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Photo Courtesy of Winona Daily News
The road from high school basketball star to NFL hopeful has been an interesting one to say the least for 2012 Springfield Glendale graduate Cameron Johnson.
The 6-foot-3 227 pound physical specimen is at Minnesota Vikings mini-camp this weekend in hopes of earning a further invite to training camp later this summer.
Johnson earned NCAA-II All-American honorable mention honors following his senior season at Winona State University in Southeast Minnesota with 69 receptions, 1,239 yards and 13 touchdowns.
After redshirting his freshman season Johnson gradually became a bigger and bigger part of the offense, eventually leaving the D-2 powerhouse as one of its all-time great receivers.
Johnson makes football look natural, but it wasn’t long ago the pigskin took a back seat to hoops.
During his senior season of high school Johnson earned 2nd team all-state basketball honors, leading the Falcons to an undefeated Ozark Conference championship and averaging 18 points per game. He was also named to the Bass Pro Tournament of Champions All-Tournament Team, scoring 28 points in an 8th place game loss to Chicago’s St. Rita Academy.
Being an undersized post player for the next level, Johnson and his father realized football was his best shot at making it big. Johnson watched across town as Dorial Green-Beckham, entering his third year in the NFL this fall, was setting records for Hillcrest in basketball, football and track.
“I kind of feel like football is an option,” Johnson said in an interview with TAGSGF.com toward the end of his junior season. “I haven’t completely thought about that. I’ll do whatever is right for me.”
After playing middle school football, mostly as a running back, Johnson focused on only basketball his freshman and sophomore years. On the advice of his father, he decided to return to the gridiron as a junior, raw but talented, Johnson made a big impact.
By the time he was a senior, Johnson was one of the area’s top targets, hauling in 31 catches for 660 yards and 10 touchdowns (4 more than the rest of the team combined). He helped Glendale to one of its all-time best seasons, going 8-3 and reaching the Class 5 state tournament before falling 35-28 in overtime to top-ranked Lee’s Summit West.
His ability and potential earned Johnson scholarship offers from FCS Missouri State, multiple D-2 national champion Northwest Missouri State and others. His superior academics could have landed him at Johns Hopkins or the Ivy League, but at the urging of then Glendale assistant Scott Opfer (a WSU Hall of Famer), Johnson made the 10 hour drive to visit Winona State.
“He (Opfer) told me I had an opportunity to play college football,” Johnson told the Winona Daily News last fall. “He drove me up here for a homecoming game against Concordia. We came up here, the place was packed, we dominated Concordia, and it just felt right. It felt like the perfect fit for me.”
His career began with questions of whether or not he could play at this level and ended as the Warriors’ go-to receiver; one that’s getting his shot at the NFL, something he never would’ve dreamed of seven years ago as a basketball-only high school athlete.
NFLDraftScout.com rated Johnson as the 240th best receiver out of 438 draft prospects they ranked.
It’s certainly a long shot that he makes an NFL roster, but it appears Johnson’s choice to play football paid major dividends on and off the field.
