NFL vets Davis, Leach speak at UNC Pembroke
By Jonathan Bym, Laurinburg Exchange
If there has ever been one player that has personified the Carolina Panthers’ mantra ‘Keep Pounding’ outside of Sam Mills, the originator of the phrase, it’s Thomas Davis.
Davis is the only know NFL player to come back and play from three ACL injuries, and he also played in Super Bowl 50 two weeks after breaking his arm in the NFC Championship Game.
The 11th-year, Pro Bowl linebacker spoke alongside Robeson County native and former NFL fullback Vonta Leach at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke’s Entrepreneurship Summit held inside the Givens Performing Arts Center on Thursday.
“I’ve lived that not only with my play but everything I’ve gone through from an injury standpoint throughout my career, and showing everybody the ability to continue to do just what that message says, keep pounding, keep fighting through all of that stuff,” he said. “I think I live and breath that on a daily basis in all that I work on.”
Davis spoke for over 30 minutes to a crowd of over 1,000 people, mostly local high school students, about his career journey and his mindset growing up in the small town of Shellman, Georgia. Davis and his wife Kelly run the Thomas Davis Defending Dreams Foundation which provides efforts to benefit the lives of underprivileged kids in Charlotte, Greenville, South Carolina and Shellman to help them succeed there dreams.
The wisdom Davis imparted into the audience was to set and commit to goals in life, giving examples of him growing up with his single mother and working hard to go to college.