Drew Davis
Drew Davis bounced the volleyball twice, spun it in his right hand then held the ball in front of him, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
The Limestone College volleyball coach chose Davis — who is playing his first season at the school in Gaffney, South Carolina — as the team’s first server to start the 2017 season.
Davis threw the ball high, hit it, and sent it at the nation’s No. 10-ranked men’s volleyball team, George Mason.
“It pretty much blew up the serve receiver and middle back,” said Davis, who shared publicly he is gay in March 2014.
Despite Davis’ strong serve, George Mason managed to win the first point and took the first set, 25-17.
Limestone looked poised to win the second set, and Davis recorded a kill and a block on consecutive points that put his team ahead 20-17. Limestone reached set point with a 24-22 lead, but George Mason rallied for a 29-27 win in the second set and closed the match with a 25-19 third-set win.
“The whole entire match, I had goosebumps,” Davis said. “The hair on the back of my neck was just standing straight up.”
The 6-foot-3, 190-pound Davis played every point of the match, and he recorded seven kills, seven digs, two aces, and one block in that Jan. 7 season opener.
“After a loss, I’ve never felt good, but the way we played and the way we fought … everybody was on the same page. We were all playing really well.”
As a redshirt senior, Davis is enjoying his second chance at volleyball more than he expected.
Davis thought he was done playing when he transferred from Erskine College after the 2015 season. He decided to leave the conservative Christian school in Due West, South Carolina, after it adopted a stance against homosexuality in February 2015.
The hostile environment created by the Erskine Board of Trustees’ action led to Davis being threatened. On March 20, 2015, an anonymous letter was put inside his car. Davis remembers the letter saying:
“Dear faggot, If you don’t leave this semester or you decide to come back, we’ll make sure that you or your family or someone that you love is going to get hurt.”
Davis said he felt “shock” getting the letter and thought, “Are these people really serious? What am I doing that’s making them so mad besides liking men?”
He never wavered in his conviction of being out as gay. But when Davis finished his junior season on the Erskine volleyball team, he enrolled at College of Charleston. He served as a student volunteer assistant coach with the women’s volleyball team the fall of 2015, and he expected to finish college at the Charleston, South Carolina, school, which doesn’t offer men’s volleyball.
However, a friend on the Limestone women’s volleyball team kept telling him to use his final season of eligibility. She connected Davis with the Limestone men’s volleyball coach, and after they talked, Davis enrolled at the non-denominational Christian college in January 2016. Conference Carolinas rules forced Davis to redshirt the 2016 season since he was going to play within the same conference.
“I’m so happy here and so happy with my teammates and the way I was accepted here,” said Davis, who was a student assistant coach with the Limestone women’s volleyball team this fall. “My sexual orientation, it’s not a big deal, and it shouldn’t be a big deal.”
Davis won a Conference Carolinas title and reached the NCAA tournament as a sophomore at Erskine. As one of five seniors in the Limestone starting lineup, he hopes to help his teammates experience those accomplishments. That pursuit resumes Saturday, when Limestone plays its second match of the season and its first conference match.
“I’ve never been happier,” Davis said. “I wish I would have went here from the very beginning.”
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