Davis Warren’s improbable road from kid with cancer to Michigan’s starting QB

It was the spring of 2019 and then 15-year-old Davis Warren, a high school quarterback from Los Angeles, sat down on the bench press to start a 6 a.m. weightlifting session.

He couldn’t finish a single warm up rep with the 135-pound bar.

“I was dizzy, light headed,” Warren said on the L.A.B. podcast with Jake Butt last month. “I knew something was off.”

Soon Warren and his parents were at an area hospital when doctors informed them Warren had Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The five-year survival rate for kids is just 66 percent (and just 29.5 for adults). Warren’s head spun. The talk was about treatments, challenges, side effects and so on. His initial thought was that he was about to die.

“You never expect that to be you,” Warren said this week.

He mustered up a question though.

“How soon can I play football again?”

The disease and the survival rate was scary, but treatment was relatively short — five to eight months. So technically, he could play that coming fall … at least if everything, absolutely everything, went right and he still actually wanted to, the doctor said.

Five-plus years later, Warren is expected to start Saturday for the reigning national champion Michigan Wolverines as they host third-ranked Texas. Across the way will be Longhorn star quarterback Quinn Ewers, backed up by Arch Manning, each former No. 1 overall recruits and potential first round NFL draft picks.

Warren’s journey from the children’s cancer ward to the 110,000-seat Big House in Ann Arbor won’t earn him an extra yard or Michigan an extra point, but it is the kind of improbable, inspiring story — even in the professionalized era of NIL — that makes college sports so special.

Warren did beat leukemia and did play high school football on his schedule — albeit after losing his hair and at least 40 pounds. He did it…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/davis-warrens-improbable-road-from-kid-with-cancer-to-michigans-starting-qb-143053981.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-09-04 14:30:53

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