Towards the end of the 2023-2024 Boys Basketball season, sophomore Johnny Nelson was moved up from JV to var sity. However, Head Coach Phil Gary did not have plans for him to play a lot. Rather, there was a need for his competitive spirit in their practices.
Fast forward two games later. Gary thought, “I gotta throw Johnny out there,” and by playoffs, he was starting. “He didn’t care if he played one minute, he didn’t care if he played 30 minutes, he was gonna have the same energy, every single day,” said Gary.
Head Varsity Football Coach, John Hoerster, added, “It doesn’t matter the sport, it doesn’t matter the occasion, it doesn’t matter who’s watching, he loves to play. He loves to compete.”
Johnny Nelson is a three-sport varsity athlete at Oak Park and River Forest High School. He plays football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring.
But three sports in one school year? Is that really doable? To make this work, the main thing was “just communicating with my football, baseball, basketball coaches,” Nelson said.
Head Varsity Baseball Coach Kevin Campbell, said “You know, it takes a special, special someone, and a lot of endurance and a very high drive to do it all, but he’s got it.” If anything, “sometimes it’s harder to reel him back in and make sure he’s taking breaks than anything,” he said.
Being a three-season athlete used to be much more common for the teenagers growing up in the 80s and 90s, but as time went on, the need to ‘specialize’ at one particular sport, heightened. “You would just play whatever sport that was in season,” Hoerster explained.
Now, this lifestyle is somewhat of an anomaly. Sports have become one of the biggest money-making industries in the world, and with that comes the push to have your child a part of a club team for the duration of the off-season and have special skills training or private lessons in between.
Although Nelson could have stuck with one sport, he chose to do it all; and it is possible. “Ultimately, I think what he’s shown is, can you be a really competitive top tier baseball player and play basketball and play football? And the answer is yes,” said Hoerster. “I would love to see more kids do it, but I understand that it’s going against what most people see and what most people are told.”
The essential part of Nelson’s love for sports is getting to make connections with many different people, and he has turned
this enjoyment into a skill as well, “I think I’m able to surround myself with a lot of different people and make connections with them. I think that helps a lot with building chemistry with teammates.”
“As a coach, when you’re looking at any athlete, you obviously want them to be great at what they do, right? But you also want them to be a great teammate and care about the program. It’s pretty evident he has both with how much he pours into the sports programs here at OPRF,” said Campbell.
