At Sean Davidson’s first meet as a freshman, he notched a personal record in the 5,000 meter race, and assistant coach Kelly Strong asked him what the method to his success was. “I don’t know, coach,” Davidson said. “I just run.”
Jacob Lauing
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There’s a Ford pickup truck parked 10 feet in front of him.
Sean Davidson sits on an aluminum bench, his back against the yellow plastered walls of Mott Athletics Center.
With one leg tucked beneath the bench, the other extended, he’s asked about his vision without glasses, which he’s worn since third grade.
Davidson, a senior cross-country runner, points at the Ford.
“Probably couldn’t read the F150 on this truck,” he said. “I don’t know the index for it, think it’s like 20 feet, looks like 300 feet away.”
Davidson remains one of the few collegiate runners with glasses. But they definitely haven’t slowed him down.
He helped the Cal Poly men’s cross-country team claim its 12th Big West Conference title in 2012. He finished second at the NCAA West Regional Preview last month, earning him Big West Cross-Country Athlete of the Week honors for the second time.
His vision has been perfect on the course this year, but when it comes to expectations, Davidson acts like he’s blind.
“I don’t give myself high expectations for anything, really,” Davidson said. “I just go with it and use the strength that God gives me and use my teammates. Whatever happens, happens.”
The Simi Valley native has grown into one of Cal Poly’s top runners, anchoring the team with fellow senior Chris Frias and junior Mitch Moriarty. Davidson placed 17th at the NCAA Pre-Nationals, in addition to three top-five finishes earlier this season, but the senior’s recent successes don’t get to his head.
“He goes into a race stress-free,” Frias said. “That’s something that makes him such a good runner; he doesn’t over-think it.”
In the classroom, though, it’s a different story.
Davidson majors in business administration with a concentration in information systems. His studies are centered around critical thinking and analyzing, from coding to creating business databases.
“It’s completely different,” Davidson said. “When I’m running, when I’m feeling a lot of pain, I like to zone out and ignore it. On the business side, you have to think about everything. Everything is a problem that you have to solve, and you have to sit there and think about it for a while.”
Davidson came to Cal Poly from Royal High School, a national powerhouse in cross country.
In 2009, Davidson’s senior year, the Highlanders won the league championships, placed second in California and recorded a 15th-place finish at nationals.
“Sean came from a very sophisticated high school program,” head coach Mark Conover said. “He came in here with a very good knowledge of training and a very good background in terms of the amount of miles he had put in.”
Davidson began his cross-country career by happenstance.
Looking for a way to escape the high school physical education class, he started running in ninth grade. He ran a 5:30 mile on his first attempt that year.
“I was like, ‘That’s pretty fast, right?’” he said.
Davidson continued to underestimate himself, even when he arrived at Cal Poly. He didn’t know much about running at the collegiate level — except for the fierce competition — so he assumed he would redshirt his freshman year.
But things started to click when he finished third on the Cal Poly team at his first race.
“I think I’ve grown a lot in confidence,” Davidson said. “When I first came in, I had no intention of making the team right off the bat. Over the years, becoming an upperclassman — now one of the oldest guys on the team — I have such a sense of leadership and responsibility to the team.”
That team is a big reason Davidson chose Cal Poly.
The camaraderie of the sport originally drew him to cross-country, so despite recruiting visits to other colleges, Davidson recognized the close-knit nature of the Cal Poly squad and wanted to be part of it.
“There’s not a single person on the team that could say anything bad about him,” Frias said. “He’s such a nice guy. He’s so easy to talk to. People just love the way he presents himself.”
Four different teammates interrupted the interview to greet Davidson and, for the most part, give him a hard time for being in the media’s spotlight.
Senior Blake Ahrold hopped on the opportunity.
“Big Sean!” he shouted. “If you need anyone to say anything good about you … ”
Davidson laughed and brushed him off. He loves his team, and the feeling is mutual. But over the years, Davidson has developed an even closer bond with Frias.
As freshmen, the two roomed together at their first collegiate meet, the 2009 Stanford Invitational, and hit it off. Davidson and Frias found similarities in their personalities, their training styles and, obviously, their performances on the trail.
“Over the past four years we’ve been neck and neck,” Frias said. “We’re just so used to competing together, not only in races, but just in workouts and in everyday runs, we’re always side by side, and we’re always training with each other and pushing each other.”
Frias has been Cal Poly’s No. 1 the past few years, forcing Davidson to the No. 2 slot.
But recently, the tables have turned.
“I’ve told him before; I said, ‘If anyone were to beat me on the team, I’d want you to beat me,’ because I have the most respect for him, and I know that he’s busting his ass and training just as hard as I am,” Frias said.
At the UC Santa Barbara Lagoon Open on Aug. 31, Davidson finished 20 seconds behind Frias. At the Fresno State Invitational, he cut the gap to two seconds. At the race after that, he finished six seconds in front of Frias. And at Pre-Nationals on Oct. 19, Davidson finished 17th as Frias fell to 29th place.
“He’s always been in the shadows of someone else,” Frias said. “Even in high school, he was the No. 2 guy from day one all the way to the end. He’s really worked hard, and he deserves a lot of credit. This is his time to shine.”
Davidson will have that opportunity at the Big West Championships this weekend. Racing on Cal Poly’s home course, Davidson is confident he will improve on last year’s ninth-place finish.
And although he doesn’t set expectations for himself, Davidson has a clear goal in mind for the remainder of this season. Whether it’s him or Frias in the lead, Davidson has his sights set on nationals.
“Any given day, we could switch places,” Davidson said. “In the grand scheme of things, we both want to make nationals. We can do it with our team, but if all the cards aren’t there for all the guys on that day, we can make it as individuals too.”
Meanwhile, Davidson’s non-analytical strategy has become pretty popular on the team.
“He’s got the right approach to the sport,” Conover said. “You don’t have to use too much of your space between the ears, other than come to the starting line with a lot of confidence that you want to get the job done, and have fun doing it. That’s the beauty of Sean.”
It’s been an ongoing joke since freshman year.
At Davidson’s first meet, the 2009 Stanford Invitational, he notched a personal record in the 5,000 meter race, clocking in at 14:46.
He was the new kid on the block at the time, so assistant coach Kelly Strong wanted to know the method to the rookie’s success.
“What’s your secret?” she asked after the race. “What do you do?”
Davidson spends his school days working on basic programming in Oracle and SQL, while using Microsoft Access and Excel to compile business information. His post-collegiate career will surely be filled with analytics.
But he responded as Sean Davidson the runner, not Sean Davidson the information systems major.
“I don’t know, coach,” Davidson said. “I just run.”