It has been two years since Isaiah Johnson was last allowed to play the game he loves. But the former defensive end has found a new home with the men’s club basketball team.

During his first two years at Syracuse, Johnson played SU varsity football for 23 games. In April of 2015, he was medically disqualified by team doctors after suffering three concussions in an 18-month span. Nearly two years later, the senior is in his second year on the club basketball team, which is 16-4 and ranked No. 6 in the country. Johnson starts at center and looks to lead Syracuse to next month’s national tournament.

“I miss it every day,” Johnson said of football. “When you bring love into a sport, you never want to stop playing no matter how many injuries you have.”

The first of the three concussions came during his freshman year. After sacking Florida State quarterback and 2013 Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston, who led the Seminoles to a 14-0 record and national title that season, Johnson didn’t remember the rest of that day.

“I don’t remember how we got home,” Johnson said. “My father told me that he came into the locker room to see me at the beginning of the second quarter. I don’t remember seeing them there.”

The second concussion happened later in his freshman year, during spring practice. He sat in dark rooms for two or three weeks at a time, a popular concussion-healing protocol. He barely ate or slept.

“The noise of a door shutting would make my headache 10 times worse,” Johnson said.

In the spring of 2015, he suffered his third concussion, again during spring practice. A team doctor called him into the office and told him he was medically disqualified from any further participation in Syracuse Athletics. Johnson cried for over three hours in his room.

While Johnson said he believes the team doctors made the right decision, he grew frustrated. His primary sport was basketball, until his junior year at Eastern Christian Academy (Delaware), where he fell in love with football. He was not a standout player on his high school team and didn’t receive all-county or state honor because he played with several future Division I players.

“I was in the shadows,” Johnson said.

But after then-Rutgers head coach Kyle Flood approached Johnson, he officially put down the basketball to focus on his football recruitment. Despite his shift in focus, basketball remained a part of his life. During his tenure on the Syracuse football team, he often played pick-up with other members of the team, along with some of SU’s varsity basketball players at the time, such as Rakeem Christmas, B.J. Johnson, and Ron Patterson.

Darron Wallace, a teammate of Johnson on the club basketball team, also comes from a football background. He declined an offer from the Cornell football team to come to Syracuse to try to further his basketball career. Wallace stands at 6 feet, 3 inches and 205 pounds, while Johnson boasts a 6-foot-5, 270-pound frame. Syracuse’s third-year coach and senior Ben Horwitz praised Johnson for his physicality and presence on the court.

Despite the injuries that forced him away from football, Johnson has no reason to be cautious with his body on the hardwood.

“This has been like a second chance for me,” he said.

Published on April 2, 2017 at 10:41 pm

Contact David: ddschnei@syr.edu