121: Jim Johnson: Amazing story of a high school coach who put his autistic manager into the final game of the season and he scored 20+ points in the final minutes of the game. Truly inspirational story of doing the impossible!

October 18, 2019

Jim Johnson

Host Mark Pattison opens up the show with a quote from the actor and comedian Jim Carrey: “If you are not in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty or back to pain and regret.” The guest that Mark feels fits this quote is Coach Jim Johnson from Rochester, New York. Determination and resilience have played a huge role in his career. He began his role as high school head basketball coach by losing his position after a first season where his team lost 17 consecutive games out of the 19-game season. But Coach Johnson’s bounced back and became much greater than that fall.

On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Coach Jim Johnson, Retired High School Basketball Coach and Teacher at Greece Athena High School, Motivational Speaker, Professional Speaker, Author of A Coach and a Miracle, and Organizational Culture, Employee Engagement and Leadership Expert. His father was his role model for coaching and he even played high school basketball for his dad. Fast forward to Jim Johnson becoming a head coach after three years as an assistant, and witnessing, as he describes, “a miracle” on the basketball court.

Listen to “Coach Jim Johnson: Retired High School Basketball Coach and Teacher at Greece Athena High School, Motivational Speaker, Professional Speaker” on Spreaker.

What You Will Learn:

Imagine the amount of passion for coaching Jim Johnson needed after his first season had a losing record of 1-18 record and they let him go as a coach. “It was an extremely humbling experience. But it ended up being, in reflection, one of the best experiences from my professional career because of two reasons. Number One,  it made me realize I had a lot to learn about leadership and coaching. And Number Two, is it really motivated me when you have a setback like that I wanted to prove that school wrong for letting me go.” 

Coach Jim Johnson’s motto of “Think bigger, lead better and win more” helped him lead his Greece Athena High School basketball team to 428 career victories. “My first 10 years it was quite a struggle in coaching. But fortunately I kept working at it and things started to get better. The last 23 years of my coaching career we never had a losing season and we ended up winning a number of championships.”

How did  Jason McElwain get his famed nickname J-Mac? “In 2003-2004, a young man came into our program. He is on the autism spectrum and he is also learning disabled. And he was a little guy back then. He is much bigger now. But he was about 5’5”, maybe about 100 pounds. He tried out for our JV basketball team and I knew very little about the autism spectrum at that point and his name was Jason McElwain. I actually tagged him the name J-Mac, which stuck because I could not pronounce his last name.” 

What J-Mac may have lacked in basketball talent he more than made up for with his big passionate heart and commitment to the basketball team. He worked as a JV manager and even stayed for the varsity games. “Between his sophomore and junior year and his junior and senior year he tried out for the varsity team, I coached for two consecutive years and did not make the team. But he was so loyal and what was so amazing is he would come to everything, all our offseason workouts, our league play. He was just a big part of this.”

On J-Mac’s third possession in that incredibly special basketball game, Jason got the ball behind the three-point arc and he let it go and scored, gaining a huge triumphant response from the cheering crowd. What was Coach Jim Johnson thinking at this moment? “Jason’s boyhood idol is Kobe Bryant. And literally, he turned into Kobe for the next three minutes and he started making shot after shot. And when the smoke had cleared, He had scored about 20 points in about three minutes, including six three-pointers. He tied our school record for three-pointers. ” 

Earning Your Victories

What contributed to Jason McElwain’s amazing record-tying performance on the basketball court? “In deserving victory, one of the things we always talk about is are we working as hard as we possibly can and the one thing that I am very proud to share with you about Jason is he was very diligent in trying to be the best that he could be. In any way that he could help the team.”

6 Keys to Make Your Dreams Come True

Coach Jim Johnson created his own personal mission statement to be crystal clear about the type of person he aims to be. He also established the team mission statement of: develop winners on and off the court. During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Coach Jim Johnson discusses elements of his 6 keys to making your dreams come true: “The first thing is really finding your passion, because when you discover that passion, what I found is when you really love something, although there is certainly a lot of work involved, it doesn’t feel as much like work because you have such joy and you are so driven to have success.”

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