Before coronavirus concerns moved much of his side-business as a personal trainer online, Thamar Davis’s clients often got a package deal when they turned up at the gym.
Not only did they get the benefit of Davis, a teacher who studied physical education and coaching in college, they also got 10-year-old Riley Cooper, his girlfriend Domonique Gorham’s daughter. A rising fifth-grader at Whittier Education Campus in Washington, D.C., Riley has seen Davis explain the routines and exercises so many times that if a client has trouble understanding something, she’s right there to demonstrate.
“If he's teaching something that the students or the people don't know how to do, I can show them,” she says.
Davis has been a fixture in Riley’s life since she was a year old, and whether they are outside throwing a football or inside watching television, it’s a relationship marked by deep affection. Asked to describe Riley, the words roll off Davis’s tongue. “Oh, man. Energetic, super smart, gorgeous, intelligent, very, very articulate. Like she's pretty much like the ideal daughter.”
Both also share another trait -- competitiveness. Riley, according to Davis, will push him to come up with new and more challenging exercise routines, and when a basketball or football comes out, it’s always a competition to see who can make the most shots or catch the most passes.
“If there’s anything competitive, she’s with it,” Davis says.
And that’s just perfect for Davis, who took a roundabout path to teaching, after first pursuing a career in football. A D.C. native, he left Washington after high school for Averett University in Danville, Virginia, where he played four years of football. He ended his career as team captain, and inscribed his name in the school’s records as one of its most productive running backs.
After graduating, he returned to D.C. with his eye on continuing his football career. He got into the personal training business while he traveled to different training camps looking for an opportunity. One finally appeared, and he was signed by the Reading, Pennsylvania Express, a new franchise in the American Indoor Football League.
Davis still looks back fondly at his time fighting to make his way into professional sports, but eventually, he had a choice to make. He and Domonique had just had their first son, Tauqeer, so when he was informed that he had been chosen for the Express practice squad -- an unpaid position -- he headed back to DC for good.
Davis spent a few years in the personal training field, before making the move to education in 2012, joining the D.C. Public Schools system. He began working with children who have learning and emotional disabilities, making his way up from a behavioral technician position to a job teaching physical education and health.
Along the way, he kept one foot in the world of sports, coaching football and basketball teams at the middle school and high school levels, where Riley was a frequent sight in the stands or on the sidelines.
“He teaches them well,” she said, a claim backed up by the trophies, including a DCIAA Opportunity League title with the Luke C. Moore High School Boys Basketball team, and a Gravy Bowl title with Roosevelt Senior High School, where Davis served as linebacker coach.
Virus-related lockdowns and social distancing have made school and team sports alike difficult to manage in recent months, so Riley has been going to school virtually, which isn’t so bad, she says. Her favorite subjects include math and social studies, “and science. Mostly science.” She also gets to spend time hanging out with her brothers, 12-year-old Tauqeer and eight-month-old Carter.
Davis, for his part, is coping with distance education at the Hope Community Public Charter School, where he began working in January, organizing online meetings of the middle school football team he’s now coaching, and continuing as a personal trainer.
With the pandemic slowing everything down, it’s also given Davis, an African American, plenty of time to reflect on the other topic dominating the news in the U.S. and around the world: the demand for police reform and racial equality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis last month.
“She's definitely going to see what's going on, with social media, Internet, the TV,” he said. “You definitely have to have the conversation, but you’ve got to word things the right way.”
He said he’s tried to communicate to Riley and Tauqeer not just the fact that what happened to Floyd was a terrible wrong, but also to help them have “more of a complete understanding” of what’s going on, including what their rights are, and how he and Domonique expect their children to conduct themselves.
“There’s a right and wrong way to go about everything,” he tells the children. “Choose the right way as much as possible.”
As difficult as those conversations can be, the circumstances also give Davis reason to think things might get better.
Speaking of the protests, he said he’d prefer not to see violence. But in general, “I would say [the movement] definitely gives me hope. Do I feel better for the future? Yes, because it’s being seen and being televised more now than it would have been 20 years ago... So now that it’s happening and it’s actually being recorded, you have to do something about it. Something has to change.”
Fortunately for Riley, at 10 years old, there’s plenty to distract from the troubles of the world. There’s lip gloss, and make-up, and playing video games with her brother. And wondering when things will get back to normal, so she can do things like race cross-country as she has in the past.
Wait. Riley is a runner? Did she know that Thamar, the ex-college running back who got a taste of professional football, was also a track athlete as a young man?
Oh, she knows.
That leads to the obvious question: Is she faster than he is?
“Yes,” says Riley, without hesitation.
Editor’s note: This is the third in a VOA series highlighting the accomplishments of father-daughter duos across America - and celebrating cross-generational ties and common purpose between fathers and daughters ahead of Father’s Day, June 21.
