Not even a power outage can keep Chris Johnson from his appointed rounds.
Johnson, 45, a 1996 Windsor graduate who still lives in Imperial with his wife, April, and two children, was teaching 30 students Friday at Webster Groves High when the whole school went dark and had to dismiss early.
He’ll face greater challenges than that when he takes over as the school’s next activities director in July, succeeding veteran AD Jerry Collins. It’s no ordinary post, either. In its entire history Webster has had only five athletic/activities directors, with Collins on duty since 2005. The Statesmen’s first AD, Charles Roberts, served from 1906 to 1944.
Johnson will be No. 6. For Christmas, Collins gave Johnson a shadow box containing a mini Statesmen football jersey with that number. It was an incredibly generous gesture in welcoming a Jefferson County native into the tradition-rich Webster community.
“As far as the St. Louis area and around the state is concerned, Jerry is looked at as one of the top ADs,” Johnson said. “If you were to try to draw up a better person to be a mentor, I don’t think you could. From Day 1, he’s been nothing but patient and slowly but surely has allowed me to take over certain responsibilities. I promise I won’t make it look as easy as he’s done for years and years.
“What impresses me about him is he puts out fires before they’re started. Every day seems like I learn something from him.”
I saw Johnson over the holidays at the Windsor gym, cheering on daughter Brooklyn, a freshman who leads the Owl basketball team in assists (20 in nine games). I got to know him when he was head coach of the De Soto football team from 2016 to 2020. The Dragons beat Hillsboro 14-8 in 2018 and Festus 38-20 in 2019. They have not come close to either rival since and are 2-28 since Johnson packed his bags for Webster.
It was easy to notice the energy and passion Johnson always exhibited for the team. He made it clear the Dragons had to be competitive with Festus and Hillsboro as a matter of civic pride.
After graduating from Southeast Missouri State University, Johnson moved to Dallas in 2001 to teach and coach football. Friday night lights are a lot brighter in the Lone Star State. They opened Johnson’s eyes to the possibility he might transfer some of that energy back home.
“It doesn’t take long to figure out Texas is the football mecca,” he said.
Johnson moved back to Jefferson County in 2011 and coached at Seckman for two years, followed by a year at Kirkwood as an assistant coach. In 2014, he joined Doug Baker’s staff at De Soto as assistant coach. When Baker left for the top job at Seckman, De Soto promoted Johnson to head coach. For the past two years he’s been the offensive coordinator at Webster. All told that’s 23 years and 256 games as a high school football coach.
“I’ll still be able to be part of Friday night football, just in a different capacity,” Johnson said.
The break-in phase before officially taking over as AD is important. Russ Schmidt had it last year when he worked with Jon Roop at De Soto before Roop moved up to principal. So did Jason Therrell in succeeding the retiring Eric Allen at Festus. At Webster, Johnson will continue to mine Collins’ accumulated wisdom for some time.
“I have a grace period to have (him) on speed dial,” Johnson said with a laugh.
Webster Groves has won state championships in several sports. The boys basketball team has captured five, the last one in 2022. The Statesmen have won four state football crowns (2009 was the last time) and were second twice. The softball team won the Class 4 state title in 2020 and the girls tennis team was third in Class 2 last year.
Johnson and Schmidt are two of the latest football coaches to take over as AD. At Jefferson R-7, Alex Rouggly rose from football head coach to AD to high school principal within a few years. Chris Schacht was the head boys and girls soccer coach at Hillsboro for 20 years before taking over as AD there. Kyle Wampler led the baseball team at Northwest and was quickly promoted to AD when Jeff Taggert left. Being a head coach has become the standard launching pad to athletic administration.
Changing the subject, let’s talk about recent achievements by some local athletes. I love it when milestones are reached.
Since girls wrestling began in Missouri six years ago – hard to believe it’s been that long – the county has produced trailblazers like De Soto’s Jaycee Foeller (three-time undefeated state champion) and Seckman’s Madison Conrad (the county’s first four-time state qualifier for girls).
You can add Herculaneum senior Eddyson Reeves to that list. Reeves won her 100th career match last month and finished fifth out of 44 wrestlers in her weight class at the Wonder Woman Tournament at Battle High in Columbia. Wonder Woman is widely regarded as the top girls tournament in the Midwest. She placed fourth in the state at 130 last season and is determined to be the first female Blackcat to claim a state wrestling championship. Only two boys made it that far – heavyweights Andrew Waites in 2010 and the late Brian Duncan in 2013.
On the hardwood, Seckman senior Colin Debold has been a scoring machine this season. Debold is currently the fifth-leading scorer in the St. Louis area with 24.5 points per game. In a 74-43 win over Affton Jan. 4, Debold went over 1,000 career points for the Jaguars (7-6). In two victories over C-6 rival Fox last month, Debold made the game-winning 3-point basket at the Gene Steighorst Tournament and assisted on the winning basket in the C-6 Showcase game at Fox.