ANDY WATSON / PBR
able to ride bulls again. But at least in the moment, talk of bull riding calmed him down, allowing Ellison and his team to cut Travis’ forehead open from sideburn to sideburn and enter the brain. “They told me three times during this that he would die,” Debbie remembers. “They also told him he would never ride bulls again. I remember one time, the doctor left the room and Travis said, ‘What will I do if I can’t ride bulls?’ I said, ‘You will ride bulls. We won’t listen to the doctor.’”
Born Again
“Everything I knew before was pretty much gone. I was just waiting for an opportunity, waiting for God to show me what I needed to do—what I had to do. It always came back to bull riding.” April 29 was the first day of Travis Briscoe’s life. The day before, they’d gone to the doctor. Knowing how much Travis loved bull riding—how just the mere mention of the sport breathed life into his dying body five months before—Ellison looked at him and gave him his answer: “I’ll tell you one thing: I won’t ever tell you not to ride bulls.” Two years later, Travis was on the Professional Bull Riding Tour at age 18. In his first event in Grand Rapids, Mich., he finished third; and in his next event, he captured second place in Columbus, Ohio, scoring 92.5 points on “Yellow Jacket,” one of the most ruthless bulls of all time whom he used to dream of riding watching television as a kid. More importantly, he now has a wife, Jessie, and a five-month-old daughter, Bentley Leigh. “Through all of that, the brain surgery and everything—it turned my life and my family’s life 180 degrees in a different direction,” Travis says. “I can’t even explain the feeling I get when I think about it today. God is great—what he’s done in my life and my family’s life. If he would do something like that for me, he’d do it for anybody. “That goes to show how good God’s grace is. I would not have walked W E B S I T E : w w w. S p o r t s S p e c t r u m . c o m
out of the hospital if it wouldn’t have been for that. Not only be able to walk again and function, but to be able to do what I love better than before it happened. It’s still amazing to hit rock bottom like that and then be better off than before.” This year has been a struggle for Travis thanks to an ankle injury that required 17 screws and three plates, forcing him to miss the PBR World Finals for the first time in seven years. But perhaps “struggle” is the wrong word. What he went through a near-decade ago—that was a struggle. “I was just kind of down and out the whole season,” Travis says. “But to think and relive everything I went through back then, I realize that this year is nothing. We just believed that God had me in His hands. And six months later, I was riding bulls again.” Six months after surgery, Travis Briscoe was in the bucking shoot. It was April 29th in T or C, New Mexico, his first amateur rodeo since the sinus infection that nearly buried him. The day before, Ellison had cleared him to ride, and now, after a sleepless night and an emotional trip to the stadium, the ride was upon him. “I was just anxious and scared, and just about every emotion I could go through I went through it that day,” Travis says. The bell rang. The gate flew open. Dirt flew up. Seconds flew by. And before he knew it, he heard the 8-second whistle. He was back. “It wasn’t reality until I was actually there,” Travis remembers. “Little did I know, I wasn’t going to start where I left off. I was going to comeback stronger and better than I already was.” The people watching on April 29th had no idea what Travis had been through—no idea he had escaped death three times, no idea he was never supposed to ride bulls again, no idea that this was the first day of his life. No idea that he ordered his helmet six months before. Stephen Copeland is a staff writer at Sports Spectrum magazine. SPORTS SPECTRUM ~ DIGIMAG 2011
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