Jen Johnson’s Santa Claus wears gold and doesn’t need reindeer to fly.
Gabe Landeskog wiped his nose. Cale Makar shook his hand. But no athlete danced — like, seriously danced — with Jen’s son Porter until Travis Hunter walked into their life.
“You know how to do The Griddy?” Porter asked the CU Buffs’ two-way football star.
“Show me,” Hunter said.
Which is the short version of how a 9-year-old cancer survivor made a Heisman Trophy winner break down laughing.
While Hunter watched, young Porter launched into Minnesota Vikings wideout Justin Jefferson’s trademark touchdown celebration dance, The Griddy. Only he took off at Sonic The Hedgehog speed, sneakers squeaking across the pristine floor inside Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus.
Heel tap, heel tap, swing arms. Heel tap, heel tap, heel tap, swing arms. Heel tap, heel tap, heel tap. Exhale.
“I knew he knew how to do the Griddy,” Porter recalled. “But I just went for it.”
Did he ever. Before long, they went into tandem Griddy, giggling like brothers. Hunter, who was visiting Children’s Hospital with his fiancée Leanna earlier this year to present a ceremonial check for $10,620, took to Porter and Jen instantly. And vice versa.
“It’s so funny,” said Jen, the Arvada mother whose son was invited to meet with Hunter and pose for pictures with CU’s two-way icon last January.
“He’s a superstar, but he laughed like a teenaged boy when they were joking around and playing around. I didn’t even know the gravity of what a big deal that was.”
Porter’s kind of a big deal, too, a pistol who was getting spinal taps at age 2 and a routine of pills — sometimes 14 of them in one go — at 3-and-a-half. He spent three-plus years in quarantine, treatments exacerbated by COVID-19 protocols. Now you’ll find him playing goalie on the ice or quarterback on the football field, dancing to daylight like nobody’s watching.
No wonder he and Hunter hit it off.
“He’s super sweet, just a really sweet kid,” Jen said of Hunter, whose 9-3 Buffs face BYU on Saturday in the Alamo Bowl. “Just a super-humble, normal guy.”
And for a guy who made dozens of the most acrobatic catches ever seen at Folsom Field, there’s a twist. You see, the real joy for Hunter comes from giving — not receiving.
“That’s just the way he is,” laughed Fronta Fountain, Hunter’s old secondary coach at Collins Hill High School in Georgia and one of the winds beneath those Heisman wings. “He’s a giver. If I went to his house right now and I needed something, he’d be like, ‘Take them. Take all of them.’”
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As the No. 1 high-school prospect in America for the Class of 2022, Hunter’s swag count at Collins Hill was off the charts. Colleges gave him shirts and shoes. Companies sent him freebies in hopes of future patronage.
One of Hunter’s best friends and old Collins Hill teammates, Chase Nash, remembered Phenom Elite, a football glove and equipment manufacturer out of South Carolina, shipping Travis huge boxes of gloves and sleeves to try.
Before one Eagles game, Hunter passed out at least 45 pairs of these new gloves around the Collins Hill locker room until every Eagle had a set to work with.
“I guess you could call that ‘Secret Santa,’” Nash said. “Only not so secret.”
Neighborhood youth were regulars at Collins Hill practices and Eagles games. Hunter had Fountain keep an extra pair of complimentary gloves in his pocket just in case one of his got ripped in the heat of battle.
After one game, Travis went calling for the spares.
“Let me see those gloves you’ve got in your pocket,” Hunter said.
Fountain handed them over.
“He takes them and hands them to a kid,” the coach recalled. “That’s his thing.”
As the oldest sibling in his family, Hunter was always conscious of being a protector, of serving as an example for his peers. He treated Nash, a gifted receiver who was two years younger, like a little brother. They worked out together. Hung out together. Saw movies together. Went shopping together. Volunteered together. Even got tattoos together.
Thursday actually marks the third anniversary of Nash’s first piece of body art. And it wouldn’t have happened without Hunter.
“I’m going to go get one,” Hunter said on Dec. 26, 2021, the day after Christmas. “You want to ride with me?”
“That’s cool,” Chase replied.
Hunter inked his shoulder. Nash joined in, adding one on his forearm that read, “Time Heals All Wounds,” buttressed by an angel. Travis even helped pay for it, Nash recalled.
“I think it just came from the ability to be able to do it,” Chase said. “He had a lot of stuff going on growing up (in Florida). He’s a generous person.
“He likes to make people smile. He likes to see people happy. It makes him smile to make other people happy.”
One of Fountain’s duties at Collins Hill was lunch-room monitor duty. Hunter would sit next to his coach during those shifts, even helping to keep the peace on days when kids got ornery.
“If a fight broke out and I had to break it up,” Fountain said, “he was always helping me out.”
Well, almost always. One incident almost broke up the Fountain-Hunter team, when, while the pair were quelling a disagreement, somebody dumped cheese dip all over Travis’ jacket.
“Never helping you again, Coach,” Hunter said at the time.
Fountain and Nash still chuckle over that one.
“Came right back, didn’t he?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. He did,” Fountain said. “If I ever needed him, he’d be there. Never a doubt.”
“He might say he won’t help somebody,” Chase said. “But he really can’t help it. He’s always been a good soul.”
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Good souls, old souls, don’t do it for the applause.
“He just was never about the attention,” reflected Heather Childs, assistant principal at Collins Hill, another longtime confidant.
“Especially now, (when) it’s been kind of (about) learning to share him with the world. And having so many people on the internet care about his fiancée, and say things — all of that noise. The mama in me is very protective of them and hopes they can kind of navigate through that.”
The mama in Jen was blown away. No. 12 in your game program might be the coolest guy Porter’s ever met, and that’s saying something.
The young man’s had an audience with Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Samuel Girard, DU goaltending star Matt Davis, to name but a few. Oh, and Landeskog.
“Like six times,” Jen cracked.
None of them made him want to dance.
“He’s going to be Justin Jefferson,” Porter exclaimed.
“And he’s going to cover Justin Jefferson,” I added.
When Hunter signed a football for the Johnsons earlier this year, Mom made sure it was put away for safekeeping instead of fresh meat for target practice on field goals.
“You wouldn’t expect someone like that to be thinking about things outside of themselves,” Jen Johnson said. “Here’s a young man and he’s always thinking about outside of himself. Which is really impressive for such a young guy.”
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