This past Monday found Howard Hustlin’ Tigers baseball coach Jon Johnson doing what he always does during the school year – teaching Spanish – when he began receiving text messages from Baylor School baseball coach Mike Kinney.
After ignoring a couple of them, Johnson texted Kinney a brief note to say he was teaching and would get back to him later. A short time after that, Johnson was forwarded a message originally sent to Kinney’s son Cooper from Gatorade’s Play It Forward program.
Thanks to a video Cooper submitted praising the good work done by the Southside Youth Development organization that Johnson helped put together, Gatorade was awarding Southside one of 12 spotlight grants of $10,000 that it hands out nationwide each year.
Beyond that, as a reward for being the Gatorade Tennessee Baseball Player of the Year, Cooper had already designated an initial $1,000, which is separate from the spotlight grant, for Southside.
“I was almost speechless,” Johnson said Saturday. “First, there’s just a small amount of people with Cooper’s talent and future who always put others before themselves. That’s such a credit to his parents, Mike and Lori, and how they’ve raised him. I hope every day that my son Justus can grow up to be just like Cooper.