He nearly walked away, and then he became a champion

If you want to hear Buhach Colony wrestling coach Eric Osmer go on a rant, bring up the subject of quitting.

Osmer has no tolerance for quitters. Can’t stand them. Doesn’t have time for them.

“Wrestling coaches talk about it all the time,” Osmer said. “It drives us crazy. I have a reputation on campus because I can’t stand quitters. Quitters give up.”

Jay Johnson almost fell into that category. He didn’t think he could handle wrestling his freshman year, so Johnson walked into Osmer’s class in the morning and told him he was quitting the team.

Johnson used his grades as an excuse.

“When I was a freshman I was a pud,” Johnson said. “I was fat. I was nowhere near the person I am now. After I told Coach Osmer I was quitting, I walked around the campus. I just kept thinking, I’ve never quit anything before. I walked back in, maybe five minutes later, and begged him to be back on the team and Coach Osmer said OK.”

Johnson went to work in the weight and wrestling rooms during his high school career and transformed himself into one of the top wrestlers in the Sac-Joaquin Section this season. The Buhach Colony senior won the 195-pound championship at the Sac-Joaquin Section Masters Championships and finished with a 49-7 record.

After his stellar season, Johnson is the Sun-Star Wrestler of the Year.

“I’ve never seen anybody grow as much as Jay,” Osmer said. “He was very weak-minded. He only stuck with wrestling because it was fun. How long can you stick with something if you keep losing? I didn’t have much hope for him.”

In fact, when Johnson told Osmer he was quitting that freshman season, his coach didn’t think that much of it. Osmer didn’t have high hopes for Johnson back then.

“When he came in and did that – he was so bad back then – I just figured wrestling did its job,” Osmer said. “I’ve had to remove a handful of kids from my teams over the years, but wrestling has made hundreds and thousands of guys quit on the first day. I thought Jay was another one of those kids.

“Coaches think they can turn anybody into a good wrestler, but if his heart wasn’t in it, I couldn’t work with that. He was just terrible back then, but he showed some guts coming back.”

Johnson went 3-9 as a freshman on the junior varsity team. The next year, he went 12-12 on varsity, but his season ended early when doctors would not clear him after he was knocked unconscious during practice before the Central California Conference championships.

Johnson used the injury as motivation.

He began spending long hours in the weight room, and he was a beast in the wrestling room. He started going deep in tournaments, finishing second at folkstyle state, second at freestyle state and first at Greco-Roman state.

He came back his junior year and went 44-9, winning a CCC title, finishing third at divisionals and sixth at Masters.

This year, Johnson won titles at the Ceres Invitational, Gregori Memorial Tournament, the Rumble in the Jungle at Pitman, CCC championships and Masters.

At Masters, Johnson outlasted Lincoln’s Yates Hunter 3-2 in triple overtime. Hunter had defeated Johnson 5-3 in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division I-AA finals the week before and 3-2 earlier in the season at the Sierra Nevada Classic in Reno.

“The week before I was thinking too much,” Johnson said. “I was thinking about doing this move or that move. I didn’t do any moves. At Masters, I just let it go. I didn’t think. I just wrestled. It was pretty amazing. I could hear my dad screaming from the stands.”

It was also an emotional moment for Johnson and Osmer, who he calls his white dad.

“After he won, we both did a lot of hugging and crying,” Osmer said. “It meant quite a lot. He beat a kid who he had lost to twice before by a total of three points. I was so proud of him. He went out and won one of the biggest tournaments in the state.”

From quitter to Masters champion, Johnson credits wrestling, Osmer and his parents for keeping him on the right path.

“My motivation was to make my parents proud,” Johnson said. “Also Coach Osmer. He’s like a dad to me. The white dad I never had. He can be (tough), but that was just his way of pushing me to always make me better.”

This story was originally published March 25, 2015 at 6:26 PM with the headline "He nearly walked away, and then he became a champion."