Bucknell lacrosse fans who have had the pleasure of following senior Connor Davis’ path to the brink of becoming the program’s all-time leading goal-scorer should be sure to send a note of thanks to Patti, Connor’s mom, who helped steer him toward lacrosse instead of football at a young age.
After all, Connor comes from a prominent football family. His father, Tim, played football at Auburn, and his uncles and cousins are the Colquitts, who all punted at Tennessee and won Super Bowl rings in the NFL. Uncle Craig won two championships with the Pittsburgh Steelers, and more recently, cousin Britton won a Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos and cousin Dustin lifted the Lombardi Trophy with the Kansas City Chiefs. Uncle Jimmy also made it to the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks.
“It was so cool getting to watch them in the NFL,” Connor recalls. “We went to the Super Bowl in Miami when Dustin won against the 49ers. That was an unbelievable experience getting to see him win a Super Bowl, because the Chiefs were bad for most of his career. But he got the tail end of it with Mahomes when they got really good. We got to see Britton in the Super Bowl in New York when he was on the Broncos, but they lost badly in that one. So we witnessed both sides of it, but fortunately Britton got his ring a few years later.”
Connor and his cousins are close – they watch his lacrosse games and send him text messages with encouragement – and he grew up following the pageantry of Auburn and NFL football games, so how did Connor stray from the gridiron?
“It was my mom. She’s big on concussions and stuff. She didn’t want to see me get hurt, and lacrosse has always been my main sport, so that became my focus.”
Growing up in the lacrosse-mad state of Maryland, Connor first picked up a stick at the age of three doing scoopers. He recalls hating it at first – the helmet and gear weren’t for him – but today he’s thankful mom and dad made him stick with it. Things got more competitive around the age of seven, and Connor’s core group of teammates stayed together through club lacrosse and at Bullis School, a lacrosse power in the D.C. suburb of Potomac. Connor was part of a Bullis squad that won a national championship in 2019.
“There were five or six of us who started in scoopers and then made it to our final club team when we were in high school. That was super cool to have the same group of guys together for the whole thing. We just missed the recruiting era where kids could sign in eighth grade, so there was some recruiting buzz early on but nothing crazy until junior year when it was actually legal.”
Former Bison offensive coordinator Ryan Danehy was Connor’s main recruiter, and Danehy’s visit to the Davis home made a big impact.
“Coach Danehy coming to my house was a pretty big deal. That’s probably what separated Bucknell early on. I grew up in a small atmosphere. I went to a private middle school with 44 kids in my grade, and in high school there were about 100 kids in my grade. So I really didn’t know anything else. I remember taking a college visit to a bigger school and attending a math class and there were a hundred students just in that class. The lacrosse guys were just sitting in the back of the room doing nothing. I remember thinking, ‘I can’t do this.’ And then I came to Bucknell and loved it from the second I got to campus. To be honest, I came on the visit because I wanted to get out of school on a Friday, but it’s the best thing I ever did.”
Connor’s skip day turned out to be fruitful for head coach Frank Fedorjaka and the Bison, as Connor has gone on to reach stardom at the college level. A starting attackman from day one at Bucknell, he was the 2022 Patriot League Rookie of the Year after scoring 45 goals as a freshman, and after an injury-plagued sophomore campaign, he came back to earn Second Team All-Patriot League honors last season.
And now he seems to be saving his best for last. With 29 goals through the first seven games of his senior year, Connor enters the weekend as the No. 2 scorer in all of Division I lacrosse. He exploded for a career-high eight goals on opening day against Merrimack and has multiple goals in every game so far. In last Saturday’s wild 18-17 win over Colgate, Connor dished out a career-high four assists and also scored three goals of his own, including the game-winner late in the fourth quarter.
The early season surge has Connor sitting on the precipice of history. He has 137 career goals, and his next tally will tie Hall-of-Famer Justin Zackey’s school record, which has held up in the books since 1994. Zackey led the nation with 63 goals as a junior, and his career record once seemed unbreakable. Until Connor came along, no Bison had come within 18 goals of the record, and only six had even scored 100. Now that unbreakable record is about to be broken.
“I try not to think about it, but it would mean a lot. Thinking back to all the hard work I’ve put into the sport, breaking the record would be cool for sure. It’s been a goal of mine for a long time. Near the end of my sophomore year I started to think it was possible, and then at the end of last year I was like, wow, this could definitely happen. We have so many offensive weapons and some great feeders, so the opportunities are there.”
At 6’4” and 210 pounds, Connor is a physical attackman, often resembling a football player in lax gloves. He can score on the crease or from long range with his powerful, accurate shot, and if the Bison don’t score, he is a force on the ride. One of the biggest goals in the Colgate game came late in the second quarter when the Raiders were on a momentum-changing run of seven straight goals to take a 10-8 lead. On a Colgate clearing attempt, Connor chased down Raiders star Liam Connor, picked his pocket with a perfect stick check, and then broke free and scored on the break.
“The Colgate game was huge for us. We needed that one after dropping a couple of games that we felt we should have had. Now if we can stack a few more wins together we can put ourselves in a good position.”
Fedorjaka’s praise for Connor starts with his leadership – he captains an extremely close-knit group – and then on to just how hard he has worked over the last four years. While some players might get complacent after a 45-goal freshman season, Connor only became more determined.
“In my 20 years as a head coach, we’ve only had a unanimous team captain maybe three times, and Connor was voted unanimously this year,” says Fedorjaka “What separates Connor first and foremost is that he is a terrific shooter. He has really hard velocity but also great accuracy and a quick release. He has improved his left hand and his lefthanded shot on the run, so now when defenders rush out at him, he can tuck his stick and go down the alley lefthanded. Each year he’s developed his dodging game, and he’s gotten so much better at moving his feet and shooting it on the run. And on top of that, he’s big and strong and runs well, he rides hard, and he scoops the ball well. He just makes all of those winning-type plays, and he makes the guys around him better, even though he is primarily an off-ball player.”
One of the few figures loftier than Connor’s goal total is his GPA, where he is a Dean’s List student and an Academic All-Patriot League honoree while majoring in economics. The postgraduate job search can be a major source of stress for college seniors, but Connor already has a job lined up as an advisor associate with Wealthspire Advisors in Washington, D.C. He interned there last summer and received a return offer in the fall.
“My mom is a teacher, so she has definitely been on me about my grades through every level of school. Academics have always been important, and it’s paid off as I got to attend a great school like Bucknell, and I’ll be starting a good job after graduation.”
But first, Connor has a significant record to break and a team to lead back into the championship race. The Bison have another big one on Saturday at home against defending Patriot League champion Lehigh, and then they travel to Easton next week for a Friday-night game against an improved Lafayette squad.
The Davis/Colquitt clan will surely be watching.
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