By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
Christmas comes every year on the heels of the Garden State Invitational, the first big meet of wrestling season for Princeton High School head coach Rashone Johnson.
Wrestling doesn’t slow down for the holidays. Johnson has held practice on Christmas Eve every year in his 15 years as head coach at PHS. The season comes with hard days and long nights, but it has been the passion of Johnson for longer than anything else.
”I knew what I was in for,” said his wife of six years, Mary. “I knew his passion for wrestling. I don’t want to say I’m the single mom during wrestling season. This year is a bit more of a challenge.”
The Johnsons are coming off a fall in which both coached at PHS. Rashone was part of the staff that helped to turn around the football team from 0-10 to 8-2. Mary joined the girls cross country staff and saw the Little Tigers put together arguably their best season in school history. All the while, the two have been juggling raising their young children — 5-year-old Ella and 3-year-old R.J. They are a new passion for their parents.
Said Rashone: “That was probably one of the coolest things to me was after one of our matches last year, when the match was over, when we were shaking hands, both of my kids were out on the mats running around.”
Mary just hopes that running around is confined to after matches. R.J. is an energetic 3-year-old, and last year she wasn’t sure about taking him to matches.
”I was very nervous he would run out on the mat,” Mary said. “I wasn’t paying as much attention to the matches. I was trying to control him. When they do it at Princeton, they like the spotlight.”
Christmas will give their dad a rare day off to visit their extended families and to celebrate the blessings that the years have brought. The next day, he will be back in the wrestling room trying to help this year’s group improve while others relax over the holiday break.
”It’s always been in the middle of wrestling season,” Mary said. “It’s not anything different. It’s always something we’ve worked around.”
Wrestling season is the one time that the Johnsons will not be coaching at the same time this year. Both coach spring track and field at PHS. Rashone is in his third year as head coach of the boys spring track and field team after five years as an assistant. Mary is in her fifth year as an assistant coach. She coaches the throwers, and last year had the pleasure of seeing one she coached, Michelle Bazile, win the Meet of Champions girls shot put title with a record throw.
”As her coach, she is the hardest working athlete I’ve ever seen,” Mary said. “She was one of those people that went above and beyond and knew what she wanted. The amount of work she did in the offseason took her where she got to.”
Coaching track and field at the same time may be their toughest challenge, and last year’s was magnified with the throwers that Mary coaches and sprinters that Rashone coaches training at different sites while the PHS track was being redone.
”Scheduling wise, it’s more difficult when we’re coaching the same team,” Mary said. “We have to be at the same time and same team. It was OK (in the fall). He had a lot of Friday night games. On Saturdays, when he was off, he could take the kids.”
When the Johnsons are not coaching, they are enjoying watching their kids grow up and playing with them. And their kids are taking note of what they are doing.
”They think it’s cool,” Mary said. “They like it. They get it. I don’t know that they fully understand that daddy teaches during the day. They have that relationship with our teams. When we’re driving into Princeton, Ella will see them doing their run and say, ‘There are your kids.’ Anyone running is one of my runners.”
Rashone has seen his wrestlers, football players and track athletes entertain their children as well.
”Jenna Cody would play with my kids,” Rashone said. “I have a picture with Nick Gillette holding my son during track practice. That’s pretty cool. If they get older, if they end up going to Princeton, we can show them these are some of the greats that came out of the high school.”
Both of their parents are certified to teach health and physical education, and the Johnsons’ kids are just getting into their own athletics now. Ella started kindergarten this year and played soccer for the first time. Gymnastics could be in their near future. Are wrestling and track and field too far down the road?
”It’s going to be on them,” Rashone said. “I would think because of the nature of the beast, they’re around it. They’re probably going to gravitate to it. I don’t really care what they do, I just want them to try to be the best at what they do. I would want them to do it to the best of their ability.”
Ella and RJ have some great role models — and some high standards — in their parents. Johnson was a standout wrestler for Bloomfield High School. He was a region champion who made it to the Tournament of Champions, and had defeated four of the top six seeds in his weight class. He lost in the quarterfinals of the TOC. At Trenton State College (it changed to The College of New Jersey in 1996), he was a two-time conference champion and three-time national qualifier. He earned All-America honors once. After graduation, he was an age group freestyle and Greco national champion. He was runner-up for the regional qualifiers for the U.S. world team. In 2006, while he was still coaching, he made it to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open.
”I still work out,” Rashone said. “My body is definitely not what it used to be, but I can still wrestle. I stopped early enough. I had a couple nagging injuries toward the end. I wanted to be able to wrestle with my kids if they do that, or just be able to run around the backyard with them.”
While Johnson was busy on the mats, Mary Denny was winning titles in track and field at Trenton State. The Paul VI graduate won the New Jersey Athletic Conference Championship titles in women’s javelin in 1997 and 1998. She also ran on the Lions cross country team. And she met Rashone.
”We met in the computer lab,” Mary recalled. “He was the consultant. I had taken my first year and I was in there all the time. It’ll be 18 years in January.”
The two weren’t romantically linked until more than a decade after they met. The time lapse is something that Mary jokes about, but it has worked out for the better.
”I thought he had potential,” Mary said. “We were young. Honestly, if we had gotten together back then, we would have never gotten together. We needed that time to build that friendship before we knew that would work.”
The two were friends through their years at Trenton State. They remained in contact after graduation and eventually started dating. They were married six years ago.
”I married my best friend,” Rashone said. “Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but it did for us.”
The two have since started a family and are adjusting to that phase of their lives. Combined with the coaching, it keeps them busy.
”What kids give you that you don’t really get until you have your own kids, it gives you perspective,” Rashone said. “It’s a different perspective that you have. Now you really can look at it from the eyes of the parents. You start thinking about what’s best, would you do this to your own kid? Not training wise, but scheduling wise.”
The wrestling schedule in particular can be hard, but the Johnsons are getting accustomed to it, and they do all they can to maintain normalcy even when Rashone cannot be home as much as he would like.
”She picks up for my butt,” he said. “She does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to that.”
Said Mary: “I see how it affects him when he doesn’t get to see the kids. He’ll do Facetime at bed time. It’s not quite the same thing. He definitely misses them when he doesn’t get to see them. It shows how much he has a passion for what he’s doing and passion for being a dad too.”
Rashone has been cultivating the PHS program for a decade and a half. He was an assistant for two years upon graduation from college, and he has tried to produce a good crop of wrestlers every season.
”To do the job right, it just takes so much time,” Rashone said. “It’s not like at Princeton I’m winning championships every year. I’d hate to see if we were lazy. I have to do the same amount you have to do at Long Branch and the powerhouse programs.”
It’s similar to being a parent. Parents don’t know just how their children will turn out, but they can pour their energy into raising them right. Mary believed Rashone had potential when she watched his interaction with his teams.
”It’s him,” she said. “It’s his personality. Because I’ve known him for so long, I see his passion. I see his love of the sport. That’s always been there. I saw him wrestling in college. He’s always been passionate about it and such an advocate for it. He gets a lot of kids that don’t have the basketball skills, so you’re a wrestler. There are no cuts. There are no cuts in track. If you’re out there trying, we’re going to work with you. He takes all these kids in and gives them something to do and coaches them and teaches them a skill.
”Eventually when we got together, I knew he’d be a great dad because I saw what he was doing prior to that.”
Rashone sees equal passion in all that Mary does. She is there for her children, and she has helped to develop an all-time great and some accomplished throwers for PHS track.
”She’s gotta be doing something right because she produced some pretty good throwers,” Rashone said. “She’s good. She works well with the kids. From what I’ve seen, she’s different in what she does in how she coaches the throwers. That’s a good thing. You have different kinds of athletes and they respond to different things.”
Mary believes that she has more patience now after becoming a parent and sympathy for other parents. She is thankful for the opportunities she has had to coach, including her newest foray into cross country.
”I loved it,” Mary said. “I did not think I’d like it that much. I ran cross country in college. Jim Smirk asked me to help coach. He wanted me for the conditioning part of it. What an amazing group of girls we had. I loved it more than I thought I would.”
Mary is looking forward to working more closely with kids. She had started as a corporate fitness trainer out of college, but soon found she had a passion for teaching. After getting her certification from Rowan, she taught in the Highland and Franklin school districts before she and Rashone started a family. She intends to return to teaching when R.J. starts school.
”I do miss teaching,” Mary said.
Until then, coaching keeps her close to kids and allows her to share in her other passion outside of her family. Rashone and Mary Johnson hold coaching and family dear to them, but they know family will win out in the end.
”Once the kids get older and they’re in sports, I’m not going to want to coach,” Mary said. “I’ll want to be there. I know Rashone feels the same way. He wants to see them too.”
Added Rashone: “We’ll do it as long as we can, and do it while we can.”
