![Class B Scholar-Athlete Award winners headshots](/sites/default/files/2024-02/240213_SA_2H.png)
2024 Scholar-Athlete Award Recipients Announced in Class B
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
February 12, 2024
The Michigan High School Athletic Association has selected nine student-athletes from Class B member schools to receive scholarships through the MHSAA/Farm Bureau Insurance Scholar-Athlete Award program.
Farm Bureau Insurance, in its 35th year of sponsoring the award, will give $2,000 college scholarships to 32 individuals who represent their member schools in at least one sport in which the Association sponsors a postseason tournament. The first 30 scholarships are awarded proportionately by school classification and the number of student-athletes involved in those classes; also, there are two at-large honorees who can come from any classification.
Students applying for the Scholar-Athlete Award must be carrying at least a 3.5 (on a 4.0 scale) grade-point average and have previously won a letter in a varsity sport in which the Michigan High School Athletic Association sponsors a postseason tournament. Other requirements for the applicants were to show active participation in other school and community activities and produce an essay on the importance of sportsmanship in educational athletics.
The 32 scholarship recipients will be recognized March 16 during the MHSAA Boys Basketball Finals at the Breslin Student Events Center in East Lansing.
The Class B Scholar-Athlete Award honorees are Navya Ashok, Ann Arbor Greenhills; Isabella DeWildt, Sault Ste. Marie; Gwenyth L. Geiger, Caro; Elaine Gordon, Adrian; Cecilia Postma, Manistee; Ollie Brown, Williamston; Jackson Dell, Chelsea; Austin Hinkley, Big Rapids; Lucas Nor, Ann Arbor Greenhills.
Overviews of the scholarship recipients of the Class B Scholar-Athlete Award follow. A quote from each recipient's essay also is included:
Navya Ashok, Ann Arbor Greenhills
Ran three seasons of varsity cross country and will compete in her fourth of track & field this spring. Earned all-league recognition and helped teams to conference titles in both sports. Serving as track captain and served as cross country junior varsity team mentor. Named AP Scholar with Honor and National Merit Scholarship semifinalist and received silver medal for Le Grand Concours national French contest. Participating in third year in student government and serving as class president. Participating in fourth year of Science Bowl and as captain. Served as vice president of Washtenaw County’s Michigan Asian Youth Liberty League as junior. Participating in third year of forensics and was a novice state champion in 2021. Participating in third year as part of Teen Leadership Council for Canton Public Library. Participated for three years and served as appointed research head and facilitator for ByKids4Kids non-profit organization. Participating in fourth year of biology club as a group leader. Served as layout editor of yearbook and editor of school’s literary magazine. Is undecided where she will attend college, but intends to study biochemistry.
Essay Quote: “I have always been passionate about equity for all and will continue to advocate for bridging these gaps. I believe that acts of sportsmanship transcend the sports realm. … To me, sportsmanship is not only about helping out the other team or competitor, but also providing equity in sports, and giving others the chance to rise up to their occasion.”
Isabella DeWildt, Sault Ste. Marie
Played three years of varsity volleyball, playing second of varsity basketball and will compete in fourth of track & field in the spring. Earned all-region and all-league in volleyball and all-league honorable mention in basketball. Also earned academic all-state in volleyball and served as captain for volleyball and basketball teams. Participating in third year of Students United and earned state and national awards for impact and service. Participating in third year on Sault High Native Youth Council and served as president as a junior. Served as student representative on Title VI Indian Education Committee. Participating in second years of National Honor Society and Youth Advisory Council, and in third year of Business Professionals of America and as vice president of communications. Served as ambassador for athletics and career center and student representative for 2023 graduation and baccalaureate. Will attend Grand Valley State University and join its Army ROTC program, and study finance.
Essay Quote: “Sportsmanship comes from more than just the player; it must also come from parents, coaches, and spectators. … Due to my education then and now, I have been able to turn myself into a leader with outstanding sportsmanship. I have even acquired the knowledge of producing sportsmanship outside of physically-exerting activities. Most do not realize it, but one channels sportsmanship within everyday life.”
Gwenyth L. Geiger, Caro
Played four seasons of varsity golf, playing third of varsity basketball and will play fourth of varsity tennis in the spring. Earned multiple all-league honorable mentions and helped golf team to first MHSAA Finals appearance. Named all-conference scholar-athlete in all three sports all four years. Served as golf and basketball captain and will captain tennis team this upcoming season. Carries 4.1 grade-point average and earned AP Scholar Award. Participating in second year of National Honor Society and as chapter president, and serving second year on student council and as secretary. Participating in second years in Interact club (as treasurer), student advisory club and as founding member of school’s book club. Competed two years in academic games and has participated in 4-H throughout high school. Played first-chair trumpet in band throughout high school, and twice was selected for lead role in drama production. Will attend Michigan State University and study environmental biology and microbiology.
Essay Quote: “For many athletes, their energy is solely focused on two main goals, to do well, and to win. To have only these goals, however, you disregard the whole point of playing a sport. Some say you are only successful at sports if you are winning because that's what's on the scoreboard, but that's not what's in your heart. At some point, you will forget the wins and the losses, but you will always remember the love you had for a sport and the respect people had for you.”
Elaine Gordon, Adrian
Playing third season of varsity basketball and will play second season of varsity softball this spring. Also participated on sideline cheer team as a senior. Earned league sportsmanship and scholar-athlete awards and served as captain of basketball and cheer teams. Dually enrolled and expects to graduate high school with 52 college credits. Playing in marching band and symphony for third year, and has served as section leader for both and qualified for state competition for solo and ensemble every year. Performed in school’s spring musical throughout high school and in lead roles every year. Participating in first year of National Honor Society and second as part of Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and has served as president, first counselor and second counselor of church youth group and as a church camp coordinator and counselor. Is undecided where she will attend college but intends to study Spanish education and sports management.
Essay Quote: “Our experiences shape our lives. They help sculpt us into who we become. However, they do not mold the core of who we are. The credit for that feat is given to our choices. … I have learned through educational athletics that sportsmanship needs to be continuous to build the habit so it becomes part of our core. An individual with good sportsmanship will make it a lot farther than an individual without.”
Cecilia Postma, Manistee
Ran four seasons of cross country, will compete in her fourth season of track & field this spring and also play her third season of varsity soccer; additionally, played two seasons of junior varsity basketball. Earned all-state in cross country and all-conference and academic all-state in cross country and track. Served two seasons as cross country captain. Participating in third year of National Honor Society and has served as president, and fourth year of student council and has served as vice president. Has participated in Science Olympiad and symphonic band throughout high school, and in Youth in Government and as part of Manistee’s student newspaper staff the last two years. Qualified for Science Olympiad state competition three times, and served as band section leader. Is undecided where she will attend college, but intends to study on a premedical track.
Essay Quote: “Our coaches approach the sport from a social standpoint before we even touch a ball. We are given lessons in maintaining positive competitiveness, personal responsibility, and the respect we are expected to hold for everyone on the field. These values held by my coaches have helped me appreciate the abilities of others. In game settings, they are quick to compliment our opponents and often point out others' talent as inspiration for our team. As players we take the same approaches, making sure we acknowledge a teammate's extra dedication, or willingness to work outside their comfort zone on the field, or even thanking a teammate for coming to practice with a smile on their face.”
Ollie Brown, Williamston
Played two seasons of varsity football, will play his second season of varsity golf in the spring, and also wrestled and competed in track & field one season apiece. Earned all-academic recognition in all four sports and all-conference in wrestling. Helped golf team to fourth-place Regional finish. Served as football team captain and golf team leader. Selected to represent school at Michigan High School Football Coaches Association athlete leadership conference. Earned AP Scholar with Honor and College Board Rural and Small-Town Awards. Participating in third years of National Honor Society and National Society of High School Scholars. Participated in robotics and worked as technician’s assistant through high school, and earned certificate of achievement from CHAMP gifted and talented math program at Michigan State University. Participated in Business Professionals of America as a freshman and qualified for state competition, and also played in symphony as a freshman. Participated in YoungLife throughout high school and is caring for adults with disabilities at a local community center. Is undecided where he will attend college, but intends to study computer science and business.
Essay Quote: “I had to fight my way up to the role of captain and learn that sometimes being a good sport means putting what’s best for the team over individual goals. … What I wanted more than anything was for the team to succeed, which meant that we had to play cohesively.”
Jackson Dell, Chelsea
Ran four seasons of cross country and will compete in his fourth season of track & field this spring. Earned all-region and academic all-state in cross country and helped team to MHSAA Finals runner-up finish. Earned all-region eight times in track and qualified for MHSAA Finals in that sport as well. Serving as team captain for both sports as a senior. Earned College Board Hispanic and Rural and Small-Town recognition awards. Participating in second years of National Honor Society and Interact club. Works as certified nurse aide at retirement community, caring for residents with dementia. Studied piano throughout high school and played one year in marching band, earning superior ratings for solo and ensemble. Participating in second year as Link Crew leader. Participating in economics club and earned full scholarship to University of Michigan Ross Summer Business Academy, and takes business immersion classes at U-M as part of MREACH program. Will attend University of Michigan and study business.
Essay Quote: “Sportsmanship is about bringing positivity to the sport, uniting others, and having fun. I believe that too often student-athletes get caught up in the pressure and competitiveness, and forget why we really do it. We are student-athletes because we love to play, compete, and forge unbreakable bonds with our teammates. We are student-athletes not to win, but to grow as individuals.”
Austin Hinkley, Big Rapids
Played fourth season of varsity tennis in the fall, is competing in fourth varsity bowling season this winter, and will play his fourth season of golf this spring. Earned all-state first-team in 2022 and honorable mention this past fall for tennis doubles, and also earned academic all-state individual and team awards in that sport. Served as tennis team captain and bowling team rotating captain. Selected as National Merit Scholarship Commended Student and earned College Board Rural and Small-Town recognition. Participating in second years of National Honor Society, Interact and Key Club and served as class president during two years on student council. Serving third year on Mecosta County Youth Advisory Council and as grants chairperson. Has played in marching band, wind symphony, pep band, jazz band and chamber winds ensembles throughout high school, serving as section and drumline leader and earning Division 1 ratings at state competitions. Participating in third year of quiz bowl and as rotating captain. Is undecided where he will attend college, but intends to study mechanical engineering.
Essay Quote: Sportsmanship is honoring truth, even when you have the opportunity to be untruthful, because it is the right thing to do. … It is realizing that high school athletics are a prelude to the highs and lows of life to come. Wins and losses are important in the moment to fierce competitors like me, but success has no meaning when it is accomplished through unjust means.”
Lucas Nor, Ann Arbor Greenhills
Played four seasons of varsity tennis and is playing his fourth season of varsity basketball this winter. Earned multiple Finals individual championships in tennis and was part of two Finals championship teams while earning all-state recognition in that sport three times. Earned all-league honorable mention in basketball and helped that team to District title. Participating in third year of school ambassador program, and as lead ambassador, and has participated throughout high school in Affinity Group Hispanic and Latinx organization and earned National Hispanic Recognition Award. Participated three years in economics/finance club and as part of National Federal Reserve Challenge team. Served two years as laboratory intern with University of Michigan dental school. Served as tennis coach for middle school team and children with disabilities. Taught trumpet to middle school band musicians. Will attend Princeton University and study molecular biology.
Essay Quote: “I believe that sportsmanship isn't just the ways in which one directly interacts with others, rather the way one carries themselves and serves as an example for other players, spectators, and future stars watching on the bleachers. … And this is why I believe that sportsmanship is so important to educational athletics, as it fosters the values of respect and a shared passion for the game. When people make a difference, it serves as an influence to not only inspire others, but also helps sprout newfound athletic careers.”
Other Class B girls finalists for the Scholar-Athlete Award were Anika Bery, Ann Arbor Greenhills; Hannah Herman, Buchanan; Reese Herioux, Gladstone; Julie Ashbaugh, Grant; Grace deWaalMalefyt, Hudsonville Unity Christian; Megan Marta, Ishpeming Westwood; Addison Rutter, Kingsford; Libby McCarthy, Manistee; Malena Johnson, Marshall; Katelyn Baney, Paw Paw; and Malia Thelen, Portland.
Other Class B boys finalists for the Scholar-Athlete Award were Angelo Ciarelli, Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard; Logan Cripps, Brooklyn Columbia Central; William E. Ribby, Eaton Rapids; Logan Lipka, Frankenmuth; Charles Lindemann, Grand Rapids Catholic Central; Ben Sytsma, Grand Rapids Christian; Stephen Petersen, Hillsdale; Michael Stout, Howard City Tri County; Anthony Mariotti Goatley, Madison Heights Lamphere; Braydon Sorenson, Manistee; Ethan Chambliss, Niles; and Aiden Roulo, St. Clair.
The Class D scholarship award recipients were announced Feb. 6, and the Class A honorees will be announced Feb. 20.
Farm Bureau Insurance of Michigan was founded in 1949 by Michigan farmers who wanted an insurance company that worked as hard as they did. Those values still guide the company today and are a big reason why it is known as Michigan’s Insurance Company, dedicated to protecting the farms, families, and businesses of this great state. Farm Bureau Insurance agents across Michigan provide a full range of insurance services — life, home, auto, farm, business, retirement, Lake Estate®, and more — protecting nearly 500,000 Michigan policyholders.
The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by more than 1,500 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition. No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools. Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract more than 1.4 million spectators each year.
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Johnson Served as Storyteller, Guardian
January 5, 2021
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Promoting the value – and values – of school-based sports.
No statement more completely, or succinctly, explains the mission of the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
Those words were sparked in the mind of John Johnson, and also might best describe his work for the MHSAA over more than three decades – which concluded with his retirement Dec. 18.
Johnson’s official title for most of his tenure was communications director, by which he designed and delivered the message of the MHSAA’s work. A more suitable title might have been “guardian” – Johnson in 1987 joined the then 62-year-old organization and became keeper and protector of all the MHSAA had been and was becoming under its recently-hired executive director, Jack Roberts.
More than 33 years later, “JJ” has stepped away as the pioneer in his field and having impacted multiple generations of Michigan high school and middle school athletes in ways that will continue. Whether as the coiner of memorable slogans, the voice explaining the nation’s first elaborate sportsmanship effort or detailing the MHSAA’s work for its schools during tougher times, or simply as the narrator passing on some of the good stories the bubble up from every season, Johnson daily worked to keep those who follow school sports in the know.
“Being the voice, and having to be the face a lot, is something that came with the territory – somebody had to be the storyteller. And while you can be prideful about that, the important thing is still the story,” Johnson said. “I’ve said it a lot: I was the lucky guy who got the job. Because the story was there to be told, the work was there to be done.”
Thousands upon thousands of times over the years, Johnson did that work with enthusiasm and grace. Most visibly, it came in front of a TV or radio microphone, or as quoted in your local newspaper and media nationwide. He has been the drive behind the MHSAA championship games watched annually on TV and online, and the messenger via various campaigns delivering the good news of why school sports are vital for kids and communities.
Serving as that storyteller, Johnson has never been one to tell much of his own. But there is no shortage of storytellers who have benefitted from Johnson’s wisdom and tutelage over the years – and we were enable to enlist a few to paint a more vivid picture as we recount at least a glance of what Johnson has meant to the MHSAA and its schools over these many years.
***
“The measure of all of us is what we leave behind. Those with whom we’ve been in contact. Those we’ve lifted up along the way. And by that measure, we are witnessing the end of a spectacular career. I’ll take away from all the exchanges, the ready smile, the encyclopedic knowledge that JJ possessed and the sense of calm within the frenzy. It was invaluable to those who popped into his world only a few times a year. John Johnson has left very large shoes in East Lansing.”
– John Keating, longtime FOX Sports Detroit anchor and host for many MHSAA Football and Basketball Finals
***
First and 1 of a Kind
Jack Roberts became the fourth full-time executive director of the MHSAA during the summer of 1986. He brought an emphasis on communication, and “communications director” became the first position he created in East Lansing.
Johnson in 1987 became that first communications specialist at the MHSAA, beginning a long last stop during a run in sports that Johnson began as a student at Mount Pleasant Sacred Heart, about an hour’s drive north of Lansing.
Johnson hadn’t played sports at Sacred Heart, but had taken part in just about every other way possible for a student. He was a team manager, statistician, student trainer, and picked up part-time sports writing work at the former Mt. Pleasant Daily Times. He wrote a series while still in high school on the creation of the MHSAA football playoffs, which were set to kick off in 1975, and that series was syndicated among the newspapers in the Daily Times’ chain. As a student, Johnson moved on to Michigan State University where he majored in journalism, and again he was published and syndicated by the Daily Times – this time for a series on how game officials were being trained by state associations, including the MHSAA.
That series foreshadowed the work he would take up a decade later – it closed with a piece on poor spectatorship toward officials. (Coincidentally, the collection of stories had been clipped and saved by the MHSAA executive director at the time, Vern Norris. The file found its way to Roberts, who eventually found out he had just hired the author.)
Also having served as a student assistant in the MSU sports information office, Johnson began his communications career at Albion College in 1978 as an assistant in the college relations office with responsibility for publicity for the college’s 17 athletic teams. (He didn’t graduate from MSU until 1979, but received two days off per week to get back to East Lansing for classes. He also served as a radio voice for Albion High games on the side.) Johnson moved on to brief stints in the news department with WITL Radio in Lansing and as an intern in the Office of Public Affairs at Ferris State University before landing with the Western Michigan University sports information department as an assistant director.
That led to a three-year stint as an assistant sports information director at Indiana University, where his responsibilities included serving as SID for coach Bobby Knight’s men’s basketball program. Johnson also assisted with press operations at the 1984 U.S. Olympic Basketball Trials hosted by IU. Johnson then left Indiana in January 1986 for a promotions position at Michigan Farm Bureau.
Six months later, his eventual journey to the MHSAA accelerated.
Roberts was hired during the summer of 1986, and not long after he asked MSU sports information director Nick Vista who had been his best student assistant of the past decade. The answer: John Johnson.
Johnson and Roberts met multiple times over the next many months, and Roberts made his choice.
“From the first moment I sat down with Jack Roberts, I knew I wanted to be here,” Johnson said. “The way he talked so passionately about high school sports, and the values of high school sports. … I saw the opportunity to take Jack’s vision and run with it.”
The day before the announcement of Johnson’s hire was to be made, Roberts asked Johnson to come with him to Grand Rapids to watch South Christian basketball star Matt Steigenga (later of MSU and the NBA) – but Johnson couldn’t go because his wife Suzie had gone into labor with their first of two children.
But a little more than a month later, Johnson started at the MHSAA on April 1 – and that came with plenty of jokes on its own.
Yet while Johnson had to miss that trip to Grand Rapids, he and the executive director would get plenty of car time together – to the benefit of the MHSAA’s member schools. To introduce themselves to statewide media, Roberts and Johnson did a driving tour to visit all of them, touring their offices, talking to them about MHSAA initiatives and asking how Association staff could better assist the media in its work. Those drives also allowed them to dream up together “the kinds of things that were unveiled over time,” Roberts recalled.
“We talked so much those first 15 years, we could intuit each other’s thinking the last 15 years,” added Roberts, who retired from the MHSAA in 2018. “We didn’t spend nearly as much time together, but we didn’t need to.”
***
“John Johnson has positively influenced so many more people than he knows and more than anyone realizes. It starts with the thousands and thousands of people who have been able to watch high school sports on the web throughout Michigan. Live-streaming of games has really come to the forefront due to the pandemic, but he was on top of this innovation nearly a decade ago when it was just in the early idea stage. He has been the person who orchestrated and led the countless schools across the state who started streaming their games in the past several years.
“JJ has also impacted numerous student journalists who wanted to learn the craft by covering high school games. He has always been SO supportive of these aspiring broadcasters and writers and reporters, affording them the opportunities to cover high school championships on the biggest stages, and treating those students the same as their professional peers. The students got to be on the turf at Ford Field and in the postgame press rooms, even if their school's team wasn't involved in the game! All they had to do was ask for credentials, and he granted them time and time again.
“JJ's influence also touched those of us who work for the MHSAA in a freelance fashion at various championship events. He has helped so many of us become better communicators, announcers, statisticians, and more. He was always willing to provide feedback & opportunities to learn, and he served as our leader who was always accessible morning, noon, and night. He pushed us to be our best every game, just as the athletes were trying to be their best. It's been my pleasure to work for him as a PA announcer for several years now, and I tried to be perfect every single time because I knew he was listening and because I wanted to do well for him.”
– Roger Smith, advisor for Lake Orion High School’s nationally award-winning School Broadcast Program and public address announcer for MHSAA Finals
***
Telling the Story
In Roberts’ eyes, a few campaigns from his and Johnson’s time together stand out most.
• Promoting the Value – and Values of High School Sports. “I came in with “School Sports – the other half of education” but that wasn’t as good,” Roberts said. … (His words) caught our brand much better.”
• Good Sports are Winners. The MHSAA launched a sportsmanship initiative a few years into their tenures that was “unparalleled” nationally, per Roberts’ description. “Before sportsmanship was an 'in thing' to talk about, John and I were talking about it.” Johnson created all of the print and broadcast materials designed to promote improving sportsmanship, and his work helped make Michigan not just the leader but a voice nationally on the topic.
• Safer Than Ever. The campaign, stretching over much of the last decade, explained that high school football – for a variety of reasons – is safer than it has ever been. Johnson worked with the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association to build the messages and promote them at a time when injury fears were regularly headlining media coverage.
“John made our ideas visible and practical. People would put them together at the league level and school district level,” Roberts said.
“To narrow (his work) down to three is unfair to him because he did a thousand things.”
And in a number of roles. Johnson started as communications director, picking up along the way responsibilities in information technology, marketing, merchandising and more. Everything from daily media questions to maintaining the MHSAA record book (and serving on the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) national record book committee) fell onto Johnson’s desk, and just about any message read at any game by a public address announcer was his work. His final years were as “all things broadcasting” as Johnson served as the MHSAA’s first director of broadcast properties – an all-encompassing title that included all-encompassing responsibilities.
The MHSAA provides video broadcasts of nearly all of its MHSAA Finals – including football and basketball with FOX Sports Detroit – and Johnson has navigated the growth of those opportunities. Same with the MHSAA Network’s audio offerings during championship events, and his voice has been heard weekly during “This Week in High School Sports” which is aired as part of programming by more than 100 radio stations statewide.
The most significant advance under his guidance over the last two decades has been the School Broadcast Program, begun for MHSAA schools during the 2008-09 school year. The MHSAA relied on that knowledge in playing a leading role last decade in the formation of the NFHS Network – the nationwide digital home for live and on-demand high school events – and it’s not unusual for Michigan SBP schools to broadcast upwards of 500 events per week via the network.
“What people don’t necessarily know is John is the pioneer in this field,” MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said. “The way he shaped this job over the last 30 years has been extraordinary – and has become the model for the 49 other states.”
***
“I’m sure that with me, JJ had to do things he never had done with anyone else – I was pregnant three straight schools years. The accommodations for me, even as just a female, it was kinda crazy especially in the 1980s. But when I was pregnant, I couldn’t walk up stairs, and he always would make special concessions for me, (like to) try to find bathrooms for me. There were so many media, and there always had to be exceptions, but he always had to take special care for me, and I’m so thankful for what he did. We laugh about that stuff all the time.
“I remember too, I had a tragedy in my family one year, and I know he was busy at the Finals, but he took me (aside), sat there and cried with me and talked with me. He took time out of his way. He treated me professionally, like everyone else. But as a person, he has such a gift to connect with people.”
– Jane Bos, longtime prep sports editor for the Grand Rapids Press and 2008 recipient of MHSAA Women In Sports Leadership Award
***
More than Scratching the Surface
The work Johnson pioneered at the MHSAA goes on. Formerly a staff of one (with help from valuable volunteers including long-time postseason assistant Walter Dell) now includes a team of employees to handle the media relations, publications, broadcasting, marketing and other messaging needs.
While making the rules for school sports remains the top priority for the MHSAA, telling the story of their importance in students’ lives comes in a close second – and Johnson has written at least the first chapters of the book.
“It needed to be done; the Association had to take bigger steps into the communications world. And thanks to Jack Roberts, it did. I was the lucky guy who landed in the chair,” Johnson said.
But again, that is simply scratching the surface. We’ll end with longtime Detroit Free Press sportswriter Mick McCabe taking a last deep dive.
I first met John Johnson in the late fall of 1977.
He was a student at Michigan State and worked in the sports information office. I was a sports writer for the Detroit Free Press, covering MSU basketball, featuring JJ’s brother, Earvin.
Well, maybe Earvin and JJ weren’t exactly blood relatives, but they were both fun to be around and each had a profound effect on my life.
No, really.
When watching the Spartans back then you knew you were watching someone special, which is why they called him Magic.
No one ever used the word magic in describing JJ, but he was young and enthusiastic and sociable while he learned the tricks of the trade under the watchful eyes of Fred Stabley Sr. and Nick Vista, the absolute best sports information directors in the country.
That is why I knew JJ would be such a good fit at Albion College, which just so happened to be looking for an SID when JJ was graduating from MSU.
JJ was exactly what Albion needed and did an excellent job and soon JJ’s career was off and running.
Somewhere along the way JJ landed at Indiana University where Bob Knight learned to tolerate JJ. If you’ve ever met Knight and understand his relationship with other human beings, you know that is like saying JJ and Knight were besties.
That was reinforced in the spring of 1984 when I spent almost two weeks in Bloomington covering the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball trials and interacted with JJ on a daily basis.
In the spring of 1987 JJ accepted a job with the Michigan High School Athletic Association. It was a job that hadn’t existed before JJ came riding into town.
Jack Roberts was in his first year as the MHSAA’s executive director and JJ was one of his first hires. He was also one of his best.
JJ was hired as the MHSAA’s first communications director. Before JJ arrived the words “communication” and “MHSAA” had never been used together in the same sentence.
If a member of the media had a question for the MHSAA chances are good it would never be answered.
That changed the minute JJ was hired. If he didn’t know the answer, he got the answer for you. And if you needed to speak with someone about a particular question, JJ got you to that person.
It wasn’t JJ’s job to do our job for us, but the thing we didn’t want was for him or someone else from the MHSAA to get in the way of us doing our job.
Not only didn’t JJ get out of the way for us, he helped us and made our jobs easier with the way he ran communications for the MHSAA.
A few weeks ago, with JJ’s imminent retirement growing closer, someone asked me to describe the worst phone call I received from JJ, one in which he was irate with something negative I had written about the MHSAA.
Certainly, he assumed, over 34 years there had to be many such phone calls.
He was genuinely surprised to learn it never happened. Not even once.
JJ knew that the media has a job to do and his job didn’t require him to complain when something negative about the MHSAA was written. I’m certain it was a lesson he learned from Stabley and Vista, who operated the same way.
As far as I know, the only times JJ ever called a member of the media after a negative story was when the reporter had the facts wrong. His call just pointed out the errors and he left out the tongue lashing.
JJ was the consummate professional in doing his job and he did it better than anyone else.
There is no way I am going to describe JJ’s job performance at the MHSAA as magical, like Earvin’s, but it was pretty darn close.
PHOTOS: (Top) MHSAA Communications Director John Johnson kneels at midcourt at The Palace of Auburn Hills in 1990 having designed the floor for that year's Basketball Finals. (2) Johnson, middle, wears the headset during a playoff production. (3) Johnson, right, coordinated media, announcing and stat-keeping among other areas during MHSAA events at the Breslin Center. (4) Johnson, far left, stands with (from left) MHSAA public address announcers Roger Smith, Erik O. Furseth, Tony Coggins and Steve Miller during a Baseball/Softball Finals weekend. (5) Johnson walks the turf at Ford Field during a Football Finals. (Photos from MHSAA archives.)