There’s no cutting corners for Morgan Johnson

Source: The Star

1 of 2

Jim Barcus | The Kansas City Star

Morgan Johnson’s many activities away from basketball included volunteering as a peer leader at Siegrist Elementary School in Platte City, where she received a hug from third-grader Claire Wilhelm.

more girls basketball...

you might also like...

Her calendar stays full even on the laziest days of her life.

On a sunny midday morning last week, while many Platte County graduates — their get-out-of-school card in hand — would have ignored the alarm clock, Morgan Johnson rose at about the same time that her first-period advanced composition class would have started. She took the family dog, Maddie, for a walk, then jogged a mile around the neighborhood. No cutting corners around the light pole for her.

Then, Johnson, too busy to eat the other half of that Toaster Strudel she had left cold on the breakfast table, changed into her 38-inch-inseam blue jeans and visited Siegrist Elementary. There, the students in Mrs. Long’s third-grade class stared up, way up, at their friend.

This is what Johnson calls summer vacation.

“I’ll go weed my mom’s flower garden if I’m really bored,” Johnson admitted, almost embarrassingly. “Or sit down (at the piano) and try to learn a new song.”

What? You thought The Kansas City Star’s 2009 Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year would be caught lounging around, overdosing on television and text messaging? The habits Johnson developed through her four years of high school are hard to break — even though she now has license to veg. (By the way, Johnson doesn’t have a TV in her bedroom.) She would rather work on something, anything, because that’s how she’s made it this far.

“Studying isn’t something that comes natural to me,” Johnson said. “My friends will tell you that I’m smart, but that’s because I work at it. It’s not because it comes naturally. I study for those Spanish quizzes that nobody else studies for.”

The 6-foot-4 Johnson earned local fame by leading her Pirates basketball team to the Missouri Class 4 state championship this past season. She won Player of the Year honors from The Star, the Greater Kansas City Basketball Coaches Association (the DiRenna Award) and the state. But Miss Show-Me Basketball also excelled in the classroom, maintaining a 4.0 grade-point average, ranking as a class valedictorian.

Now just weeks away from starting her new life as an Iowa Hawkeye, Johnson has more work to do.

“The challenge,” Johnson said. “(I want to) prove to the world that I’m not just a tall player.”

Sounds like Johnson has kept a Pirate chip on her shoulder.

Back in her freshman year, the blushing, sweet-faced Johnson walked into Platte County High as the tallest girl in the city. A starting spot on varsity was all hers, and many upperclassmen felt threatened. Their jealousy turned to exclusion, and Johnson had a rough rookie season fitting in.

“It was pretty evident,” coach Chris Stubbs said. “Kids look at you like, ‘What are you doing? You haven’t earned your spot yet.’ ”

In the hallways, Johnson was looked at simply as “the tall girl.” She remembers one comment vividly: A freshman peer told her she had made the varsity only because of her height, dismissing her skills.

Johnson thinks that sentiment lingers.

“A lot of kids think she’s just a tall girl, and it comes easy for her,” said her father, Doug Johnson. “But she puts in the work.”

Basketball fans were on hand to see her score a state tournament-record 41 points in the 2009 semifinal round, but they never witnessed Saturday mornings throughout her junior season spent inside a North Kansas City gymnasium, where she routinely worked on the post moves that would get her noticed by Division I programs. Even some teammates never saw the extra 10 minutes of work that Johnson put in after practice — a daily ritual that she believes makes all the difference.

“Whatever she does, Morgan has to do the best,” said her mother, Leslie. “She’ll never tell you, but Morgan’s a bit of a perfectionist and wants to do well in whatever she does.”

That includes the classroom.

Despite her senior-year schedule — volleyball, basketball and volunteering as a peer leader at Siegrist Elementary — Johnson took a full load of Advanced Placement classes. Tired from practice, she often found herself lost in homework for three hours a night. Johnson made a massive binder with saved quizzes, tests and notes, referring back to the material long after she completed it.

“She worked really hard,” said Angela Sherman, who taught Johnson in Advanced Placement world history. “She wanted to know everything she could. She wasn’t satisfied to get done with an assignment and keep her A. She really wanted to understand what she was learning.”

Today, Johnson’s still working. She’s working on dunking — she’s not quite there but almost. She’s also working toward an early June departure to Iowa, where she’ll start down the path to becoming a pediatrician. And, too, she’ll be busy on the basketball court, showing just how much work it takes to be this good.

“I get to show people that it’s not all about being 6-4. It’s about how you try hard and work through everything,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be trying to do the best I can and prove everybody wrong.”

submitted by CANDACE BUCKNER - 2009-05-18 16:55:00