‘I work like my dad’s still here’

Hockey wasn’t fun anymore for Travis Bordine.

He had played it and loved it since he was 7 years old, but it wasn’t nearly the same without his father, David, around.

On top of that, hockey now triggered the painful memory of that junior-varsity game in early 2006, the last time David saw his son play. By then Travis knew David wasn’t going to win his battle against leukemia, and when the son played only briefly that day he felt he had let his father down.

He had, of course, done nothing of the kind. David Bordine always stressed effort as much as results, and Travis rarely strayed from that blue-collar approach.

It was an approach that said you keep fighting and don’t quit, which explains as well as anything why the Glenbrook North junior has returned to hockey after taking a year off.

What’s more difficult to explain is the path that glorious, improbable comeback has taken, how a pudgy 5-foot-9-inch, 200-pound freshman who played sparingly on defense is a solid varsity forward now.

“I’ve never seen a transformation to this degree in this amount of time, especially someone this age,” Glenbrook North varsity coach Mark Brunner said. “He’s just a completely different player than we saw before.”

Travis grew up in southeastern Wisconsin, playing a ton of sports and always with David, the consummate dad, watching. That didn’t change after his parents went through an amicable divorce when he was 10, and it barely changed after David became ill soon after that.

The family still marvels at the time David smashed up a foot in an accident and still coached Travis’ 7th-grade football team on crutches.

Travis, his mother, Laura, and his younger sister, Meg, moved to Northbrook just before he started high school. His father’s health was deteriorating, and that winter Travis’ life turned upside down when Laura told him David wasn’t going to make it.

“It devastated me,” he said last week. “I was almost in denial.

“I tried to focus on school and hockey. It was hard.”

That’s why it meant everything when David somehow managed to get to that late-season game and why it hurt Travis so much when he played so little.

“My heart was just taken away,” he said.

Then, in mid-April, his dad died at 47.

By then Travis was in the midst of playing frosh-soph lacrosse, a new sport for him and one for which he developed an immediate passion. That would make it easier for him to skip hockey his sophomore year, and it drove him that summer of 2006 and into that next school year to make himself a better lacrosse player.

He worked out daily, cut out junk food and wound up starring on the JV lacrosse team and playing some on the varsity last spring at 6 feet, 170 pounds.

Along the way, his passion for hockey slowly returned. Part of it was seeing Glenbrook North win the 2007 state tournament, part was a one-on-one match against his hockey star girlfriend, Whitney Routman, who routed him and damaged his pride, and part was making his father proud.

Early last August, Travis finally told his mother, “I think I’m going to play hockey,” and she replied, “You’re crazy.”

It did seem nuts because this was three weeks before tryouts and after he had already missed most of the off-season program. And it seemed even crazier when Brunner swung open the locker room door and saw someone waiting who looked familiar but whose name he couldn’t quite recall until he saw “Bordine” on the kid’s hockey bag.

“He said, ‘I thought you moved,'” Travis said.

Brunner admits he considered Travis as strictly a junior-varsity candidate at first. But even though he had barely touched a stick for more than a year, the weight loss and conditioning regimen had made Travis, now 6-1 and 168 pounds, markedly faster, stronger and more skilled on the ice.

“To be honest with you, in the first scrimmage I didn’t know him,” his mother said. “I said, ‘Gee, I wonder which one Travis is?’ I couldn’t believe the speed.”

Travis survived two rounds of varsity cuts, and, in a scene from a Disney movie, he scored three goals in an exhibition match against Fremd, his first game since his return.

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“I know if my dad had been there to see it, he would be so proud,” said Travis, who has settled into his team’s regular playing rotation while wearing No. 67, David’s number as a high school and college football star.

“But I don’t care about goals or assists. My goal is to help out the team, be that hard-working presence like he taught me.”

David may no longer be in the stands, but he still teaches his son, still coaches and guides him like he always did. It both drives Travis and helps him cope with the pain of loss with which he is still dealing.

“His thought process is, ‘If Dad were here, what would he have said, what would he want me to do?'” Laura said. “I don’t think that will ever go away for Travis, and it’s good, it’s valuable.”

Travis couldn’t agree more.

“I work,” he said, “like my dad’s still here.”

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*Read Barry Temkin’s blog “Upon Further Review” at chicagosports.com/temkin

*Hockey season preview: For a look at the 2007-08 season, including team rankings and players to watch, go to chicagosports.com/prepsplus