Sam Houston State is mourning the death of William Davis, a Bearkats football player who died at 22. Head coach Phil Longo confirmed the news in a statement Sunday, saying the team had lost “Will Davis,” a player he described as a beloved part of the Bearkat football family.

“It is with heavy hearts that we mourn the loss of Will Davis,” Longo said. He added that Davis “was an upbeat, positive, passionate young man who will be sincerely missed,” and said, “Tanya, the kids and I are praying for Will's family during this difficult time.” The school did not announce a cause of death.

Davis had come to Sam Houston after a college career that began at Virginia Union and continued at West Virginia. At Virginia Union, he played 19 games and finished with five interceptions and one touchdown. After the 2024 season, he transferred to West Virginia, where he played one game and graduated in 2025 with a masters of science in sports management.

Longo said Davis was preparing to compete for a roster spot at Sam Houston State. That made the loss more abrupt for a program that had only recently begun to integrate him into the next phase of its roster. Davis had already been through two other college stops, and by the time he arrived at Sam Houston, he was looking for a place that felt like a fit.

“Sam Houston felt like home from the moment I first set foot on campus,” Davis said in remarks shared through Nilson Sports. He said he wanted to play somewhere where he fit seamlessly into the culture if he was going to be far from home geographically, and he pointed to Coach Dovonte Edwards’s NFL experience as a motivating factor.

For Sam Houston, the immediate reality is that one of its newest players is gone before he ever got the chance to compete for the spot he was chasing. For Davis’s family and former teammates, the unanswered question is the one that now hangs over everything else: how a 22-year-old athlete who had already rebuilt his path twice died so suddenly, with no cause yet made public.