At six-foot-two, you don\u2019t have to look very hard to find Arlington Heights Yellow Jacket safety\/wide receiver Antonio \u201cT.J.\u201d Johnson. But it\u2019s more than his height that gets him noticed on the high school gridiron and in the classroom. Currently ranked 94th in the nation, Johnson has already landed a full-ride football scholarship to Brigham Young University. And even though he seems to have the world by the tail at the moment, Johnson\u2019s journey has been anything but easy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I met up with his mom, Wendy Brown, during football practice to meet the young man so many Fort Worth football fans have been raving about. She stood on the sidelines\u00a0\u2014 arms crossed, eyes locked on the field \u2014 as her son moved through drills with the confidence of someone who has something to prove. Brown\u00a0smiled as she watched him work, a mix of pride and awe in her expression.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Brown, getting T.J. into sports wasn\u2019t just a pastime \u2014 it was a lifeline. \u201cWe got him started in sports when he was three,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s the age you can start at the Y(MCA). He started football at four. We played two years of flag, then moved to tackle at six. He\u2019s basically been doing this his whole life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Football, it seems, wasn\u2019t something T.J. discovered \u2014 it\u2019s something he was born into. \u201cWhen he came out,\u201d Wendy laughed, \u201chis arms were up like this \u2014 like he was already ready to catch a pass. One of his first words was football. He never played with toys. It was always about balls and sports.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
By the time T.J. hit high school, football wasn\u2019t just a game \u2014 it was his north star. But the journey from the Peewee fields to a Division I scholarship didn\u2019t come without dark stretches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember so many nights of him crying as a sophomore and junior,\u201d Brown\u00a0said. \u201c\u2018I don\u2019t have any offers. Nothing\u2019s happening for me,\u2019 he\u2019d say. And I\u2019d just tell him, \u2018Keep the faith. It\u2019s going to happen.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It did.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In June, Brigham Young University flew T.J. and his family out to Provo, Utah. \u201cThey laid out the red carpet,\u201d Brown\u00a0recalled. \u201cPhoto shoot, hotel rooms \u2014 it was surreal. I knew it was going to happen, but to actually experience it was amazing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For T.J., the trip represented something far bigger than football. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of hard work behind this,\u201d he told me during a break from\u00a0practice, sweat still glistening under the Texas sun. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this since I was four. I train every weekend with my coach, even after games. I just keep working.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though he\u2019s heading to BYU as a safety, he hasn\u2019t lost his respect for the receiver position. \u201cI\u2019m a receiver at heart,\u201d he said, grinning. \u201cBut I like defense because I don\u2019t have to wait for somebody to give me the ball. I can just go take it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019s found role models in LSU\u2019s cornerback DJ Pickett \u2014 \u201ca big dude, big corner, which I am too,\u201d he said \u2014 and in the NFL\u2019s own Sauce Gardner. \u201cThat\u2019s one of my guys,\u201d T.J. added. \u201cThat\u2019s who I look up to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, it hasn\u2019t all been easy. \u201cRight before I came to Heights, I didn\u2019t think I could do this,\u201d he admitted. \u201cI had to overcome that. When I came here, everything changed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That change, says Arlington Heights head coach Curtis James, was immediate and powerful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe greatest thing about T.J. is when he came in, he said he came here because he really wanted to just be in a spot where he had a chance to be himself and grow,\u201d James said. \u201cAnd I said that\u2019s the perfect attitude to have. He played receiver last year, and to transfer to defense from receiver is not as easy as people think, but he\u2019s bought into it. He\u2019s flying around, he\u2019s doing things I\u2019ve never seen a free safety at my campus do, which has been fantastic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
James says that while the team encourages younger players to learn both sides of the ball, few manage to keep up with the conditioning and intensity that it takes. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a high-level kid to do all the hard work and the conditioning to be able to play both,\u201d he said. \u201cI told him, you\u2019re going to make sure your body\u2019s in shape \u2014 one side of the ball will suffer if it\u2019s not. But he bought into it, and he\u2019s proven that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
What James looks for, though, goes beyond talent. \u201cI make sure they have fun with the game of football,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they\u2019re not having fun, none of this is worth it. If it ever feels like work, they\u2019re just doing it because somebody said to do it. But when they\u2019re having fun,\u00a0it\u2019s child\u2019s play. You just have to show them how to be great at it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He grinned and nodded toward the field. \u201cT.J. is having a tremendous time. He loves being a leader \u2014 even when he doesn\u2019t feel like being one. He shines through anything we ask. There\u2019s nothing too big or too small. He\u2019ll see me picking up trash, folding laundry, hanging clothes \u2014 he jumps right in. The little things you don\u2019t see your stars do \u2014 he does those.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Back home, Brown reflects on the challenges T.J. has faced. \u201cHe\u2019s color blind, hard of hearing in his left ear, and has dyslexia,\u201d she said, smiling through a mix of pride and disbelief. \u201cBut look at him now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She recalls the advice she got when doctors told her that her son shouldn\u2019t play contact sports. \u201cThey said with his hearing, it was too risky,\u201d Brown shared. \u201cBut he told me, \u2018I\u2019d rather go deaf than stop playing football.\u2019 So I said, okay \u2014 then we\u2019ll keep playing and believe we\u2019ll be okay.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Elementary school was just as hard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThose early years were tough. I\u2019d get calls almost every day \u2014 temper tantrums, frustration,\u201d she\u00a0added. “But once he got into a dyslexia program, everything turned around. He became a straight-A student after that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, T.J. speaks about those challenges with calm confidence. \u201cIt gets hard,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s always going to get hard, but I have to persevere through the hard stuff to be where I want to be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Off the field, T.J. works part-time at Roller Land West \u2014 a skating rink where he likes to unwind. \u201cI skate all the time,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cThat\u2019s my thing. It helps me relax.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He plans to major in business marketing at BYU. \u201cI want to learn how to make money \u2014 build wealth \u2014 so I can help my family,\u201d he said. \u201cMy mom, my brother, my sister. They\u2019ve done so much for me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wendy\u2019s daughter, Jaden, is a senior nursing student at TCU \u2014 a Chancellor\u2019s Scholar. Her youngest, Dorian, is a junior at Benbrook. \u201cIt\u2019s been just me and the kids forever,\u201d Wendy said. \u201cIt\u2019ll be hard with T.J. gone, but I want him to have a big, amazing life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When asked what keeps him grounded through all the noise \u2014 the accolades, the expectations, the dream of the NFL \u2014 T.J. doesn\u2019t hesitate. \u201cMy mother,\u201d he said. \u201cHaving a good mom. No backing off, no letting me quit. That\u2019s the secret.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He grinned when I asked where he\u2019d like to end up one day. \u201cBaltimore Ravens,\u201d he said without missing a beat. \u201cFree safety.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For now, he\u2019s still just a kid from Fort Worth \u2014 skating, studying, chasing down passes under the Friday night lights. But if there\u2019s one thing clear about Antonio \u201cT.J.\u201d Johnson, it\u2019s that no obstacle \u2014 not hearing loss, not dyslexia, not doubt \u2014 can stop him from listening to the one sound that\u2019s driven him since childhood: the pop of shoulder pads on a Texas football field.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At six-foot-two, you don\u2019t have to look very hard to find Arlington Heights Yellow Jacket safety\/wide receiver Antonio…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":321915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[37212,5229,11438,1369,1318,7371,7372,13813,23120,62,10763,358,7453,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-321914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-academic","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-arlington-heights","11":"tag-college-sports","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-fort-worth","14":"tag-fortworth","15":"tag-people-of-influence","16":"tag-recruitment","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-stephen-montoya","19":"tag-texas","20":"tag-top-story","21":"tag-tx","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115413799814763639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}