He Takes Sports to Extreme

On the first day Trevin Lund learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels, he told his father, “Wait here, Dad.”

By the time he returned from around a blind corner, the 5-year-old was standing on his seat, holding the handlebar with one hand and acting like a daredevil.

“Hi Mom, hi Mom,” Lund waved as his horrified mother watched from a window in the family home.

“That’s when my dad thought I was nuts,” Lund said. “He called me Evel ‘Trevin’ Knievel.”

Lund, a junior at Notre Dame High, is the ultimate sports child of the 1990s. He has yet to discover an extreme sport he doesn’t like.

He’s one of the nation’s top snowboarders for his age group. He plays fullback and defensive end on the football team. He’s a pole vaulter, surfer, and rider of dirt bikes and skateboards. He has a trampoline in his backyard to practice all forms of cutting-edge activities.

Asked if Lund is crazy, linebacker Mike Barron of Notre Dame replied, “Yes he is, for sure. He’s really not scared to try anything.”

The perception of Lund being a sandwich shy of a picnic is unanimous.

“He is a nut,” Joe McNab, Notre Dame track coach, said.

“It scares me every time he tells me what he’s doing,” said Kevin Rooney, his football coach.

“He doesn’t realize he’s mortal,” said Lund’s mother, Laurie. “He says, ‘If I jump off the roof, I’ll land like a cat.’ ”

At least three times a week since football season ended in December, Lund heads off to the mountains for snowboarding competitions.

“I guess it’s the excitement of it all,” he said. “I love the rushes. I love flying through the air 30-feet high.”

Poets write and artists paint, but Lund does his soul-searching by somersaulting through the air.

“It’s pretty crazy what I do,” he said. “If you’re crazy enough to realize it, you’re pretty crazy.”

Lund’s grandmother lobbied for him to cease his extreme-sports ways.

“Why do you always have to be flying through the air on a snowboard or riding a big wave or playing football?” she asked.

She was excited when Lund said he’d be going out for track. Finally a nice, safe sport, she thought.

“Then I told her I was pole vaulting,” he said.

Last spring as a sophomore, Lund cleared 13 feet 6 inches in the pole vault. He also scared his coach when he fell off the mat into a wooden crate.

“I came running down and he’s laughing,” McNab said.

In football, the 5-foot-11, 185-pound Lund was known as the “wallbreaker” for his mad dashes into the blocking wedge on kickoffs, without any fear for his body.

“You’re the kind of guy who’d play baseball on the freeway,” one coach told him.

“I’m basically known as the lunatic on the team,” he said. “I’m the kamikaze pilot who flies in there, blows everything up and loves it.”

Lund could be Notre Dame’s starting tailback next fall because he runs so hard.

“You like kids who have the kind of reckless abandon and lack of fear he has,” Rooney said.

Lund, 17, doesn’t drink or smoke. He has a 3.5 grade-point average. He’s never broken a bone in his body and doesn’t even have a cavity.

“One time I didn’t floss, my father pulled me out of bed, and I swear I’ll never forget to floss again,” he said.

His father, Robert, is an endodontist, his mother an interior designer. His older brother, Tyler, was an All-Southern Section football player at Beverly Hills High in 1996.

Everybody has complete trust in Trevin’s decision-making ability.

“I worry about broken bones,” Laurie said. “But I also know he doesn’t try anything unless he’s been practicing and knows how to do it.”

Said Lund: “My dad always told me, ‘If you think you can, you can. If you can’t, you’re right.’ When you’re flying 30 feet in the air upside down and doing a double backflip, you’ve got to have faith or you’re straight out crazy.”

Last week, Lund competed in a snowboard competition while wearing his Notre Dame football pants underneath his outfit to help cushion any falls. Rooney was kind enough to let Lund borrow the pants.

“When you’re 30 feet in the air and fall on your butt, it hurts,” Lund said.

Lund wears a helmet while snowboarding and never forgets his ND1 bracelet.

“I’m representing Notre Dame on the hill, too,” he said.

Lund plans to keep snowboarding “until the snow melts.” He’ll head to Utah for spring break and more snowboarding. He’ll go to Zuma Beach for surfing. He’ll work on his pole vaulting. He’ll bring out his dirt bike. Ditto for the skateboard. Come summer, football beckons.

How does he do it all?

“I have faith in myself,” he said.

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Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422.