later when coaching and that’s because she simply cared so deeply and wanted to see her team succeed.

“That’s ultimately my goal coaching now is to be loved and respected like coach Davis because I push my girls but I also try to show them that I love them and I do care about them, and I think after these past couple of days with them getting to see all of this and getting to know coach Davis a little bit more, they know I do,” Johns said.

Kecia Davis touched the lives of many, that much is evident but even though she is physically gone she is now immortalized forever at Columbus High School with the Kecia Davis Memorial Volleyball Tournament.