When former Apollo High School basketball player Arlando Johnson gets inducted into the Eastern Kentucky Athletics Hall of Fame later this year, it won’t be just him getting into the Colonels’ exclusive club.
For Johnson, the honor isn’t his alone. It’s his mother, uncles, aunts and every other person that helped him along the way.
The former Eagle said when he got the call from EKU, two things went through his mind.
“The first one is my mother,” he said. “My mother, who is a single mother, has done a great deal for me — through basketball, my family, school, the whole nine yards. Just to know that our hard work together paid off.”
The second thing was the work that he put in — the work that was mostly behind the scenes.
“I was one of those crazy kids that didn’t understand heat advisories,” he said. “At 4 p.m. in 95 degrees, I’m running miles in the heat not thinking I could fall out and die. I never thought that. It was just what you did when you were in the ’80s and ’90s.”
Johnson was born in 1971, the same year of the first Owensboro Dust Bowl.
“It molded us,” he said of the annual basketball tournament.
Johnson recalls people standing up to 20 rows deep to watch basketball all day and night.
“It was the only time you’re 7-8 years old that you were allowed to stay out past your normal curfew because if you were at the Dust Bowl … you were fine.”
Johnson starred at EKU from 1991-1995 where he averaged double digits all four seasons, including 18.2 ppg during his senior year.
But, the drive to succeed for Johnson didn’t start when he got to Richmond or even when he first stepped on the court at Apollo.
“I had four uncles, three of them have won state championships at Owensboro High School,” he said.
Two of those uncles won basketball state titles for the Red Devils, while one won a football state championship.
“I had some big shoes to fill when I got to Apollo,” he said. “There were a lot of times at the holidays when your family got together that I couldn’t talk because they were talking state championships and all I had was a regional championship … Knowing at the end of the day, I was trying to be the best for my family. I can say that now but at the time, I’m just trying to get crumbs to get in the conversation. There was that humble pie that I always had.”
For Johnson, family was and is everything. It’s why he was as successful as he was for the Eagles and Colonels.
“I had great success at Apollo, great success at Eastern, but that’s what drove me — to try to be as good as my uncles were,” he said.
Johnson’s mother has worked for the same company for 39 years. He said it’s her work ethic that gave him his.
“I’ve seen her do this every day,” he said. “Get up and go to work. When you see that, you know what hard work is.”
This accolade from EKU, more than 25 years after his playing days at the school, was icing on the cake for Johnson.
He said it showed him that what he did resonated with people.
“When you put this thing together called life, you just try to do the best you can and you hope people notice,” he said.
Johnson said there’s always someone that’s better. It could be someone in the next county, the next state or even in their own family, but that doesn’t mean anyone should give up. He said it means they should work harder.
When he graduated from Apollo, Johnson had a few schools recruiting him but EKU was a Division I program that he knew he could play at right away.
“It was kind of just a snowball thing and it kind of worked for me,” he said. “It was far enough from home but it was still close enough if I needed to get there I was good.”
It also had Mike Pollio as its head coach.
Pollio, a former Kentucky Wesleyan College coach, also coached Red Devil legend Rod Drake.
Drake, along with many other area hoopers, were vital to Johnson’s growth.
“They taught me how to play,” he said. “Most of those guys then were trying to get a workout in so if a young cat messed up their workout, you were going to get kicked off the court. You had to play the game the right way. I got schooled on how to be a collegiate player when I was in high school.
“I was lucky. A lot of kids don’t take that tutelage. I did. I took it every day. We played five to six days a week.”
The players before him that taught Johnson what it took to play in college.
“I just wanted to listen and soak up as much as I could so I knew the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do,” he said.
Johnson admitted he didn’t always make the right decision, but he learned from everyone around him.
One piece of advice that he held onto was to go into EKU and make an impact right away, from the very first day of practice.
He said it didn’t matter who you were, as long as you brought it on the court.
“Everybody wants to try and feel like you belong to something,” he said. “You don’t want to say ‘My name is’ — no, ‘My game is.’”
Johnson and his game will be inducted into the EKU Athletics Hall of Fame Oct. 3 in Richmond.
