Started From the Bottom: The Story of Dom Johnson
- Coach David Heeb
- Feb 8, 2017
- 8 min read
"Champions aren't made in gyms. They're made from something they have deep inside of them... a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have the skill and the will, but the will must be stronger than the skill." Muhamed Ali
Happy Humpday JWT Peeps. I hope you've had a good week. I'm really excited for today's story. It's really the beginning of "Just Win Today," of "Coach Heeb," and so many other things about my life, because today's story is about Dom Johnson, the "best winner" I've ever met in my life.
In sports we throw the term around "he makes the players around him better" way too much. Often times it's only a little bit true or not really true at all. Maybe the guy is a good player, but "HOW" exactly does he make guys better? Dom Johnson really, truly made guys better. I saw it with my own eyes.
Dom was the best leader I ever coached. He brought people together. He made them better. There are two reasons Dom was such a great leader. One, he was our best player by a mile, and he was still our hardest worker. Two, he was our best player by a mile, but he was our most unselfish player.
When your best player, BY A MILE, is the hardest worker on your team, only wants to win, and isn't selfish at all, you're going to win a lot of games. People are going to think you're a great coach. I always tell people, "I was a lot smarter coach when Dom was riding on my bus, or when I was riding on his bus, however you want to put it."
I started coaching Dom when he was 9 years old. I was 17 and still a senior in high school. The little league baseball team didn't have a coach. So I would hit leadoff and play center field for my high school team, and then I would show up at the little league field at night for practices and games.
I remember one night Dom was pitching. We were in a close game, and he was wild, just walking every other batter. Dom's dad, Buck, was always hard on Dom. He pushed him. So as Dom came off of the field, Buck met him at the edge of the dugout. He was on Dom, HARD.
So it was time to take the field again, and Dom is getting ready to go pitch. He's in tears. I walked out to the mound, put my arm around him, and tried to get him to refocus. He nodded, wiped away those tears, and went back out to pitch. He struck out the side. Here he was, like 9-10 years old, having a terrible game, and somehow he just reached back and found it.
Fast forward. 7th grade AAU basketball. We got the ball, down three, with about 15 seconds to go. Dom takes a three at the buzzer, misses it, but gets fouled. He walks out there, by himself, no time on the clock. He made the first free throw. He made the second one. One more and we're tied up. He missed. We lost by one. He just cried and cried on the way home.
Fast forward. Sophomore year, our team was good, with a chance to be really good. We struggled early. The problem? Our sophomore point guard was averaging 6 points and 8 turnovers per game. He was shooting 29% from the floor. My grandpa, who hardly ever missed a game, told my dad one night "Johnny, I don't know what David sees in that boy." He wasn't the only one thinking that. Dom was STRUGGLING.
I saw Dom throw the ball away with the game on the line. Then I saw him do it again in the next game. Then I saw him miss a three that would have tied another game. He was never afraid to take the big shot, but through the years, I watched him miss a lot of them. I saw him cry on the way home plenty of times.
Dom was always SUCH A HARD WORKER. He turned it on in the second half of the season. If I had to guess, I would say he averaged about 20 points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists, and 3 steals per game for our team during our state tournament run. More importantly, he made CLUTCH SHOTS in several of those games. We went on to win our first state championship. Everybody, including my grandpa, saw what I saw in Dom!
Dom's junior year he was so improved. He had a phenomenal season. Our team led the state in scoring, topping 100 points in 14 of our 30 games that year. It looked like we had a shot at back-to-back state titles. Instead, we got upset in the Sectional round of the playoffs by Clarkton. It was a devastating loss because we hadn't played particularly well (credit Clarkton for that), and Dom had missed several free throws. When you lose by three, and you missed a lot of free throws, it haunts you.
So after the game, when we got back to school, I buried my head in my desk and just cried. It was a heartbreaking loss. After about an hour, I heard a ball bounce. Who was it? I thought I was there by myself. All of the lights were out.
I walked downstairs, and there was Dom Johnson in his practice shorts and a tee shirt, shooting free throws. I asked him what he was doing. He said, "Getting ready for next year." (who else has goosebumps right now?) The next week Dom started working out after school. He told everybody else to show up. If a guy didn't show up, he would find you. Those guys became so close knit because they did all of that on their own, with no coach. Dom was the ringleader.
That summer we had open gym and conditioning Monday thru Thursday. Four hours per night, four nights a week. We went to team camp. We shut it down somewhere in early July. The guys would have like 3-4 weeks off, and then it was time for school to start. I told the guys if they ever wanted to get in the gym to shoot, to just call me, because I lived like a block from the gym.
So on our first "night off," there was a knock at my door. It was Dom. He said he wanted the key to go shoot. I said okay, gave him the key, and told him to go unlock it and I'd come sit in there with him. I put on my shoes and walked to the gym. When I got there I couldn't believe my eyes. Dom had THE ENTIRE TEAM in the gym shooting. I said, "What's going on?" One of the guys said, "Dom called everybody and said we had open gym." This happened the next night and again the next night. When he showed up the third night I gave him the spare key I had made earlier that day! I told him to be sure to lock the gym when he was done.
He didn't want any days off. He wanted to win so bad, and back to the beginning of my story, he knew he couldn't do it by himself. He knew he needed help. So he was always pushing, prodding, pulling, and trying to help his teammates improve. He truly made everybody around him better. He made me better. He made me work harder. I didn't want to let him down.
Dom's senior year he was a scoring machine. We got to the SEMO Christmas Tournament, and he scored 47 points the first game against Meadow Heights. The next night, against Jackson, who wound up winning the tournament, he scored 45. He had been doing it all year. He was just unstoppable, but we lost that game to Jackson.
The next day was a Sunday, so there was no game. We had practice and a team meeting where I challenged everybody else to help with scoring, rebounding, etc. We had a good team, but we had to take another step to be great. I challenged Dom, who was super unselfish, to find a way to get other guys involved.
The next night, against Cape Notre Dame, he scored 18 points and almost had a triple double. We had four players score in double figures. We won. Dom was more happy scoring 18 and winning than he was scoring 45 and losing.
Our team got better and better. We won the district championship. In the Sectional game of the playoffs, the same game we had lost the year before, we played Scott County Central. They were really good. Dom had missed several free throws the year before, but didn't miss a single free throw that night. We won that game by four points. so we needed all of Dom's free throws (he shot 81% from the free throw line his senior season).
We got to the Final Four, and the defense set out to stop Dom. They played him a junk defense that denied him the ball and left other guys open to shoot. It was a smart plan, but again, Dom was so unselfish that he found another way to win. He just told everybody else to shoot it and he would go rebound. We had two other guys, Randy Conn and Zak McIntyre, score over 20 points. We won by 35.
The next night, having seen the semifinal shooting display put on by Randy and Zak, our opponent decided to guard everybody straight up, the old "one guy can't beat us" strategy. That would work against most people, but not against Dom Johnson. He scored 25 in the first half and finished with 40 points overall. We won our second state championship.
After high school, Dom had a great career at Three Rivers Community College and then at Illinois State University. He played professionally overseas and is now the head boys' basketball coach and athletic director at Richland (MO) High School. He's married and has beautiful kids. I'm so proud of him.
And here is the moral of the story... Dom didn't always win. I saw him lose over and over again. I saw him cry. I saw him struggle. I saw him when he wasn't "good enough." Then I saw him work. I saw him earn it. I saw him believe so hard that he made everybody else believe it, too. I saw him, by sheer force of will and personality, make everybody around him better.
Bigger picture, today I am somebody who has "been successful" at my job. I could not have done that without surrounding myself with winners like Dom Johnson. Like so many other amazing people I've met on my journey, Dom made me better. I accomplished so much more because of his help, because of how he believed in me, than I ever could have without him.
And if you asked Dom Johnson, he would say the same thing about me. That's why he's the best winner I know, he just never thinks it's all about him. So if we're talking about "Just Win Today," my advice is take a page out of Dom's book. Work hard. Be unselfish. Help everybody around you. Make them better.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if we all did that?
Thanks for reading. I hope you have a great day.
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