Alumni Spotlight -- Joshua Davis
Pictured: Joshua Davis competing for Blackburn at Principia College in 1986
The record for the 8k at Blackburn has endured for nearly forty years since Joshua Davis turned in an impressive 26:18 back in 1986. Since graduating from Blackburn College in 1989 with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Joshua Davis has worked for various “tech” companies such as VMware, Microsoft, and Accenture Consulting. Joshua was inducted into the Blackburn College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015.
Joshua shared: “Running and endurance sports have been a part of my life since I was sixteen. After Blackburn, I ran five marathons, with the highlight of being in the elite start group for the 2005 Chicago Marathon. I have also enjoyed moderate success running shorter distance races in the Central Florida area. Nothing has ever compared to the experience that I had at Blackburn College. In the four years in the program, we built the program from just a couple of people to win the Prairie College Conference Championship in 1988. None of this would have been possible without the Cross Country coach who brought me to Blackburn, Jim West, and Charles Pohlman who took over the coaching duties in 1987. We lost Charles Pohlman in 2018 to ALS. He was a great friend and mentor to many Blackburn Cross Country runners over the years.”
Joshua remembered: “One of the amazing moments in the four years of leading the Blackburn Cross Country team was hosting the first and last Prairie College Conference Championship at Blackburn College in 1988. For the large part of my four years at Blackburn, we had trouble fielding the five people necessary to qualify as a team and hadn't won a meet. We had a pretty good team that year with Charles Pohlman coaching and one of the best runners that Blackburn ever saw in Michael Smith. We won the meet and took home the conference title for the first and only time since Blackburn moved out of the Prairie College conference the next year.”
Pictured Below: Two Blackburn Legends: Trent Koplinski & Joshua Davis at the 2017 Celebration (FL) Marathon & Half Marathon
