OREM — A few hundred former Mountain View High football players and their parents gathered Sunday night at the Bruins football field to honor former coach Terry "Teko" Johnson.
The common theme among those in attendance was that Johnson left a big impact at Mountain View in the three short years that he led the Bruins football program. Johnson, 41, died of unknown causes last Wednesday in an Atlantic City hotel while visiting family there with his wife.
"We loved him very much," former Mountain View lineman Taylor Johnson (no relation) said. "He was a great man, and he was a great coach."
Johnson took over the Mountain View program in 2007 after the Bruins went 1-9 the season before. He took the Bruins to the state quarterfinals in his first season before losing to Sky View. But even after that loss, he kept football in perspective and made sure the players did as well.
"We sat around and talked after that loss for about an hour, just like great friends," former player Greg May said. "It was one of the neatest things in my life."
Johnson's record in three years at Mountain View was 14-17.
"He wanted to change the whole mentality at Mountain View, and he did," May said, pointing out that Johnson told his players and students to never be satisfied with mediocrity and always push for improvement.
He coached 12 years prior to the Mountain View job in Pennsylvania, where he racked up an 87-55 mark. He graduated from West High and played college football at Purdue. He was hired this past offseason to be the new coach at Cottonwood High, a job he was extremely excited about.
"He was a young man, so it's tough," Mountain View assistant coach Eli Herring said. "We've lost a good friend."
Those who gathered Sunday to honor Johnson with tributes, songs, poems and prayer talked of Johnson's skills as a psychologist and how he used those skills to get the most out of his players and students.
"He was a manipulator, but a very good one. But he did it because he wanted us to become the best we could possibly become," Taylor Johnson said.
Herring described Johnson as an old-school coach who had a tough side but knew how to communicate with his players.
"I saw him love the boys and reach out to them in ways that I don't think I've seen before as a coach," Herring said.
New Bruins coach Jon Snyder said Johnson told him all along that he was grooming him to be the head coach someday. He remembers Johnson for how he wanted to not only build a football team but develop his players into quality young men who carried on that way for the rest of their lives.
"He wanted to see them still doing those good things five or 10 years down the road," Snyder said.
Services and burial for Johnson are tentatively scheduled for Wednesday in New York. Plans also call for a memorial to be held somewhere in Salt Lake City on Saturday.
e-mail: jimr@desnews.com