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PHOTOS COURTESY OF RAY FUNK

SUCCESS STORY. Anthony Johnson won the Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges east region MVP award as his team, the Yakima Valley Yaks, won the league’s championship. Johnson was a former basketball player at Stadium High School who was all but done with basketball when he met his wife, Shaunte Nance. She encouraged him to keep playing and eventually helped him earn a spot at Yakima Valley.

Love and basketball

By Ben Miller

Generally the storybook tales of movies don’t really mesh up very well with real life. Even films that are based on actual events usually get a little jazzing up when they get to Hollywood. But the story of former Stadium High School basketball player Anthony Johnson is like something straight off of the silver screen.

Three years ago, Johnson was out of school, out of basketball and generally lost in life. Today, though, things are completely different. Thanks to his wife Shaunte Nance – a former basketball standout at Foss High School – Johnson has gotten his life together on and off the basketball court.

At Stadium, Johnson wasn’t much of a standout on the court or in the classroom. As a senior, he averaged just more than 12 points per game while the Tigers went 6-15 and finished in seventh place in the Narrows League Bay Division. Not exactly the kind of performance that gets you noticed at the next level.

On his report cards, things were even worse. Not showing up for class on a regular basis, Johnson saw his cumulative grade-point average during his time in high school come out as a 1.6. Needless to say, there weren’t a lot of opportunities awaiting him after graduation.

In 2005, though, while he was spending the year at home helping his mom and brother around the house, the most important event of his life happened. He started dating Nance. After that, things just started to change for him.

Not sure what he was doing or could do with his life, Nance was there as someone who believed in him. She pushed him to become better not only as a basketball player but as a person as well.

“She noticed something in me,” Johnson said. “She figured in her mind that I could play college basketball while at the time I was ready to give it up.”

Nance, then playing basketball on a full-ride scholarship to Northwest Nazarene University (NNU), watched Johnson play at the YMCA and knew that his time on the hardwood wasn’t over.

“He had an amazing shot, it was something I envied,” Nance said. “His dedication to the game was a big thing. I knew once he put his mind to it, the sky was the limit for him.”

But Johnson still needed a little bit of help to even get a chance to show what he could do. Again, Nance was there for him, though in a way neither of them quite expected.

After her freshman season at NNU, Nance decided to quit playing basketball, instead deciding that her relationship with Johnson was more important. As far as they were concerned, the couple’s adventure on the basketball court was all but over, and they were focused on the rest of their lives.

A week later, though, the women’s basketball coach at Yakima Valley Community College (YVCC), Cody Butler, called Nance up. Butler had heard that she left NNU and was interested in having her play for the Yaks and offered her a scholarship.

Nance jumped at the opportunity, but she had one condition. If she was going to play for YVCC, she wanted Johnson to have a chance to make the men’s team. The coaches agreed, and all of a sudden, the opportunity that Johnson needed to show off his stuff, the one he never really had in high school, was there for him.

“She kind of gave me an opportunity there to ride her coattails into the door,” Johnson said.

Once he got through the door, it didn’t take long for him to earn his own coattails. After the first day of tryouts for the men’s basketball team, Johnson earned himself a scholarship and a spot on the roster.

“He had the tools to be (a) division I (caliber player),” said YVCC assistant coach London Wilson. “If you have the tools, it’s all in your head.”

From there, things just started to take off.

Nance and Johnson were married Nov. 1, 2006, while the basketball season was about to begin just a couple of weeks later. They were embarking down a path that led to a new life together and a new beginning to both of their basketball careers.

In his first season at YVCC, Johnson averaged 18.3 points per game on 57.6 percent shooting from the floor. After nearly a year off from organized basketball, Johnson was beginning to make a name for himself on the hard court again.

“I thought that once I got my foot in the door of the college basketball realm, I thought I had a chance to get better and succeed,” he said. But he is still surprised by just how successful he has been so quickly.

After breaking out last season as the Yaks’ leading scorer as a freshman, Johnson’s star shined even brighter as a sophomore. His numbers went up even higher and his team came along for the ride.

Johnson saw what he could do in his first season at YVCC and he hit the gym even harder, putting on muscle and working to get event better than he had already become.

“It’s been like a complete 180,” Nance said. “He just played, every off-season that’s when he goes into the ‘hyperbolic chamber,’ just playing a lot of basketball. Day in and day out.”

Nance said she has been astounded by the way that Johnson has been able to challenge himself. As his skills came closer to his potential, he has found new ways to drive himself harder, even against lesser competition. One day he would just take jump shots, other days he would just use his left hand. She is impressed with how he just keeps pushing himself.

Earlier this month is when Johnson’s story really found its movie moment, that climactic point where everything just kind of comes together.

In his two seasons of varsity basketball at Stadium, the Tigers went 15-26 and never even had the opportunity to dream of championships, but at YVCC dreaming wasn’t the only thing Johnson did.

Playing on a team that for most of the season had just seven players available, Johnson drove the Yaks to the Northwest Athletic Association of Community College (NWAACC) championship over the heavily favored Spokane Community College Sasquatches in the title game. During the regular season, the Sasquatches had defeated YVCC twice by more than 20 points each time.

“Seven guys aren’t supposed to win the championship,” Johnson said. “We definitely battled through a lot of adversity. I will always remember these guys forever because of what we went through as a team.”

If seven guys aren’t supposed to win the championship, then for sure a player like Johnson isn’t supposed to win the NWAACC east region MVP award, but he did. In three years he went from a nobody on the basketball court at Stadium to “the” somebody in the NWAACC.

And finally, people other than Nance have started to notice Johnson’s prowess with the basketball. Johnson has been hearing from Division I college basketball coaches that want him to play at their schools, and he has already received four full-ride scholarship offers from the likes of Montana, Boise State, Weber State and Seattle University.

“It’s a dream come true,” he said. “Being in the position and being on the phone and knowing that on the other line a Division I coach is talking to you, it makes me want to sign right then.”

Even with all of the newfound success that Johnson has had on the basketball court, there is one thing that he is even more proud of that has nothing to do with lay-ups or 3-pointers. After putting up a 1.6 in high school, Johnson’s grade-point average at YVCC is 3.2.

“It’s definitely something I can smile about,” he said.

Johnson said that he is where he is today thanks to his wife. Without her, who knows where he would have ended up.

“It’s about myself and my wife most importantly,” he said. “That made me want to go out and do all I can do to be successful in life. I’m on a war path right now, I’m living life right now with something to prove.”

And with the way things are going, Johnson in proving that the happy ending of a fairy tale story isn’t just something you’d find in Hollywood.

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