Memory of Father Keeps Her Running Strong

By Diane Pucin

March 1, 2000 12 AM PT

When she was in first grade, Crystal Davis entered a 50-yard dash.

Without thinking, without doing anything but listening to her father, Patrick, tell her to run as fast as she could, Davis left all those other little kids 25 yards behind her. Crystal doesn’t remember exactly what her time was in that monumental race, but she knows she set a first-grade record and she knows that from then on her nickname became “Speedy Gonzalez.”

Davis is a junior now at Santa Ana Valley High. She is probably the best female high school sprinter in Orange County. She is the county’s defending 100-meter champion and her coach, Toby Brannon, only wishes he could enter her in more than four events.

And when Davis lines up to run, far away from that Norwalk grade school, she still hears Patrick’s voice in her ear. “Run as fast as you can.” She still carries Patrick’s strength in her heart. “I think of my dad before every race.” She imagines sometimes that Patrick is holding her hand. She looks at a picture of Patrick when he was competing as a sprinter at Fremont High in Norwalk. She sees that photo every morning and every evening in her room, above her bed.

What Davis can’t do is feel Patrick’s hug or get a pat on the back after a race well run. She can’t listen to Patrick talk about her form or tell her tall tales of how fast he was.

When Crystal was 8 and Patrick was 32, Crystal lost her dad. Patrick died of a heart attack. He was a long-distance truck driver and died in a hotel room on the road. Althea Davis, Patrick’s young wife and Crystal’s mother, got a phone call from a stranger telling her that her husband was dead. Patrick had lived with a small hole in his heart, a hereditary condition that Patrick kept secret from his speedy daughter and downplayed to his wife.

“After my dad died,” Crystal says, “I kept telling my mom that my heart hurt. It scared her so much that she took me to the doctor. But my heart was fine. I think it just hurt because I missed my dad.”

Brannon says that Davis, who is also a forward on the school’s basketball team with a scoring average of more than 15 points and a rebounding average of 12, is a spectacular athlete who could excel at many sports.

Besides the 100- and 200-meter sprint races and the 400 and 1,600 relays, Davis says she’d like to try running the 300-meter hurdles and she is practicing the long jump. “Last year,” Brannon says, “and without ever having practiced the long jump, Crystal hit 18 feet on her first try.

“I just wish there weren’t a rule against running an athlete in more than four events,” Brannon says. “I’d run Crystal in everything I could. Heck, she’d probably be a great pole vaulter.”

Her father’s death did not keep Davis from running. She’d run against her brothers, she’d run against her step-brothers. Her step-brothers she calls them, the sons of her mother’s longtime boyfriend, James Strong.

“There’s always been something inside Crystal,” Althea says. “There’s a desire she has and her father had it. From that day in first grade when she set that record, it just gave her something a little extra.”

If she hasn’t had her father’s physical presence, Crystal says she guards her talent and nurtures it because she believes that “What I have is a gift from my father and I’ll always have that gift.”

She also has a special booster in James Strong Jr. Strong is a track man himself, a middle-distance runner of some talent. He is 29 and had been coaching Crystal until recently. Now Strong is concentrating on his own bid to earn an Olympic trials qualifying time in the 400 meters.

“But I wish,” Strong says, “that I had the talent Crystal has. Let me tell you, this girl has a very special gift.”

As a freshman at Santa Ana Valley, Davis finished fourth in the 100 meters at the Southern Section Division II finals. “There was no question,” Brannon says, “that I had something pretty special on my hands.”

Her best time of 12.12 in the 100 leaves her tied for fifth all time in Orange County and Davis’ aim now is the county record of 11.99 seconds, set in 1981 by University High’s Annette Rogers.

Brannon sees in Davis a deeper, more mature attitude about both track and school. As Davis sped off to join some teammates in a jog around the school’s neighborhood even though the rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was blowing hard, Brannon smiled.

“Last year, same conditions, Crystal wouldn’t have been here or she would have been trying to get out of practice,” Brannon says. “This year she’s the first one to come to me and say, ‘We’re practicing today coach, aren’t we? The weather’s not that bad.’ ”

Strong says Davis has committed herself to doing work off the track, especially weight training. Crystal uses weight equipment in her garage, the same equipment her father used when he was a high school runner. “And Crystal has gotten real serious about her school work,” Strong says. “I think she realizes what’s out there for her if she puts her mind to it. She has the athletic ability to run at UCLA or USC. She needs to get the grades. “

Her sports idols, Crystal says, are Marion Jones, the country’s best female sprinter and an athlete who was both a track and basketball star in high school at Thousand Oaks and in college at North Carolina; and Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan? “Of course,” Davis says. “He’s the best who’s ever been. That’s what I want to be.”

Her personal idol is someone else. Someone Crystal carries close to her heart, someone Crystal listens to even though he’s not here. “I hope,” Crystal says, “that I am making my dad proud.”

“There’s no doubt of that,” Althea says. “No doubt at all.”

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: [email protected]