The Facebook photo stopped me.
My old middle school football coach and PE teacher stood smiling atop Borah Peak, Idaho’s tallest mountain. At 86, he had climbed 12,662 feet above sea level.
And Mount Borah isn’t the only thing Coach Noel Johnson has been climbing lately.
Another recent photo shows him with friends atop the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia — a “totally legal climb,” he assured me earlier this week at his home in Blackfoot.
“Yeah, but why’d you do it?” I asked.
“Because it was cool,” he said, flashing a juvenile grin.
The Facebook photos capture other adventures from Coach’s recent years of “retirement”:
- A helicopter ride to the top of Franz Josef glacier on New Zealand’s South Island. Check.
- Landing a trophy fish on some Alaskan riverbank. Done.
- Shattering a senior-age-group 5K record in Utah. Why not?
Every Facebook photo left me wondering what keeps Coach going after all these years. He runs 5ks, still mentors youth at his church, travels the world with his wife. At 41, I could use a little of whatever Coach Johnson has.
So I visited him at his home of 54 years across town to find out. I got my answer, and then some.
For decades, Coach taught young people what commitment and determination look like. Nearly 30 years after retiring, he still lives those lessons, driven by the same desire to prove he can “do it.” It has defined him since a childhood where he struggled to fit in — and it’s left some of his former students and players still measuring themselves against the lessons he teaches.
“You’re amazing, Coach!” one former player and student wrote beneath the Borah Facebook photo.
“My hero,” wrote another.
‘Bodkin,’ he said
Coach’s brick house is the same as I remembered from decades ago. He was in the backyard, picking beans from his garden, when I arrived.
His wife, Carol, walked me to their patio to announce a visitor. A sun hat rose slowly above one of the rows. As he approached, I wondered: Will he remember me?
“Bodkin,” he said.
We’re Facebook friends and have seen each other a few times over the years, but it still felt like a win.
Two hours at his kitchen table followed. We reminisced over a few moments on the field.
I still remember one moment from middle school football. An opposing coach accused me of being older than I was. I don’t remember all the details, but I remember Coach Johnson’s response.
He asked my mom for my birth certificate and marched to the other side of the field to show it to that coach before the game.
Maybe that seems like a small thing now, but it wasn’t then. You remember the adults who stand up for you when you’re a kid.
That was Coach Johnson.
Then he told me his story, which started 75 years ago in Shoshone, when a boy with a cleft palate endured teasing and just wanted to show that he “could play” in a small town.
‘You can’t achieve what I can achieve’
Coach was on the smaller side growing up — small enough that a few playground bullies occasionally tested him.
He still scoffs at bullies, but those experiences made sports his proving ground. He wanted to prove he was more than what the bullies saw.
“You want some way to say, ‘You may be a bully, but you can’t achieve what I can achieve,’” he told me.
Achievement became his thing. As a kid, he started a youth baseball league with the help of his parents. He competed in baseball, basketball and football growing up.
After our meetup, he texted me his high school basketball photo, which showed the shortest guy on the team bearing the second-largest number on his jersey.
“Fifty-four is a center’s number,” he pointed out. “I was maybe five-foot-four.”
“Big in spirit,” I responded.
The shortest guy on the basketball team went on to play college baseball at Ricks College (now Brigham Young University-Idaho) and Idaho State University.
He picked up a mentor along the way: American businessman, author and housekeeping expert Don Aslett.
The two met while Coach was a student at Idaho State, where he painted houses for Aslett through a family connection. During one trip to Twin Falls, Aslett asked about Johnson’s plans and encouraged him to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
His religious convictions grew, but sports remained his love. He returned from a mission to Texas to pursue a fitting career: teaching and coaching.
He held positions in Dietrich and Kimberly before landing in Blackfoot, where Carol grew up and where Coach would teach and coach countless young people for decades. They settled in with their son Jace and daughter Janae.
Coach doubled down on a philosophy that would define the way he led student athletes: “If you’re going to ask kids to work hard, you’d better be willing to work hard yourself,” he told me.
As a PE teacher and coach, he wanted kids to see that.
He ran. He lifted. He stayed active.
He retired — and the wins piled up
In his 70s, years after ending a long career in the classroom and on the field, Coach checked his weight and decided it wasn’t where he wanted it.
To his chagrin, someone asked what position he played on the line during his football days.
“I played defensive back and quarterback,” he said.
The comment bothered him. It was all the motivation he needed. He started lifting weights again. He ran, biked and dropped dozens of pounds.
Now in his 80s, the 5K races — and medals — have piled up. His times are consistently in elite categories for his age. He pointed to the 5K record he set last year at the Huntsman World Senior Games. Time: 30 minutes and 45 seconds.
Dozens of medals from races across the country hang on a hook in his hallway, each marking another finish line Coach crossed long into retirement.
He and Carol have crossed other finish lines, serving missions of their own for the church.
The two have turned that same spirit of adventure toward a lifetime of travels together — from mountain trails and riverbanks abroad to chasing BYU’s football team across the country.
Zip lining. Hiking. Trips to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Hobbiton, where the opening scenes of Lord of the Rings were shot.
After our visit, Coach texted me a picture he was especially proud of: a single, hulking bean harvest from the couple’s garden.
He’s out there often, Carol told me.
Approaching 90, he still sees it all as coaching and teaching in a way — just a bit more by example.
Or as he puts it: “Just set your pace and do the best you can.”
