Johnson Serves with Mission Waco, Cancer Center
5/10/2018 12:00:00 AM | Football
Baylor Bear Foundation
Growing up in one of the rougher parts of Houston, Micheal Johnson essentially stayed busy to stay away from trouble.
"There was always a lot of trouble around me, so my mom did anything she could to keep me busy," said the 6-foot-1, 291-pound Johnson, a junior defensive tackle for the Baylor football team. "My mom and my dad, they always told me, `You're special, you have gifts, but what are you going to do to give back, to help others?'
"And me, I always wanted to help others. I wanted to be a doctor or fire fighter growing up. Getting a smile out of people, that's the only thing I could really hope for."
That's why Johnson returned to his Houston roots over spring break and served as a volunteer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center where his mom, Yolander Johnson, works.
"Working at my mom's job, you see a lot of people who are sad, they're suffering," he said. "I feel like it's my responsibility to try to help in any way I can. . . . That's just the way I was raised. And as it became my own habit, it's really become second nature. I look just like my dad, but my heart is just like my mom. I just want to help people."
Not surprisingly, Johnson won Baylor football's community service award at the Green & Gold Spring Game on April 21 and helped the football team win the CHAMPS Cup Award at the Golden Bruisers Award Show. Coach Matt Rhule's team has completed over 600 hours of community engagement this year, working with Church Under the Bridge, Fuzzy Friends, Mission Waco, Pack of Hope, Red Cross, Share the Harvest, the VA Hospital and a local YMCA.
"That's just who Micheal is," Rhule said. "He doesn't have anybody that's not a friend. He's caring, he's giving. He's just a wonderful young man, a really good football player, a good student. . . . If everyone else had maybe 10 (hours of community service), I think he had 31. The numbers were staggering. And he does it quietly. It's not like he's putting it on social media when he does it. He just kind of does it. And that's fun to be around."
Johnson has also served as a volunteer with Mission Waco, Church Under the Bridge and the VA Hospital, "just spending time with the veterans and just being there to have fun with them; playing bingo and shooting some hoops."
An all-state defensive lineman and two-time district defensive player of the year at Fort Bend Hightower High School, Johnson was a 3-star recruit who picked the Bears over offers from Washington, Vanderbilt, Texas Tech, Boise State, Purdue and Northwestern.
Hightower head coach Padriac McGinnis, a former college and arena football player himself, had 12 Division I players on the 2015 district championship team and another 13 that played at some level.
"He pulled us to the side and was like, `Hey, you need to start getting ready,''' Johnson said. "My junior year, that's when all the offers started rolling in, I was like a 210-pound defensive end/outside linebacker type, a `tweener. And he was like, `Hey, you need to gain some weight.' So, my whole junior year, I was drinking muscle milk and just lifting weights. By the time my senior year hit, I was about 245, 250."
Coming to Baylor as a 17-year-old freshman two years ago, Johnson played three games as a reserve defensive lineman for the Bears' Cactus Bowl champions.
"I had just turned 17, just gone to prom," he said. "We had already enrolled in college before we even graduated, so I had to go back and walk the stage (for high school graduation)."
Last year, he played in all 12 games and started one, registering five tackles, one stop behind the line and a QB hurry. Johnson is part of a deep rotation in the defensive line that includes senior Ira Lewis, juniors Tyrone Hunt and Bravvion Roy and sophomore James Lynch at tackle.
"We talk about it every day, we want to be the heart and soul of the team," Johnson said. "We want that responsibility. I feel like it's up to us, we have to go get it. We just have a new energy about us. We're hungrier now."
Johnson, who sat out the last six practices of the spring to rehab some old knee injuries, said "from Year 1 to Year 2 in the new defense, we're light years (ahead)."
"You can turn on the tape from the last practice of last spring ball and the last practice of this spring ball, and we look like a totally different team," he said. "And not even on defense, just the whole team looks so different. . . . Last year, I could tell there was a lot of thinking, like, `Hey, am I supposed to do this?' Now, we're just playing football. We're just communicating and going fast."
Back in the fall, Johnson went through "one of the hardest things, just mentally, that I've ever had to go through" when his former Hightower teammate, Robert Grays, died of a neck injury suffered in Midwestern State's game against Texas A&M-Kingsville. They had played football together since they were 4 years old and were closer than brothers.
Upset that he "didn't get to say goodbye, didn't get to see him," Johnson said his comfort was that it "happened playing the game we grew up loving. We could play football all day, all night. My mom had to pull us off the streets just to get us to come inside."
"I know he was having fun. That's why I couldn't be mad anymore," Johnson said, "because if he could choose the way he wanted to go, that's the way he would have passed. But, it took me a long time to cope."
Micheal's message to his 14-year-old brother, a freshman at Hightower, is to "live life to the fullest, don't live with any regrets. I don't care what you do on the football field, you should be an A-plus person and get your education."
Baylor football opens the 2018 season with a Sept. 1 game against Abilene Christian at McLane Stadium.
