Johnson hones entrepreneurial skills

They say that kids can do the darndest things.

Well, in Nate Johnson's case, they not only helped him create a summer job for himself, they also served as the inspiration for his future career.

Just like last summer, Johnson is again working Stevenson's youth basketball camps.

He's one of the camp's main attractions. After all, he was the best player on a Stevenson team that advanced to the Waukegan sectional last winter.

But somewhere along the way, Johnson discovered that he is equally enamored by those same kids who are looking up to him.

"I just started to realize that I really like working with kids," said Johnson, a freshly minted Stevenson graduate. "I've been thinking about how much I would like to go into coaching someday."

Johnson is also interested in business and becoming an entrepreneur.

He decided to combine his interests and has partnered with teammate Jeff Levitt to offer camps and private lessons this summer to aspiring young basketball players.

"We've been passing out our brochures at Stevenson camp and we've gotten some interest," Johnson said. "We're going to have a camp during the month of July and we'll do 1-on-1 training by appointment. We're thinking it's going to be mostly fourth through eighth graders, that age group. It should be fun. We wanted to have a summer job that we would really enjoy."

Then again, Johnson's workload won't end there this summer.

He's also got to get himself ready for college basketball.

Johnson earned a scholarship to play at Division II Saint Leo University in Florida. He recently decided on Saint Leo, and on basketball in general.

Johnson, also a star football player at Stevenson, could have played football in college. His elite status in the two most major high school sports makes him not only a rare breed but also the Daily Herald's 2010 Lake County Male Athlete of the Year.

As a senior this past year, Johnson was named all-conference, all-area and honorable mention all-state in both football and basketball.

"It's great for Nate to get this (athlete of the year) award because he's a heck of a player and a heck of a kid," Stevenson boys basketball coach Pat Ambrose said. "Athletes like him are pretty rare.

"You can look at all the top basketball players out there and very few of them are also playing football. And a lot of the top football players aren't even really playing basketball much anymore. He's a top player in both."

Muscular and a legit 6-feet-3, Johnson has good size and strength to be a catch-everything receiver in football and a do-everything forward in basketball who can drain 3-pointers just as easily as he can post up and rebound.

He averaged 16 points, 8.4 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.3 steals per game in leading the Stevenson basketball team to a 21-8 record.

In football, Johnson hauled in 38 catches for 941 yards and 9 touchdowns in a season in which the Patriots went undefeated during the regular season and advanced to the second round of the Class 8A playoffs.

Despite being a late bloomer who didn't even start playing football until his sophomore year, he finished as the second-leading receiver in Stevenson history.

"I love football and it was a huge decision for me (about whether to play football or basketball in college)," Johnson said. "I had a really good senior season in football, but a lot of recruiting is done the summer before your senior year and I definitely wasn't at the level I was this past season last summer.

"I would have wanted to play Division I football and I heard from some schools, but they wanted me to walk on. Maybe they didn't want to take on a project, or maybe they knew I was also interested in basketball and didn't know how serious I was about football. So I decided to wait to see what happened with basketball."

Basketball is Johnson's first love anyway.

He was drawing interest from various basketball programs when Saint Leo University entered the equation.

He had never heard of the school, which is located near Tampa, until Ambrose mentioned a personal connection he has down there. Before Johnson knew it, he was on a plane to Florida.

He came home sold, and still felt that way even after taking a visit to Northern Illinois to check out the basketball program.

"I really, really liked it down there," Johnson said of his April visit to the Sunshine State. "The weather was really nice. I stayed overnight with the players and I really liked them. I got to play against them in a scrimmage and I felt like I really fit in. I just felt really comfortable in every way there."

Johnson hopes that will make it easier for him to move on.

He says he's really going to miss competing on Friday nights with his high school buddies. After all, there were plenty of good times, like when Johnson rolled up 7 catches, 221 yards, 2 touchdowns and scored the game-winning 2-point conversion in an overtime victory over Glenbrook South in September, or when he scored a career-high 26 points in a big nonconference win over Evanston in December.

"This is all so bittersweet," Johnson said of the end of his high school career. "I'm sad to leave behind high school sports and my teammates and all the big games. I've had a great time.

"But now, it's time to move on and I think I'm ready. I'm ready to play college basketball and I'm ready for new opportunities. It should be a lot of fun."

For information about Johnson's youth basketball camp in July and/or 1-on-1 instruction with him, e-mail Johnson at natejohnson005@yahoo.com.