The former Dunbar High School standout was sentenced to six months in jail on April 8 after testing positive for marijuana during a 30-day sentence he was already serving for violating terms of an intervention program. Johnson had been placed in the program following a marijuana possession arrest last October.
He’s been kicked off the team, and out of school, along with fellow freshman Elijah Pittman, of Covington, Ky.
“All we can do is give student-athletes a chance, and that’s what we did with these guys,” 27-year-old Chipola coach Jake Headrick told the Jackson County Floridian newspaper this week. “Those are young guys. I hope they learn from this.”
Johnson, 18, reported to the Jackson County Correctional Facility on April 1 to begin his 30-day sentence but was allowed to leave for a few hours each day to attend classes at Chipola. Five days in, he failed a drug test at the jail. Facing the full brunt of the original marijuana possession charge this time, he pleaded no contest.
According to a corrections officer at the jail, Johnson is a trusty. He is being given a chance to cut his sentence in half by holding down what amounts to a full-time job in the kitchen. He is allowed two visitors per week.
While a blow to Johnson’s future, this whole sequence of events is also a punch in the gut to Headrick, who in February told the Dayton Daily News he made several nine-hour drives from Florida to recruit Johnson, saying it was the hardest he had ever worked to woo a player.
Johnson, a 6-foot-3 guard, had been attracting interest from major four-year schools until his arrest in January 2009 on an attempted burglary charge when he and others were accused of trying to steal an X-box from a house in Huber Heights.
Headrick looked past that red flag and convinced Johnson that Chipola was where he belonged.
Johnson seemed to reward Headrick’s faith by averaging 14 points per game, taking over at point guard midseason and helping the Indians go 23-5 in the regular season and win the Panhandle Conference.
On March 5, days after Johnson’s first prison sentence was handed down, Chipola made it to the championship game of the Florida Community College Athletic Association tournament. Allowed to play, Johnson scored 11 points and had seven rebounds in a 61-52 loss to Tallahassee Community College.
Campus tour
• University of Georgia sophomore Danny Neff (Vandalia Butler) placed third in the 1,500-meter run at the Florida Relays (April 1-2) in a personal best 3 minutes, 45.53 seconds. That's a time equivalent to a 4:02 mile.
• Megan Kelsey (Fairmont), a senior distance runner at Bowling Green, has been named to the All-Mid-American Conference academic team for indoor track and field. To qualify, a student-athlete must have at least a 3.20 cumulative GPA and have participated in at least 50 percent of the contests for a particular sport.
• Indiana University East freshman Cory McKinney (Eaton) was named track and field athlete of the week in the Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference after breaking his own record in the shot put with a heave of 42-4 last weekend at Indiana Wesleyan.
If you have information about an athlete competing in college, please share it by emailing Sean McClelland at smcclelland@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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