PUYALLUP, Wash. — Travis Calloway lost everything that mattered to him.
“In an instant, it was gone,” Calloway said. “It was taken away.”
Wracked with pain, knocked down more times than he can count.
“It’s a monster,” he said. “Twelve screws, and rods in my spine right now.”
He has spent half a lifetime fighting just to get back to square one. Yet here he is, coaching young athletes to peak performance.
“I found ways to just keep going,” Calloway said.
Calloway has had a lifelong love of sports.
“I played everything when I was younger. Football, basketball, baseball,” he said. “I loved it and I lived it.”
As a promising college football player at Eastern Washington University, Calloway took a hard hit in practice.
“When we collided it felt like my knuckles cracked, but it was in my spine. The coaches were like, ‘You alright?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ This just felt kind of weird.”
It wasn’t until the next morning that he realized he’d actually suffered a serious spinal injury.
“When my feet hit the floor, I fell to the ground,” Calloway said. “I had no feeling, anything, from my waist down. And so that was the start of everything.”
It’s a battle he fights to this day.
“It’s been a 21-year-old deal now,” Calloway said.
He’s endured 50 grueling operations.
“I had 24 surgeries in two years,” he said.
Some caused more harm than good.
“When I woke up from surgery number 10 I’d lost feeling again,” Calloway said.
He’s had to re-learn how to walk. Five times.
“Everything that could go wrong went wrong,” he said. “I got infections. I fell during therapy and knocked the screws out of place.”
More than a decade into the struggle, he found himself once again immobile and facing debilitating pain.
“I didn’t know who I was anymore. I really needed to search and come up with a reason to keep fighting,” Calloway said.
He found that reason. Her name is Beth.
“When I met her I was in a wheelchair,” he said. “And she had every reason to run for the hills. But she didn’t.”
His now-wife encouraged him to follow his dream.
“I knew he had more to offer, more to give to the world." Beth Calloway said.
He began training elite athletes through his company, Calloway Athletics.
“I found my purpose,” Calloway said. "We see all athletes. I have cheerleaders to tennis players, to football, to female hockey players.”
“He shares his life story and it helps me out a lot," Mason Pike, a baseball player at Puyallup High said. "I feel like he’s my friend and also my coach, too, so it’s been great. Pretty special.”
Calloway has also helped rebuild the bodies of other people felled by injury or illness, like stroke survivor Scott Robertson.
“I’ve seen [Calloway’s] progression and I know that I can get better, too, with his help,” Robertson said.
Calloway said, “I’m able to help and give back, and that’s my way of dealing with it.”
Faced with the challenges he has endured, most of us would be forgiven for calling it quits. Travis Calloway is not most of us.
“I have an opportunity to keep living, to keep going, and to keep fighting,” Calloway said. “And, every day, I’m going to take advantage of that.”