Xavier Nation Magazine Feature: Three Musketeers

Xavier Nation Magazine debuted in November 2014 as a publication produced by Xavier Athletics, designed specifically for its passionate and supportive fans. Xavier Nation aims to bring the alumni, fans and friends of Xavier content that can't be found anywhere else. The magazine goes beyond the statistics and history of a traditional media guide with stories that bring to life the coaches and athletes who represent Xavier.

Get to know more about three Musketeers players, Edmond Sumner, Remy Abell and Myles Davis, from the Fall 2015 edition of Xavier Nation.

Cracking His Own Code

When Edmond Sumner was a high school sophomore, he bought an old Apple MacBook so he could take it apart and rebuild it. He succeeded, used that laptop all through high school, and ignited a passion for technology that he brought with him to Xavier.

"Starting in middle school, I've always been fascinated with how things get built," says Sumner, a redshirt freshman guard.

At Country Day, the prestigious Detroit-area school that counts Chris Webber and Shane Battier among its basketball alumni, Sumner took a computer class that taught him JavaScript and webpage design. "The next thing I knew, on days off from basketball I'd be in there for hours, looking at new technology," he says.

Country Day used PCs, though, and Sumner gradually gravitated toward the Apple product line. He received a new MacBook as a graduation present and also uses the iPad and iPhone 6. "Apple, all the devices work so well together," he says. "It's just so easy."

Undeclared as far as a major, Sumner, who was magna cum laude in his senior year at Country Day, says he'll probably choose computer engineering. He's enrolled in an intro class this semester, and he's already done an internship at the Detroit auto-parts firm where his mother works.

"I love basketball, and I know that's what I want to be doing [after college]," he says, "but when basketball stops, I need to have a backup. Computers, technology, that's what interests me. It's something that just comes naturally."

What didn't come naturally: redshirting last season with tendinitis in his knees. "I had to just sit and watch everybody else get better," he says.

Abell Lets the Spirit Move Him

This is the story of a wing and a prayer: how a wing—Xavier's Remy Abell—finds comfort and direction by seeking a higher power in times of crisis, and how the power of prayer closes his days with serenity.

"Faith helped me with everything," says Abell, a senior. "I've been in situations, even in school, where I'm stressed, wondering what grade I'm going to get, will I pass…God just works miracles. He works in my life. He answers. He gets me through it."

Abell firmly believes he was guided to Xavier upon his decision to transfer from Indiana. "My family, they didn't understand it at first, but Xavier ended up being a good place for me," Abell says. "We made the Sweet 16, and I'm about to graduate this fall. I've been having success ever since I set foot on campus."

His father, Tim, is a minister. So are his grandmother and his mother's husband. "I could see myself doing that one day, down the road, if basketball doesn't work out," Abell says.

But he's never needed brick and mortar to make a house of worship. He grew up attending Third Central United Christian Church in Louisville (and still goes when he's back home). He's attended Baptist services and now attends the nation's sixth-oldest Catholic university. But to Abell, more important than any particular church is what's in the heart. "If you believe in God, then you believe in God," he says. "It's one person."

It's also important to Abell to close each day with a prayer.

"Anything I go against," he says, "I'm always going to be good with God."

What's In a Name?

There are name-droppers, and then there are name-droppers. And Laura Davis can drop a name with the best of them—drop a name like her son, Myles, drops threes on powerless opponents.

Myles Davis, Xavier's virtuoso junior guard, is named for the landmark jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, give or take an i. Myles's mom named his older brother Sam for his father, but with a wink to the song-and-dance man, and his sister Angela, like the civil rights activist.

"She planned it out pretty well," Myles says.

Myles—the y was his mom's idea, to "make it more unique"—says he topped out as a musician in middle school, when he played piano and flute.

"I tried to play the trumpet, but it just didn't work out for me," Myles says. "I was better at the flute than the piano. I was good at the flute. But I couldn't play one note now."

Myles gets his music by listening now. He has a couple of his namesake's albums, likes the song "So What" from the 1959 album Kind of Blue, and says he's interested in seeing the Don Cheadle Miles Davis biopic shot in Cincinnati last year.

"I'm not totally into it," Myles says, "but I have some sort of a background. I don't listen to it every day, but I definitely pay respect to the name."

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