The spirit of Nick Johnson lives on with the Santa Barbara High boys water polo team.
Santa Barbara coach Mark Walsh shared a story of Johnson’s impact on this year’s team during Monday’s Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table press luncheon at Harry’s Plaza Café.
Johnson died last spring while doing a swim workout at the high school pool. The coroner attributed the death to “accidental drowning.” A standout water polo player for Walsh at Santa Barbara, he was in his sophomore year at UCSB.
Walsh and his team met for dinner on the eve of last week’s Channel League opener against CIF top-10 ranked Ventura. Rather than watching a scouting video of Ventura, Walsh elected to show the team a video tribute to Johnson. He said he hadn’t yet addressed this group about Johnson, “so I thought it was a good time.”
The video stirred something inside the players.
“His anthem has a lot to do with trying as hard as you can all of the time, only look at yourself, don’t blame others, no one controls how good you can be, only you can control how good you can be; what do you do when you go up against someone who is bigger, stronger and faster than you? Do you shrink or do you become mentally tough? What are you going to do in those situations? We talked about that a little bit,” Walsh explained.
In the game, it was crunch time and the Dons saw a four-goal lead shrink to one with 2.5 minutes to go.
“They called a timeout, I talked to the guys about what they were going to do and as I’m walking away I heard one of the guys say: ‘Hey, guys, just remember what Nick said,’ Walsh recounted. “At that my moment, I said: ‘Oh my gosh. In time of crisis, they’re referring to what was said last night and they got it.’ I just had a really good feeling things were going to work out well for us. We ended up keeping them from scoring, we ended going up by three and winning the game by two.”
It was such a stirring moment that Walsh called Berkeley Johnson, Nick’s father, and told him what happened.
“It was a really, really neat moment. I shared it with Nick’s dad and he was really excited for us,” said Walsh.
The Dons are having a good season. They’re 13-5 with a team of mostly sophomores and freshmen. The win total matches their season total for wins last season, a season in which they missed the CIF playoffs for the first time in several years.
Walsh introduced seniors John Salman and Chris Bartholomew, whose work ethic and maturity have played a key part in the team’s success. He said Salman “lives his life a lot like Nick does. He’s just on it; he gets it. He’s been so great to have for our younger guys.”
On Bartholomew: “He’s changed his mindset and is working hard at every practice, and is a very good leader,” Walsh said. “Maturity-wise, he really flipped the switch. He’s a guy others can look to in how you work out, how you prepare yourself for a game, how you conduct yourself.”
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