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The line of people stretched through the Bishop Miege auditorium, connecting Travis Releford’s present and future.
He sat on the stage, behind a table and between members of Kansas’ NCAA championship basketball team. Next to Sasha Kaun and two seats over from Russell Robinson, Releford took his place and signed autographs for the line of fans snaking through the room.
They had come to his school that Saturday in early May to watch the Jayhawks’ departing seniors in an exhibition game against local high school players.
It was both a goodbye and a hello for Releford, in that respect.
He would graduate the next day from Bishop Miege, culminating a senior year in which he was The Star’s All-Metro boys basketball player of the year. And he would soon move on-campus at KU to become part of the newest class of Jayhawks hoping to fill in the spaces vacated by much of that national title team.
A 6-foot-5 guard with a national profile, Releford had attracted the attention of premier college basketball programs around the country. And while he chose the one less than 50 miles from home, his road from Kansas City to Lawrence had seemed much longer at times.
Raised by his mother, Venita Vann, Releford and his five siblings moved around town a few times. He would switch high schools during his sophomore year.
But, as Vann says, “We were on the right path, and we never came off of that path.”
On this afternoon, as he shared the stage with the now-storied KU seniors, Releford’s journey — this part of it, at least — was all but complete.
While the fans made their way up to the stage and through the row of players, placing NCAA championship memorabilia in front of him to autograph, Releford turned to Kaun.
“I had told him I didn’t feel right signing the national championship (stuff) because I wasn’t a part of it,” Releford said. “But he was like, ‘Oh, it’s OK, man. You’re part of the family now.”
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Family is a good way to start Releford’s story, his path to KU.
Vann sits in the living room of the home she shares in Kansas City with her fiancé and children. She talks about how Travis kept his focus and found his way to KU.
“Being a single mom, you hear the stories that either your kid’s not going to make it, they’re going to be in gangs, they’re going to be robbing and stealing — that’s the mentality of (how) some people think,” Vann says. “… I instilled in him to be a good person.”
Releford would know his father mostly through phone calls and periodic visits to places like the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron, Mo.
Releford’s father, Tracy Releford Sr., pleaded guilty to charges of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in 1992, receiving a life sentence and a five-year consecutive sentence in the shooting death of Donald J. Brodie. He remains in Cameron, awaiting a second parole hearing in 2010.
His father usually calls him once or twice a week, Releford says. They have more to talk about now than when he was younger.
“I didn’t really know what to say to him then. Now I can ask him stuff and talk about anything — basketball, everything. We’ve gotten a lot closer,” Releford says. “Everybody where he’s at knows that he’s got a son that’s going to Kansas because he goes around bragging and whatever.”
Vann, of course, is proud as well.
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