4MyChild: Help and Hope for Life

November 27, 2006

Overcoming the Odds: Canyon High’s Travis Higgins has found a way to contribute to the Cowboy football program.

Another great news story of a young man overcoming the odds and enjoying life, and the game of football. A very moving story on the challenges Travis Higgins face throughout his life and how he ended up playing football for his school team despite suffering from hemiplegia cerebral palsy.

By Cary Osborne
Signal Sports Editor

Thursday November 23, 2006

Canyon High sophomore Travis Higgins’ statistics are as follows: zero yards rushing, zero yards passing, zero tackles — zero games.

On a Tuesday, three days before Canyon’s first round playoff game against Royal High, Travis watched the Cowboys practice from the steel benches guarding his field — the press box.

Would he like to be out there practicing?

“I wish,” he says. “I wish.”

Travis can’t, though.

Travis suffered a stroke while in his mother Debby’s womb.

Debby doesn’t know when it happened, but said she first noticed something was different about her son when Travis had just turned 1.

“He started not reaching normal milestones,” she says. “I thought he’d be closer to walking.”

She took Travis to the doctor, thinking maybe he had a hip condition, but the X-rays were normal.

She then took him to a neurologist where he was given an MRI.

The right hemisphere of his brain was normal in the printout.

The left was completely black.

Because of the stroke, Travis has a form of cerebral palsy called hemiplegia.

Hemiplegia is an incurable condition that paralyzes one side of the body — Travis’ right side in this case.

Travis will insist he is normal and by first appearance he is.

He likes sports — USC football being his favorite team.

To read full article visit: http://www.the-signal.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=34546&format=HTML. Read more inspirational and uplifting stories about cerebral palsy.