BUILDING A SOLID FOUNDATION:

Ex-teammates Drury, Roy continue to share common bond

 

 

By Ray Curren

 

ORANGE, CT -- Chris Drury and Travis Roy don't consider themselves extraordinary people. Ask either one of the good friends about themselves and you'll likely get a short, cliché-like response.

 

Drury on capturing the Calder Trophy last week, awarded to the NHL's top rookie:

 

"I just wanted to make the team and have fun. The awards just came."

 

Or Roy, on playing host to the fourth annual Travis Roy Foundation Golf Tournament Monday at the Race Brook Country Club, which helped raise approximately $20,000 toward research of spinal cord injuries.

 

"This is easy. It's good people and it's just fun to be here."

 

Although they won't admit it, the truth is, Drury and Roy are far from ordinary.

 

Drury, a Trumbull native, was third in rookie scoring with 44 points (20 goals, 24 assists) this season for the Colorado Avalanche, helping them to a Northwest Division title and the Western Conference finals.

 

He became the first person to capture the Calder Trophy and the Hobey Baker Award (hockey's equivalent of the Heisman Trophy), which he won in 1997-98 for Boston University. All this in addition to winning a Little League World Series title as a 12-year-old with Trumbull National. And he won't turn 23 until Aug. 20.

 

"He will continue to surprise people that don't know who he is," Roy said. "There's no limit to what he can do."

 

Roy, meanwhile, has managed to turn a tragic accident into a story of hope and inspiration. Roy and Drury were teammates with Boston University on Oct. 20, 1995, and were on their first collegiate shift against North Dakota when, only I I seconds after hitting the ice, Roy missed a check and hit the boards headfirst. He has not walked since and is confined to a wheelchair, unable to move his left arm and with little motion in his right.

 

But somehow Roy, now 24, has turned the losing hand he was dealt into a winner. He has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for spinal cord injury research and has written a best-selling book, fittingly titled "Eleven Seconds". There is also a movie in the works that Roy hopes will focus even more attention toward the plight of quadriplegics like him.

 

Roy hopes to graduate from BU next spring and devote more time to the Foundation.

 

"I keep in touch with him whenever I can," Drury said. "He's been a great friend and not just because he's in a wheelchair, When I'm on the phone, I don't think of him as being in a wheelchair."

 

While Drury, whose brother Ted of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim was also in attendance Monday, might have surprised some by scoring four game-winning goals in the playoffs, Roy knew that Drury is at his best when the pressure is at its greatest,

 

"It was a lot of fun to watch, knowing him, knowing what kind of person he is," Roy said. "You knew he was going to shine. You knew he was going to have the big goals. He always does."

 

The golf tournament that brought them together Monday began as a small event that Foundation co-chairmen Michael and John Ferguson came up with in 1996.

 

The shotgun format event and following auction raised $5,000.

 

However, as Drury and Roy's popularity grew, so did the number of people interested.

 

Monday's festivities featured almost 300 golfers and a host of items for the auction, including a stick signed by Brian Leetch and a book autographed by Tiger and Earl Woods. Additional items were still arriving hours before the auction.

 

"Travis is without a doubt the biggest inspiration to us," Michael Ferguson said. "When you have a rainy day, you think of Travis and what he has had to go through."

 

 

New Haven Register

June 29, 1999