Saddest story ever: Eleven Seconds from SI

There was an unwritten rule in the Roy household: No lying down on the ice. Ever since Travis was three, a towheaded bug of a kid playing for his father's Mite team, he was taught that if he got knocked down, or if he tumbled into the boards, or if he got whacked in the ankle by a puck, he should bounce back up. His dad, Lee, a former MVP at the University of Vermont, wouldn't stand for the theatrics some kids pulled, collapsing at the first sting of pain as if they'd been felled by a splitting maul. "Get up, you're not hurt," Lee would say, a Yankee accent flavoring the reproach, a smile creasing his gentle face.
Lee was famous for these words in Maine, where for the last 20-plus years he has been Mr. Youth Hockey, helping to found the Portland Youth Hockey Association in 1972, managing four different rinks in the southern part of the state, coaching kids from Mite to college age. Get up, you're not hurt. It was right there in Travis Matthew Roy's scrapbook, a city phone book-sized compilation of hockey clippings, programs, photos, and award certificates. Travis had pasted in a picture of his dad with a cartoon balloon coming out of his mouth that read, "Get up, you're not hurt."
And Travis always did. One time, when he was about 12, he skated past the bench during a game and yanked off a glove so his dad could see the blood dripping from the tip of one of his fingers. "What do I do?" Travis asked.
"What do you mean?" Lee replied, having ascertained that the wound was a long way from the boy's heart. "There's a shift going on." Travis slid the glove back on and kept playing.
Which was why, on Friday, Oct. 20, as Travis lay motionless on the ice of Boston University's Walter Brown Arena, just 1:56 into the opening period of the season, those who knew him felt a cold wave of panic. Travis had never lain on the ice. No coach who'd ever had him-not his father, not any of his three high school mentors and certainly not BU coach Jack Parker-had ever had to go out onto the ice to help Travis Roy to his feet. Never. But 11 seconds into his first shift of his first college game with his family in the stands, Travis lost his balance while trying to put a little something extra into a check. He hit the end boards with the top of his helmet and fell to the ice like a rag doll, utterly inert.
"It looked scary," says Tim Pratt, Travis's coach for two years at the Tabor Academy in Marion, Mass. Pratt had driven up to see his former star player's first Division 1 game. "But I've been around hockey my whole life. You're used to scary moments that turn out alright. But the longer it went on, the scarier it became."
"I thought it was a shoulder or an arm," says Brenda Roy, Travis's mother an assistant high school principal. "We're trained after all these years that if the boy goes down, you sit. Lee never panics. Then Lee called me down, and I knew it must really be something."
One of Travis's roommates, defenseman Dan Ronan, was on the ice when it happened. "He was lying so still, I automatically thought he'd been KO'd, because his chin was flat on the ice," Ronan says. "That ice is cold. I was thinking, if he were conscious, he'd get his chin off the ice. But when I finally went over to him, I saw his eyes were wide-open."
Lee Roy had walked down to the end of the rink. He replayed the missed check in his mind. Travis had wanted to pop somebody right off, to show that he belonged. Someone came up to Lee and said, "Are you Mr. Roy? Travis wants to talk to you."
Lee shuffled onto the ice, hoping his son had suffered a broken arm or a separated shoulder. Deep down, though, he must have known. "I think Travis was looking for a friendly face," he says. "I wanted to sound upbeat, so I said, 'Hey boy, let's get going. There's a hockey game to play.' But when I got down on the ice next to him, he said, 'Dad, I'm in deep s***. I can't feel my arms or legs. My neck hurts.' I was trying to think of something positive to say back. Then Travis looked me right in the eyes and said, 'But Dad. I made it.'" Lee's pale blue eyes fill with tears as he recounts this, and shaking his head, he starts to weep. "I said, 'You're right, son. You did.' It didn't last long. Eleven seconds. But he made it."

 

It's actually a book, but that was a summary from The Hockey Book, from SI