Forgiving with love, Travian Robertson is back coaching after car accident
.JPG "South Carolina assistant coach Travian Robertson during a 2026 spring football practice.")
No one wakes up asking God to inflict their lives with torment and devastation in an effort to become some sort of inspiration. But sometimes the pain and loss do come, and, well, becoming an inspiration is the only way to find an upside in something so tragic.
South Carolina football defensive line coach Travian Robertson did not get in his car in the early morning of Aug. 22 hoping to be an inspiration. He was just trying to get to work. But on his way to the Gamecocks’ football facility, just before 6 a.m., a 2014 Nissan Pathfinder traveling west on U.S. 76/Dutch Fork Road drifted over the center line and collided with Robertson’s white 2024 Chevy Tahoe.
The driver of the Pathfinder, 35-year-old Columbia resident Kelly Marie Johnson, died at the scene. A lawsuit filed by Robertson and his wife, Kettiany, against Johnson’s estate contends that she “consumed various alcoholic beverages at an unknown location(s) to and beyond the point of intoxication” before getting into the car.
Robertson was conscious when the paramedics arrived, pulling him out of the car and onto a stretcher. He’s a spiritual man, driven by faith that a higher power is in control, which better explains how the conscious feeling of his back lying flat on a stiff stretcher provided a sense of peace.
“I don’t know what it was,” Robertson said Monday, “but it came over me that I was going to be all right.”
Robertson was transported to the trauma ICU at Prisma Health Richland hospital, where he spent the first 10 days of an eventual 14-day hospital stay. Over those two weeks, he was at the mercy of his doctors — and understood, like his players do with him, to trust the experts. They did their part. He did his. The outcome was five surgeries that, above all else, stabilized him and, secondly, repaired his legs.
Naturally, his mind ran with negative thoughts — which is a human reaction. But humans also have the power to shift those thoughts, and Robertson, leaning on lessons about positivity he learned from football coach Willie Fritz, refused to let negative thoughts evolve into a negative situation.
“The whole accident was a negative,” Robertson said. “But I tried to make every day a positive day for me.”
His family certainly helped. While Robertson had gone along with everything the doctors asked, he vetoed their suggestion that he do his rehab at a facility every day. Rather than have someone drive him to a clinic every day, he chose to rehab at home and spend more time with his wife and three sons.
“It was about three months where I was non-weight bearing. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t do anything,” Robertson said. “Eventually my natural instincts of being a hard worker just kicked in.”
And, so, as the South Carolina was struggling in what would become a 4-8 football season, Robertson was at home, trying to work his way to a speedy recovery. Doctors said he couldn’t lift anything over 5 pounds, so he’d get Gatorade bottles and start doing workout reps with those.
And, slowly, he would hit little milestones — which always seemed to be measured by how close he was to his players. At first, his wife drove him to the facility and he stayed in the car as South Carolina’s players and coaches swarmed the car and talked with him. Not long after that, he watched pratice from the balcony of the coaches’ offices, sitting in a wheelchair with boots on both his legs. Then he was able to watch practice from a golf cart. Soon after, he was standing during practice. Little victories.
And now, seven months after the crash, he’s back full time leading the Gamecocks’ defensive tackles, coaching them through drills like he did before the five surgeries.
“You know,” USC head coach Shane Beamer said of Robertson, “I was watching practice tape the other day and saw him on tape jogging from one drill to the next. Which is pretty miraculous when, not even a year ago, there were questions whether he would even survive at one point.”
There is inspiration in Robertson’s story, or at least a lesson that life can sucker-punch you when you least expect it and the test of your character revolves around your response. In that way, Robertson has led by his actions, by pushing himself through unimaginable pain to try and get back to work, to get back to his players.
Robertson is quick to point out, though, that no one should want this. No one should aspire to be an inspiration because, well, it means they endured something horrific. But, like a coach searching for teaching points, he wasn’t going to let something negative stay negative.
”I do take it,” he said. “It’s very important to me that I stand strong for things that are happening in life other than football, so they can see that we are human beings and we all go through things. Every thing isn’t gonna be peaches and cream. We’ve got to figure it out.”
It was clear that Robertson was talking about more than physical recovery. If his story evolves into a life lesson, it will likely revolve how he thinks about Johnson, the mother of five who died in the crash.
Robertson’s brother came to visit him in the hospital , saw the condition of his sibling and became filled with anger toward the other driver. Robertson stopped him.
“I was like, ‘Look man, you can’t say you forgive and you still hate,’” Robertson said he told his brother. “I explained to him, ‘In order for me to move on and be at peace with this, I had to immediately forgive with love. ... If I had a lot of hate with my forgiveness, I would not be standing here right now.’”
