Photos in this story are credited to John Polzer.
Senior wide receiver/kick returner Trevor Davis remembers sitting at Memorial Stadium during a California football game as a child when former Golden Bear and current NFL standout wide receiver DeSean Jackson threw a football up to him in the stands during pregame warmups.
Davis, who became a diehard Cal fan that day, hopes one day this season to make another kid's day by doing the same thing.
Davis was joined at the eighth annual Bay Area College Football Media Day at Levi's® Stadium in Santa Clara by Cal head coach Sonny Dykes and junior safety Griffin Piatt. Members of the Stanford and San Jose State football teams also met with the local media in attendance and dignitaries like Gary Cavalli, the executive director of the Foster Farms Bowl.
Like Davis, a Martinez native, Piatt also grew up in Moraga a Cal fan.
“That's really special to me,” Piatt said about representing Cal at the press conference. “I grew up 15 minutes from Berkeley. I grew up going to Cal games and I love living in the Bay Area. I plan to live here for a long time. To be in this position to represent Cal was really special.”
Added Davis: “It's a great feeling. I've been watching Cal for a long time. It's a surreal feeling. Growing up here, watching so many NFL stars come from Cal and being able to play where they played is amazing. I came here today wanting to put Cal in the best light possible for its athletics and academics.”
Being a Cal student-athlete is something that runs in Piatt's family. His father and uncle are both Cal graduates, and his grandfather, the late Ed Dougery, played on the Bears' basketball team under legendary head coach Nibs Price.
Both players took different routes to get to Berkeley. Davis started his collegiate career at Hawai'i before transferring to Cal, while Piatt originally joined the Bears as a walk-on wide receiver.
Regardless of how they got to this point, Dykes is happy to have them on his squad in 2015.
“You've got to recruit the Bay Area kids,” Dykes said. “You want the best kids from the Bay Area every year. They're both really good players. They're kids who we're proud to have in the program. They're hard workers, great teammates and good athletes. We think they're both going to have a good year.”
Davis will get to see plenty of Dykes this season as the Bears' head coach will also take over the responsibilities of coaching the outside receivers. Davis said he is excited to work directly with his head coach and he hopes to follow in the line of talented receivers that Dykes has coached throughout his career such as NFL standouts Michael Crabtree and Wes Welker at Texas Tech, and Rob Gronkowski at Arizona.
The wide receiver position will be crowded in 2015 with seven of the eight Cal receivers to record at least 20 receptions in 2014 returning this season. The crowded wide receiver depth chart is a good problem to have, according to Dykes, and he feels like Davis is in a good spot to carve out his role.
“The good thing with Trevor is with Chris Harper's departure, he's kind of the guy now at the X position,” Dykes said. “Maurice Harris will be in there too and he'll compete with Trevor. We've got five to seven receivers who will all have to compete with each other for playing time, which makes them better individually and makes us better collectively. Any time you have competition, that's a good thing.”
Davis echoed Dykes' thoughts about competition being a good thing.
“We all embrace it,” Davis said. “I like the fact that there's a lot of competition. You need competition to get better, and we all want to be the best. We all want to be better than each other, and that's a good thing. Every day at practice, I know there is a guy behind me trying to pass me or somebody I'm trying to pass because there are so many great receivers. Everybody wants that starting job.”
Davis is also a prolific kick returner who ranked second nationally last season with a 32.6 yards per kick return average and tied for second with two kick return touchdowns, both setting school marks. Davis returned both of his kickoffs for touchdowns on back-to-back returns at Washington State to become the third player in Pac-12 history and the 20th FBS player to return two kickoffs for touchdowns in a single game. As a result of his accomplishments last year, Davis is a 2015 preseason second-team All-American kick returner (Sporting News) and on the watch list for the Paul Hornung Award given annually to college football's most versatile player.
Growing up going to Cal games as a child, Piatt said while he enjoyed watching players like Aaron Rodgers and Marshawn Lynch, it was Syd'Quan Thompson, Cal's former cornerback from 2005-09, who he wanted to model himself after on the football field.
Entering last season, Piatt was determined to lead the Pac-12 in interceptions. He was on his way to doing that after recording an interception in each of the first three games of the season before suffering a season-ending injury against Washington. But nothing has changed for Piatt in terms of his goals for 2015. He's going to take another crack at accomplishing what he set out to do last year.
“My goal last season was to lead the Pac-12 in interceptions,” Piatt said. “I was kind of on my way to doing that before the injury, so I want to do that again this year and just be a playmaker in the secondary. I'm very excited about starting fall camp. It's been a long summer, going through conditioning and getting ready. I'm anxious to get back on the field and get started.”
Dykes is excited to get Piatt back on the field, but first he wants to see Piatt back to 100 percent health.
“The big thing is to get him back healthy,” Dykes said. “We want him to play a full season for us and to stay healthy. We're going to be real careful about how we bring him along. We want him to come back strong and be ready to go. We expect him to hopefully be a starter and improve on the season he was having at the start of last year. He was one of our better defensive players until he got hurt. We expect him to improve on that.”
When training camp does start at Kabam Field at California Memorial Stadium on August 7, Davis and Piatt won't be far from home, and they'll get another chance to play the game they love on the field they grew up watching games as fans.
The Golden Bears are slated to open the 2015 season Sept. 5 with a non-conference home game vs. Grambling State (2 p.m., Pac-12 Networks) and will also host a pair of fan events on Aug. 22 with Golden Bear Day (1 p.m.) and Pigskins & Pearls (3 p.m.).
The Bears will host another non-conference home contest vs. San Diego State on Sept. 12 (2 p.m., Pac-12 Networks) as well as four Pac-12 home games vs. Washington State (Oct. 3), USC (Oct. 31), Oregon State (Nov. 14) and Arizona State (Nov. 28).
Cal has road games at Texas (Sept. 19, 6:30 p.m. CT/4:30 p.m. PT, FOX), Washington (Sept. 26), Utah (Oct. 10), UCLA (Oct. 22, 6 p.m., ESPN), Oregon (Nov. 7) and Stanford (Nov. 21).
Season tickets including partial plans and single-game tickets for 2015 Cal football are available now by calling the Gold Standard Sales and Service line at (800) GO-BEARS (462-3277) or visiting CalBears.com. Season tickets start as low as $17 per game and partial plans begin at $24 per contest.
