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player ready...Chris Johnson was well prepared for his turn to operate as the backbone at Naperville North.
The family atmosphere Jeff Powers has instilled for the last nine years while guiding the Huskies’ basketball program may have contributed.
Good teammates are another.
“I think that great leaders are built from other great leaders and I’ve had some of the best in the past,” Johnson said.
For three years, the 6-foot-7, 225-pound Johnson has been a rock in the middle for a program that won 74 games.
Finally a senior, he knew it was time to take charge.
“I don’t know if it was so much as a switch as more of a learning curve for me,” Johnson said. “We’d be in practice sometimes and I’d catch myself hearing an absence of vocal leadership. People in practice my junior year, like Youcef (Merabet), Scott (Smith), Tabo (Tarun) — all those guys would never shut up and keep cheering the guys on.
“So I just tried to do that as much as I can. It sort of just came a little bit naturally after seeing all the leaders pass through North.”
Johnson, the Naperville Sun’s 2017-18 Boys Basketball Player of the Year, set the tone for a team that finished 26-3 and tied the program record for wins.
In 23 games, he averaged 12.9 points and a team-high eight rebounds in being named the conference most valuable player.
Tom Welch, Naperville North’s versatile 6-6 junior guard/forward, is thankful he’s been able to play alongside the three-year all-conference selection.
“All three years, (Johnson) been such a dependable player, offensively, defensively,” Welch said. “Defensively he does a great job of walling up and making it difficult for (opponents) to make an easy layup.
“Offensively you get him the ball as much as you can whenever he’s open. It’s not a guaranteed basket but it’s probably as close as you can get.”
Powers, who is retiring after 20 of coaching, has always had teams largely defined by getting the most out of its collective talent.
Johnson was part of both regional titles under Powers and the sectional title they brought the program last season.
“Chris is up there (among the best players I’ve coached),” Powers said. “He’s a gladiator, a warrior. I told everybody he’s the best big man I’ve coached. The best defensive player I’ve ever coached, that’s for sure.”
While he has brought three conference titles, two regional titles and a sectional title to Naperville North, Powers’ aim has been to establish “men of integrity.”
No one exemplifies that more than Johnson, who plans to major in psychology at Illinois.
Nominated by Chris Sullivan to participate in the J. Kyle Braid Leadership Foundation, Johnson also has made his mark off the court.
His work as a peer leader in the school’s adaptive PE program showed his willingness to look out for others and expound past basketball.
That’s his legacy as much as the 11.2 points and 6.2 rebounds he averaged in 81 career games.
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“Basketball is just a game,” Powers said. “Everything else he does is all about life. The way (Johnson) lived his life here at Naperville North was off the charts in the way he led and the way he led by being a great role model, the way he doesn’t get peer-pressured into things.
“He’s his own man. I think just not only here but as he continues on in his life, he’s going to make unbelievable footprints on different people.”
Blake Baumgartner is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.