Travis grew up in Jersey Shore Pennsylvania, which is a small town with around 3500 people and is full of woods, streams, and rivers. Travis is the middle child of three, he describes his family’s financial situation as lower middle-class. At the age of seven his parents got divorced this lead him and his siblings splitting time at both parents’ homes. To say Travis was always going to be in Sports Journalism would be a bit of a stretch.
As a first-generation college student, he went to Pen State and studied psychology. This is also where he met his eventual wife who plays a pivotal role in why he is here today. He said during his first two years of undergrad Travis hit every hurtle that a first-gen college student could. His grades were bad, he was unfocused, and even had his battles with drugs and alcohol. He ended up taking some time away from school to get himself together, and the improvement was undeniable when he came back.
For his last five semesters at Pen State Travis never received anything lower than an A minus. He ended up in Phoenix working in sails. He knew it wasn’t something he could do for a longtime. One reason is because he couldn’t deal with the repetitiveness of the thing. Travis never felt like he was improving or learning anything new. He’d have thoughts like, “your 26 and this is what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.” He also would clash with one of his directors a lot which made an already unfulfilling job that much worse. Travis described the job as do your part and shut up. It got so bad that his wife could tell that he wasn’t himself.
To find some enjoyment throughout the day he created a blog. It originally started as something he could look forward to doing at work, but it ended up becoming a seed that grew into him applying to go to school at Cronkite. He didn’t believe he would get excepted, one of the reasons he didn’t think he could was because his environment growing up said the opposite. Travis grew up in a blue-collar town with a set order of operations, he never knew anybody that stepped out of that box. Once he did get excepted, he understood that to be successful he was going to have to give up the security of the job he did have, and the person who pushed him to take that step was his wife.
Yes, Travis would love to become a well-known columnist and maybe even contribute to a radio show one day but for him his success runs deeper than that. His ultimate goal is to be the best man, husband, and future father he can be. His motivation for this goal is because he’d like to change the trajectory of his family’s last name. When you look at it, Travis being the one to change the meaning of his last name makes perfect sense. He’s the first one from his family to go to college, as well as the first writer from the town he’s from. I guess you could say there’s a first time for everything.
