Dressed for Success

The hulking young man put on a blond wig and a navy blue skirt.

“I was just having fun,” he said.

It was the first pep rally of the season, a big deal at Notre Dame High, and he showed up in drag.

“I like showboating,” he said.

Travis Johnson laughs about it now. It took guts to pull a stunt like that in front of the student body and his buddies on the football team. It took every inch of his 6-foot-4 frame, every ounce of his 270 pounds.

As his coach, Kevin Rooney, explained: “Anybody else, it might not have worked.”

But Johnson is not like anybody else. One minute, he is an overgrown kid, all smiles and antics, dancing to music that plays in his head. The next minute, he steps out of his skirt and onto the football field where he becomes a monster of a defensive lineman.

Call it: The Two Sides of Travis.

“You’ve got to want to put a hurting on somebody,” he said. “You keep pounding and pounding and by the third quarter they won’t be there anymore.”

That’s the Travis who burst onto the scene as a 10th-grader last season, prodigiously large and fast, a man-child among boys. His 22 1/2 sacks put him on the sophomore all-state team.

This season, he anchors the defense for a Notre Dame team that is jumping from Division III to the tougher Division I.

So far, so good. The Knights are 3-0.

Shortly after appearing in drag, Johnson manhandled the vaunted Sylmar offensive line, sacking the quarterback twice, batting down a pass and forcing a fumble in a 22-19 Notre Dame victory.

“He’s a great player,” Sylmar Coach Jeff Engilman said. “He has extreme quickness for a guy his size.”

The quickness to beat opponents with an outside move. The size to bull rush his way up the middle of the line, what he calls: “Throwing around the big boys.”

Johnson did a fair amount of that during subsequent victories over Burroughs and Saugus. Now, on the day of a showdown with rival Alemany, a matchup of the No. 3- and No. 4-ranked teams in the region, he has brashly predicted a 30-sack, 100-tackle season.

“He makes a lot of big plays,” Rooney said. “He does a lot of things that stop the other team.”

But just when it seems Johnson has life by the facemask, he has a way of acting his age.

“He’s always joking around and he likes to rap,” said Matt Lutz, his best friend and a Notre Dame defensive back. “Off the field, he is very, very funny.”

He is also vulnerable. It takes only two words: Oak Park. Watch his grin evaporate, watch his brow furrow.

Oak Park is where Johnson lives. He played youth football there and was expected to star at the local high school. Sure enough, as a ninth-grader, he was a standout on the Oak Park High freshman team and a key reserve on the varsity basketball squad that won a league title.

Then came his transfer to Notre Dame.

Oak Park Coach Dick Billingsley reacted bitterly: “He’s really let our kids down. The way I look at it, he became a free agent at the end of last season and shopped around. Now, he’s signed a big contract.”

Certainly, Notre Dame offered a stronger program and higher visibility. Certainly, Johnson handled the transfer poorly, waiting until just before the school year. He insists the switch had more to do with friendship than football.

It had to do with Lutz. Johnson and Lutz grew up together and were coached in Pop Warner by Matt’s father, Al, who was a Notre Dame alumnus.

“Travis was like my dad’s third son,” Matt said. “He always told Travis, ‘I think you should go to Notre Dame.’ ”

Matt went directly to his father’s alma mater. A year later--after Al died of cancer in August 1997--Johnson decided to rejoin his friend. Billingsley’s criticism stung him.

“I was too young to realize what would happen,” he said quietly. “I learned something--some people love you only for what you give them. Then they dog you when you leave.”

At Notre Dame, Johnson had to adapt to the culture of a Catholic school. Classes were tougher, forcing him to attend summer school to keep his grades up.

On the football field, the coaches wondered if he had the determination to fulfill his enormous potential.

“For guys who have a lot of physical talent, sometimes it’s hard to get them to learn the little things,” Rooney said. “The ones who become really great players are the ones who understand that they need to keep learning.”

But the football field was one place where no one needed to worry about Johnson.

This is a player who sneaks down from his bedroom late at night to watch hours of videotapes, studying the moves of National Football League stars such as Reggie White and Derrick Thomas. He practices relentlessly, often forgetting he is not supposed to level his own quarterback.

“He walks back and forth growling, his eyes get real big,” Lutz said. “He goes into a zone, I guess you could say.”

Now he goes against Alemany and vaunted junior quarterback Casey Clausen. Johnson spent a recent afternoon honing his pass-rush technique, using those quick feet to explode from a three-point stance, take a step left, then blow through the gap.

Over and over, Johnson practiced the move. “There’s a lot that needs to be done,” he said.

Yet, between drills, that smile quickly reappeared. He sometimes broke out singing, waving his hands in the air. He joked with Lutz.

After all, he’s still a kid.