BY NATE KOTISSO | THE MONITOR
MISSION — Six-year-old Ruben Davila watched his cousin play football on a club team in Monterrey and went nuts every time he touched the football. His cousin picked up on Davila’s ear-splitting screams and asked Ruben if he’d want to try football out for himself.
Four years after joining the same Monterrey club team, Davila’s running ability began to turn heads. At age 10, Davila ran for 14 touchdowns during the season of his third-grade year.
“I had a good year,” Davila said. “What separated me mostly from the other kids was my speed and my height. I was 4-foot-10.”
Davila and his family moved into the U.S. and the Sharyland pipeline, where in middle school he met current Sharyland quarterback Edgar Longoria. Now a junior, Davila is second on the team in receiving yards (191) and leads all wide receivers in receptions (22) and touchdown grabs (3).
When they first met, Longoria and Davila both played defense. Their friendship didn’t hit its stride until they officially became Rattlers. Upon joining Sharyland’s JV team, Davila made the switch to offense as a wide receiver.
“Every time we played defense, we’d back each other up and hang out at lunch every now and then,” Longoria said. “Now we hang out every weekend. We started playing backyard football. We’d make appointments where we’d go to the park or go to a stadium, and I’d just start throwing to him. I was starting to get a rhythm with him, so when it came down to games, we’d know where the other was going to be.”
“These kids (Davila and Longoria) have been teammates for four years,” Sharyland coach Ron Adame said. “The chemistry is there with those two. For example, Edgar knows how much he can lead Ruben on a deep route, knowing his speed and what his strengths are. They’re stronger when they’re on the field at the same time.”
Sharyland’s exodus at wide receiver loomed large following the 2016 season. The senior trio of Edgar Alanis, Miguel Pena and Luis Franco made up for 68 percent of the team’s receptions and 18 of its 25 touchdown passes. The lone impact wideout expected to return to the squad was Blake Klein (28 receptions, 634 yards, five touchdowns in 2016), so the Rattlers would be forced to count on new faces at wide receivers to soften the blow.
Davila and the other Rattlers receivers dealt with Longoria’s rib injury in the spring that kept him off the field until the team’s district opener against Valley View on Sept. 22. Diego Vela, another JV quarterback last season, started in place of Longoria in Sharyland’s first two games.
“I felt pretty good either way, because I’ve known Edgar for a while, and I met Diego during my sophomore year,” Davila said. “I got used to both of their throws. I’m really comfortable with either one of them (playing quarterback). It would have been perfect for me and the team.”
Adame believed Davila to be one of the top receiving options coming into the spring, but even his expectations didn’t match up with what Davila showed during May practices.
“He had a real good spring,” Adame said. “Ruben didn’t do our first week of spring ball because he was competing at the regional track meet. When he came back from track, you could see the confidence that comes with competing against some of the best runners in our region, and he brought it over to the football field. We saw him take short passes, and he was going for big gains or taking them to the house. That’s when we saw a burst of what he was fully capable of.”
Longoria had an easy answer to what separates Davila from the typical wide receiver.
“Ruben forgets about bad plays pretty quickly,” Longoria said. “If he drops the ball, obviously he’d be upset in the moment, but after that, it doesn’t even look like it affects him. His mentality is amazing.”
After starting the year with a demoralizing 62-0 loss at the hands of Weslaco East, Sharyland (3-1) has won three in a row, including its first two district games. The young Rattlers have grown up quite a bit heading into their road game at Roma (0-5) tonight.
“We all said that we would never lose a game like that again,” Davila said. “Our work ethic pushed us to where we are now.”