Section D/Sports – Columnists
Top Prospect
Karen Wolfendale
This is the first in a series of articles looking at the life of top football prospect Travis Gardner as he begins his five-year trek from Westside Middle School to a football scholarship at Gainesville University.
After scrimmaging with the snooze alarm on his clock radio, Travis Gardner drags himself out of bed. It is 6:40 a.m. Still in his pajamas, Travis places both his palms flat against the chilly hardwood floor, preparing to knock out a set of twenty-five pushups.
Since August, when Coach Elvis Goddard offered him a football scholarship, Travis has pushed himself to do six such sets a day in order to build more muscle.
From down the hallway echoes the voice of his mother: “Don’t lose track of time! Oatmeal or cold cereal for breakfast?”
“Cap’n Crunch! No milk!” Travis answers between pushups six and seven.
Travis has exactly forty-four minutes before the school bus arrives. If he isn’t waiting on the street corner opposite his modest single-story house, the driver will leave without him—football scholarship or not.
He has already had to make the nearly two-mile walk once this semester.
After Travis’s seventeenth pushup, Galaxy, the family’s black Labrador retriever, interrupts the set, begging for attention.
“That’s eight pushups I have to make up later,” Travis says, scratching the streak of white fur on the dog’s chest.
Despite the sudden fame that has come with his scholarship, Travis’s life isn’t so different from that of other eighth graders. Friends, school, and Pop Warner football all make demands on his time. Of course, he also has nearly 200,000 Twitter followers as @TravisG_Gator. And on the bus ride to Westside Middle School in Alachua, Travis is the only student with a reporter riding shotgun.
“Other kids look at me like I’ve made it. Lots of people do. I don’t want to let any of them down,” said Travis. “Sometimes it’s a lot of pressure.”
It isn’t all a world of worries for Travis, who sports an off-the-charts “cool” factor normally reserved for teenage pop stars.
“Everybody wants me to sit with them in the cafeteria. So I’ve been spreading myself around, sitting at three or four different tables a week,” said Travis. “Other kids want to help me with my homework now too. That’s good, because it leaves me extra time to train. My mom’s even excused me from some of my house chores. That way I can concentrate more on football.”
Travis’s older brother, Gainesville University freshman Carter Gardner, plays tight end for the Fightin’ Gators. His scholarship offer came late in his senior year at Beauchamp High School.
“I got here the hard way, living in the weight room and running extra pass patterns by myself in the backyard,” Carter said after a recent Gator practice. “But I think it’s great that Coach sees something special in my brother.”
Has the publicity surrounding Travis distracted Carter as he tries to establish himself as a college player?
“People ask me things like, ‘Aren’t you the brother of that kid who got a scholarship?’” said Carter, who has not caught a pass in his first three games with the Gators. “I usually joke around and say, ‘That’s me, just keeping a space warm for him until he gets here.’ But I’m really focused on my own college football career.”
Travis’s Pop Warner team has won its first three games this season. He has also thrown nine touchdown passes against only two interceptions. Yet reservations about Travis’s scholarship still exist, as well as charges that the offer lends the Gator program positive publicity in the face of an NCAA investigation. Under the condition of anonymity, an opposing Pop Warner coach spoke to the Sentinel about these allegations.
“There’s no doubt Travis is the best quarterback in our league, really advanced for his age. But a scholarship to someplace as competitive as Gainesville? This early? Elvis Goddard is ten times the coach I’ll ever be. Who am I to second-guess him?” the coach stated. “But I do.”
A sea of students parts in front of Travis as he makes his way from the curb to the green cinderblock Westside Middle School building. His classmates meet him with cheers of encouragement and high fives.
“Way to go, Travis!”
“Rock that interview!”
At the school’s doors, an assistant principal dutifully checks students’ ID cards as they enter the building. Travis strolls past without having to produce his. Another perk of his newfound celebrity.