Johnson takes her talents to Montgomery Academy
Chloe Johnson was the AISA Player of the Year in 2020. She follows her father, Robert, to Montgomery Academy beginning this season. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
One of the best teams in Class 3A just got a little better.
Montgomery Academy picked up a huge addition to its girls’ basketball team this week with the announcement that Alabama Independent School Association Player of the Year Chloe Johnson will be joining the Eagles.
Her father, Montgomery Academy head football coach and athletic director Robert Johnson, left the decision with his daughter concerning whether she would remain at Lee-Scott Academy in Auburn or transfer to Montgomery Academy, but confirmed her decision by announcing the family was moving within a couple of blocks of the school.
“I’m ecstatic,” he said. “I’m really glad.”
Johnson has been in the market for a house for the past couple of weeks, but held off on the news until Chloe could meet with her Lee-Scott teammates and break the news of her departure.
“It was tough for her to leave,” he said. “She’s got a lot of good friends there and coaches that she has relationships with and having to move twice in two years is not easy. But she also knew that MA was a great place and she’s gotten to meet a lot of the girls there. They’ve been nice to her.”
Johnson, a sophomore last season, earned the private school association’s top honor by averaging 14.1 points, five rebounds and 5.4 assists in leading the Warriors to the Class AAA state championship.
One of the state’s top point guards, Johnson made history in 2016 by earning most valuable player honors in the AISA AAA state tournament as a sixth grader in leading Tuscaloosa Academy past defending state champion Glenwood in the finals.
The next year, Johnson and the Knights lost in the semifinals, but in 2018 she returned as a veteran eighth grader and led TA to the state championship with a win over Glenwood. In 2019, she led the Knights to a second consecutive title by beating Reg Mantooth’s Fort Dale team in the finals.
Mantooth was hired in June as the Eagles’ basketball coach.
“First of all, in my mind, she’s a true point guard,” Mantooth said. “She really understands how to play basketball, how to pass, how to make her teammates better. Just watching her the last three or four years, how much she’s improved overall just kind of tells you that basketball is her thing. She spends a lot of time working on it, a lot of time practicing it, a lot of time outside the season trying to get better. You always want to coach somebody like that.”
When Robert Johnson left Tuscaloosa Academy at the end of the 2018-19 school year to take a job at Lee-Scott Academy in Auburn, Chloe made the transfer to the Warriors and picked up where she left off, leading Lee-Scott to a rout of Glenwood in the AAA championship game.
Johnson will bring her four state championships and a resume as one of the state’s top players to a team that has alternating senior power forwards in Anaya Thomas and Ann Cobern Chapman and a trio of senior starting guards in Leighton Robertson, Madi Caddell and Gabby Ramirez, along with top senior reserve guard Julia Williams. Montgomery Academy returns six of its top seven players from last year’s team that reached the regional finals.
The close-knit group of seniors have compiled a 55-11 mark over the last two years, reaching the 3A finals in 2019 and counting half (four) of their losses in 2020 to a Pike Road team that is now classified as a 5A team. Last year’s loss in the regional finals marked only the third time in the last 10 years that Montgomery Academy has not reached the state tournament.
The girls were quick to roll out the welcome mat to Chloe Johnson and invited her to attend some open-court sessions in June.
“Nowadays, you don’t have to live close to each other to actually hang out,” Robert Johnson pointed out. “They can all hang out on social media, which helps. She went to a couple of events with them and they went out to eat once or twice. All of that helped build relationships.
“And she knew Coach Mantooth and I think that helped. I think she has a lot of respect for him.”
The Eagles will be in one of the state’s most contested areas this winter, joining Catholic, Prattville Christian Academy (a 2019 semifinalist) and Trinity (a 4A regional qualifier last season). Mantooth invited Chloe Johnson to several team events in early July, but Johnson declined until she could officially join the team. Still, even without seeing her in any Montgomery Academy workouts, Mantooth knows what the addition of Johnson means for his team.
“She’s done a little bit with our girls,” he said. “I think she’ll fit in real well, mainly because she is a true point guard that can handle the ball and pass the ball and see the court. There are a lot of good scorers around her and she’ll fit really well with this team.”