Staff Stories: Josh Johnson

by Brian Ogden, Assistant Director/Communications

STARKVILLE – In the summer after he graduated high school, Josh Johnson stepped on the softball field for the first time. He was set to attend the University of Wisconsin-Stout that fall where he would play collegiate baseball and run on the track and cross country teams.

Johnson became a highly decorated athlete for the Blue Devils, winning 14 letters, but that summer began a journey that would take him to the highest level of sports: representing his country on the international stage.

He'd grown up playing baseball, but since as early as he can remember his father played fastpitch softball. Johnson would go watch his father, but it wasn't until that summer that he tried it for himself. One of his dad's old teammates recruited him to play in a Wednesday night league, and Johnson spent the next eight weeks falling in love with softball.

"I remember being bad at first," he said. "When you've never hit that, it just takes a long time at first. The next summer I came back from college and knew I needed to play more games. My summer baseball team back home only played like 20 games, so I started playing a lot of fastpitch."

Once he had exhausted his eligibility, Johnson knew he wouldn't be hearing his name called at the MLB Draft, so he returned to the softball diamond. With newfound free time outside of baseball practice, he focused solely on fastpitch and started playing in tournaments almost every weekend.

The one thing I remember about the start of my softball career is that it reminded me of Little League. It reminded me of going back to play for these pure reasons. We'd play tournaments just like Little League. The field was just like Little League. The dimensions were even the same. It was one of those things when I first started playing, that feeling of competitiveness and fun was all there again.

"In baseball, it was you're done with the game go home," he said. "In fastpitch, it was intense. It was fast. Every game meant something because if you don't win you don't go on to the next game. The intensity of the game is really what drew me in."

A middle infielder by trade in college, Johnson started out playing second base and shortstop. The Bulldogs' pitching coach didn't start throwing from the circle until he was 22, and even then it wasn't planned.

"How it usually works is you run out of pitching at a tournament, and the person on the sideline who looked like they kind of knew what they were doing got the first chance," he said. "So I got the first chance."

If there had been any scouts in the stands, they wouldn't have been impressed.

Johnson hit five of the first six batters he faced. It wasn't appreciated and the other dugout began yelling at him across the field. But, he got the job done.

"We ended up winning the game 18-2 because it turns out it's really hard to score without getting any hits. I was hitting people, but I wasn't giving up any hits," he said.

The next summer he started taking pitching seriously, just in case his team needed his arm again down the road. As he started his coaching career, he'd practice in the gym on his own. He started playing with new pitches and would occasionally run into another coach who was willing to help out.

"As a player, I never got any instruction on mechanics," Johnson said. "Which was a big plus because I never had these bad cues in my head. I had just what I knew, which was throw the ball."

I would throw in a little indoor gym at school. The next year I got better. I got good enough that I could maybe go two or three innings before I lost it. The next year I was I was throwing four or five times a week, just into a net because nobody wanted to catch me.

I would throw in a little indoor gym at school. The next year I got better. I got good enough that I could maybe go two or three innings before I lost it. The next year I was I was throwing four or five times a week, just into a net because nobody wanted to catch me.

He cracked the Major level of the North American Fastpitch Association in 2005. He then headed to New Zealand over the winter for his first international trip in the softball world. At the same time he was trying to finish a doctoral degree while competing.

Johnson loved the chance to dive into a new culture. It opened his eyes to new possibilities in the world of softball as well. When he got back from that first stint in New Zealand, one of his friends convinced him to help him give lessons. The teammate taught him how to teach and started him with the younger players.

"Playing on the world stage, I was exposed to so many different ways of how to do things," Johnson said. "The New Zealanders have their own way. The Australians, the Japanese, the Argentinians, Europeans and Canadians, they all have their own way. Now when I see something, like a weird pitch that works for a player but nobody can explain, I've probably seen it in the men's league somewhere. I can relate to it, and I think that's what gives me a big advantage."

In 2009, the New Zealanders were the defending champs at the ISF Men's World Championships. They finished as the runners-up to Australia while the Americans placed fourth. Following that season, USA Softball came calling.

Johnson was named to the roster shortly after that and joined the team for the ramp up to the 2013 World Championships. That year Team USA finished seventh, but Johnson emerged on the world scene. He threw as the team's ace and even beat the eventual silver medalists Venezuela in pool play.

He'll never forget the first time he put on the jersey.

"You get the USA logo on your chest and it's like your perspective changes," he said. "Now it's serious. Before you're just playing and it's you and your team. Now you're playing for the whole country. You start to get this sense of other people had investment in what you were doing. That's what's so different."

Johnson compares the feeling to what he sees in freshmen taking the field at the Division I level for the first time.

"They get in a game, especially in the fall when you see them for the first time putting that jersey on, and it's like the jersey weighs so much," he said. "It almost looks like a lead weight on their chest. I'm able to relate to those fears, that anxiety and that pressure, and I'm able to usher kids through that process a little easier."

Johnson played with the national team for two more years, competing a Pan American Games qualifier in Argentina in 2014 and playing in the games in 2015 in Canada along with another World Championships appearance.

He ended up getting hurt throwing batting practice while coaching at Ball State and wasn't able to fully recover before the next cycle's tryouts. By that time, he was married and expecting his first child. He decided it was time to move on from his playing days.

The final resume was long. Johnson's club team had climbed as high as No. 4 in the world, and he'd been ranked as a top-30 player worldwide. Johnson's honors included 16 NAFA All-World Team selections and he was inducted into the NAFA Hall of Fame in 2013. But none of those honors compare to representing his country.

"At the end of the day, when you put the USA part of it and say, 'I played for my country. Here's video of me playing,' it's almost validation," he said. "You think about the names that I'm next to and it's like woah. That's pretty cool. Having that kind of validates that what I did was something special and worth mentioning."

I was never at the top of the mountain, but I was at a pretty high plateau. You look down and around you and you're like, 'Man, there's something weird about this. I might be okay.'

I was never at the top of the mountain, but I was at a pretty high plateau. You look down and around you and you're like, 'Man, there's something weird about this. I might be okay.'

Mississippi State University Athletics

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