Kasey Davis’ favorite football teams were Oklahoma University, TCU and the Conroe High School Tigers.”He loved football ever since he grew up in Oklahoma,” said Davis’ mother, Jenny Cantrell.

Davis, a redshirt freshman kicker for the TCU football team, was shot in the chest early in the morning Jan. 3 in an apartment complex parking lot in Conroe. Police found his body in the Chevy Tahoe he borrowed from his mother. He was 20.

While in seventh grade, Davis was a center striker for a junior league soccer team when a chance encounter began his football career. His mother ran into the football coach outside a junior high locker room.

“I bet Kasey could kick that football through those uprights,” she told the coach. Davis played in the next game.

Davis returned to soccer his eighth-grade year, telling his mother that he didn’t like getting roughed up during football games, Cantrell said. During the fall of Davis’ ninth-grade year, Cantrell received a call at work.

“‘Hey mom, I’m going to play football,'” Cantrell recalled Davis saying.

His mother reeled. Davis was a soccer player. He hadn’t been lifting weights or hustling through two-a-day practices with the other guys.

“But Kasey, you’re not on the football team,” she remembered telling Davis.

“‘They recruited me. The first game’s tomorrow. I’m gonna play,'” Cantrell recalled Davis saying.

Davis turned down scholarships from other universities to attend TCU, Cantrell said. He liked TCU’s small size and personable atmosphere.

“He thought he’d get a top-of-the-line education there,” she said. “He just felt like he’d get the best, is what he’d always say.”

Davis met his girlfriend, Katy Weischwill, at an extra-credit astronomy assignment during their freshman year at TCU.

“Kasey was the kind of guy you couldn’t help but like,” Weischwill said. “At times it seemed as though he would make a game out of making me happy. He would always say, “‘When you smile, it makes me happy.'”

Davis cared most about his friends and family, Weischwill said.

“He cared about other people’s feelings and wanted to help in any way he could,” she said. “Even though he had a million and one things to do, he acted as though cheering me up was the only thing on his agenda.”

Cantrell said Davis loved doing “boy things” like riding jet skis at Oklahoma’s Grand Lake with his four brothers.

Weischwill said Davis enjoyed all kinds of music and always played disk jockey at his house.

Cantrell said: “Kasey had no boundaries when it came to music. Just like he had no boundaries when it came to people.”

Davis was following a premedical track to become a plastic surgeon, Cantrell said. Weischwill said she and Davis always watched “Nip/Tuck” together on Tuesday nights.

Cantrell said Davis wanted to do more than just Botox injections.

“He wanted to do reconstructive surgery to help people,” Cantrell said.

More than 700 people attended Davis’ funeral, Cantrell said. She has received an outpouring of flowers, phone calls and cards from community members.

“He had one of the largest funerals Conroe’s ever had,” she said.

Jeffrey Lasiter, the only suspect in the case, remains in Montgomery County Jail on $100,000 bond, said Sgt. Bob Berry, of the Conroe Police Department on Friday. He has been charged with murder but has not yet been arraigned, Berry said.

“We are filing our case with the district attorney’s office in the near future for indictment,” Berry said.

Berry was not available for comment on Lasiter’s status Monday because of a public holiday.

Berry said Conroe police have not been able to link Davis to Lasiter, a former grocery store employee in his early 40s.

“The age difference suggests that they wouldn’t have been hanging around together,” he said.

Police have yet to determine a motive for the shooting, as Lasiter’s statements are often rambling and incoherent, Berry said.

“There are more things I can tell you that are not a motive than are a motive,” he said.

Berry said road rage has been ruled out, and the scene did not indicate that drugs could have been a motive. He said witnesses reported that the two did not argue, and there were no attacks other than the actual gunshot. Berry also said Davis had not been robbed.

Cantrell has set up a scholarship in Davis’ name at Conroe High School, where the soccer team has retired his number. She also plans to place his sports memorabilia, including his TCU helmet, in a memorial in the Conroe High School locker room.

“Kids can see that memorial and know that even if you come from a small school, you can make it big if you dare to do it,” Cantrell said.