The legend of Clinton Davis began when he was in grade school.
Most days he didn’t walk home.
He ran.
“I would always get bullied,” he said. “Kids would chase me home and never catch me.”
Looking back, it was a case of foreshadowing. Very few would ever catch Davis. Little did the bullies know then that they were trying to run down a kid who would go on to become the greatest sprinter in WPIAL history.
There is fast, and then there is Clinton Davis.
By the time Davis graduated from Steel Valley in 1983, he was already considered one of the premier sprinters in the world. He had won three gold medals at the Junior Pan Am Games in Venezuela, beat several of the world’s top 400-meter runners at the Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden, was featured in Sports Illustrated, was on the cover of Track & Field Magazine, and was a two-time Post-Gazette athlete of the year.
Records are made to be broken, but many of Davis’ are still being chased nearly four decades later. That includes his PIAA records in the 200- and 400-meter dashes. Davis ran a 20.86 in the 200 his junior year and a 46.29 in the 400 his senior year. He is one of only three boys in WPIAL history to win six gold medals in individual events at the PIAA championships. He “tripled” in the 100, 200 and 400 his junior and senior years. He did the same at the WPIAL championships.
George Novak was Davis’ football coach at Steel Valley. The Ironmen won a WPIAL title in 1982, Davis’ senior year. Novak went on to become the longtime coach at Woodland Hills, where he coached more than a dozen players who went on to play in the NFL, among them speedsters Steve Breaston and Miles Sanders.
So, when Novak gives Davis the following label, it certainly holds weight.
“He was the fastest kid I ever had,” Novak said.
Rick Dunmire, Steel Valley’s track coach back then, called Davis the best high school track and field athlete he has ever seen.
“His times at the same age were faster than Carl Lewis’ times,” Dunmire recalls. “He was an elite kid then.”
Davis had “future Olympian” written all over him. He was sponsored by Adidas and had scholarship offers from just about every college in the country. He ultimately picked Pitt, where he shared an Oakland apartment with Olympic gold medalist Roger Kingdom. But as quickly as Davis could whiz down a track, his career was pretty much over at just the age of 19. Davis was severely injured in a car accident in Coraopolis in 1985. He broke both of his legs and was in a wheelchair for about a year. After recovering, he ran in a few small meets before giving up the sport.
“I was running times that they run today 37 years ago,” Davis said. “If I wouldn’t have gotten hurt, I probably would have broken world records in the 200 and 400.”
In the early 1980s, Davis was a really big deal. Nowadays, he’s “Big Daddy,” a nickname he has had for years. In fact, Davis’ voicemail begins with him saying, “You’ve reached Big Daddy Incorporated. Everything I do, I do it big.”
Davis, 54, is a jovial man with a hearty laugh who has been married for 20 years. He and his wife, Phyllis, live in Turtle Creek. Davis has six kids. He works two jobs — he’s an inventory control manager at an At Home store and “does a little bit of everything” at Gabe’s. He also loves watching cartoons. SpongeBob and Courage the Cowardly Dog are two of his favorites.
There are many memorable stories about Davis and his ridiculous speed, including one that led him to giving track a try after he moved from Braddock to Homestead before his freshman year at Steel Valley. Davis was on Steel Valley’s ninth-grade football team, which was taking on a West Mifflin North team led by a freshman phenom of its own in running back Chuckie Scales.
“Scales was a really talented kid,” Dunmire recalled. “He caught a pass, and a kid came out of nowhere to catch him and made him look like he was standing still. That was Clinton Davis. I said, ‘Well, either Chuckie isn’t as fast as we thought or this kid is really unusual,’ which was the case.”
Scales ended up transferring to Shady Side Academy, where he became a Parade All-American before playing at Pitt.
Davis, who ran a 4.4 in the 40-yard dash as a freshman, according to Novak, said Dunmire tracked him down the very next day to try to convince him to run track in the spring.
“I said, ‘But I don’t know anything about track.’ But then he said, ‘If you run track, you can get out of school early.’ I was like, ‘OK. That’s good for me,” Davis said, laughing.
There was the time as a senior at the WPIAL championships when he was on a star-studded 400 relay team that also included Melvin Anderson, Brad Jones and Duane Dutrieuille. Those three all played college football — Anderson and Dutrieuille at Minnesota and Jones at Georgia Tech. Anderson played in the NFL. But by the time Davis got the baton to run the anchor leg, he was well behind leader Vernon Kirk of Ringgold. Kirk played football for Pitt and was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams.
“Vernon had a 10-meter lead when Davis got the baton, and Davis ran him down, caught him and beat him by a full stride. That was an elite kid and Davis caught him,” Dunmire said.
Added Novak: “It was unbelievable.”
A week later, Davis ran his state-record 46.29 in the 400 at the PIAA championships, a time that Dunmire said could have even been much faster had it not been for Davis conversing with his teammates as he neared the finish line.
“He was so far ahead of everyone else that he was talking to our team while he was running the last 75 meters,” Dunmire said. “If he would have pressed that, he would have run a 45.”
To put Davis’ time into perspective, consider that since then, the fastest time any athlete has run in the event at the WPIAL championships has been 48.32. Davis ran two seconds faster than that 37 years ago. Davis also set a PIAA record in the 100 (10.46) his senior year, but that mark was broken by Penn Wood’s Leroy Burrell, a future Olympian who eventually set a world record in the event.
Davis, who was inducted into the WPIAL Hall of Fame in 2011, said he didn’t lose a high school race his junior or senior years. He dropped only one as a sophomore, but never got to race at the WPIAL or PIAA championships after suffering a hamstring injury at WPIAL qualifiers.
Colleges eventually flooded Davis with mail. He took official visits to UCLA, USC, Georgia, Auburn and Tennessee.
“He was one of the top five or 10 runners in the country,” Novak said. “He could have gone to any school he wanted to.”
Davis said he strongly considered UCLA. Los Angeles was going to be hosting the 1984 Summer Olympics, so it made sense. But Davis said he believed UCLA coaches were going to have him run in too many events. He also liked the idea of going to school close to home, so he elected to go to Pitt.
In June of 1984, Davis ran in the Olympic Trials at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, but fell short of qualifying in the 200 or 400, a pulled hamstring being one of the reasons, he said.
It turns out 1985 was even worse. First, his family’s apartment caught fire and burned down in March. A month later came the car accident which nearly took his life.
“They actually pronounced me dead at the scene,” Davis said. “I started to show signs of life, so they life-flighted me to AGH. I was in the room with two broken legs. The doctor said I might never walk again.”
Davis did walk again, but his days of fascinating onlookers with his blazing speed were over.
His legend, however, lives on.
“A coach once asked me, ‘How fast is Clinton Davis?’” said Dunmire. “I said, ‘Clinton is as fast as he needs to be in any race he runs.’ He was like a blur.”
Brad Everett: beverett@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @BREAL412.
First Published: June 19, 2020, 10:15 a.m.
