HIGHLAND SPRINGS, Va. — As he prepares for his 19th season in charge of the Highland Springs football program, head coach Loren Johnson has learned a thing or two about communicating with today's players.
He says he has had to change how he reaches each individual athlete.
"I communicate a lot more with kids than I did early on," Johnson said. "Early on I would say it once and expect it to be done. I still had the same standard, but it's also with some explanation or a reasoning of why."
Johnson grew up in Miramar, Florida and played college football at Virginia Tech.
Highland Springs High School has a predominately African-American student body.
Johnson said one of the first coaches that reached him was a Polish biology teacher from Upstate New York.
"He was the first coach in a building that said, 'Hey, what you're showing me is not good enough, and you got to be better in that regard," Johnson said. "I started to realize that he really, really cared about who I was as a person and what I needed to do to be successful at that point in time in my life."
That also showed Johnson just how influential a coach or teacher can be for teenagers.
He had lessons of his own that could extend beyond the football field.
As he started communicating more individually with his own players, he also branched out into a medium he had not previously given much thought.
Johnson began posting inspirational and instructional messages to social media each day. Sometimes twice a day when he's able.
He's also learned about batching his videos and has his children as his technical advisers.
"They're keeping me on task," he said. "They say, 'Dad, you can't do every video every day. You got a batch. You got to do different things. You got to be able to use the content as much as you possibly can."
After just a couple of months, the reaction from far and wide has been very positive.
"So early on it was a lot of laughs, it was a lot of jokes, but now it's a lot of coach, can I talk to you for a second? Thank you, I appreciate that. I needed to hear that, and that, that's kind of the reaction that I was looking for," he said.
Johnson cannot take full credit for his messages.
They were all handed down by the man who inspired and influenced him more than anyone throughout his life, his father Lee.
"A lot of what I'm doing on social media is things he's said to me or conversations that we've had that I took notes about that now that I'm sharing or trying to share wisdom like he shared wisdom," Johnson said.
Johnson lost his father last Christmas Eve.
While his father's voice might be silenced, his words are not.
They live through his son who is now sharing the lessons he was taught with those who may look at Coach Johnson as a father-type figure.
"So that's all I'm trying to do, right, to honor his legacy, share the information that he gave me, share the information that I gained, share it with somebody else, so they could be a step ahead of where they thought they could have been or where they should have been," Johnson said. "I never wanted to let him down. All I ever wanted to do was please my dad and just make him proud of who we are. So, the legacy means more than anything, like his last name, and the last name that I bear means more to me than anything else in the world, any amount of money, anything out there."
You can follow Coach Johnson's post on Instagram and Facebook.
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