Cody Thorn Johnson will still be around as he is the new athletic director for the district and is serving as the junior high principal. The veteran coach stepped down as the wrestling coach after 30 years following the conclusion of last year.
The list of accomplishments for Norton in his watch is impressive – 11 Class 3-2-1A titles, including five straight from 2013-2017. He had 49 state championship wrestlers, including Gavin Sproul and Kolton Field last year, and Johnson won more than 250 duals during his tenure.
He had more than 100 wrestlers in his tenure that were top-four finishers at the state meet.
All four of his children, three sons and a daughter, all had a part in a championship for the small school in north-central Kansas on Highway 36, a little south of the Nebraska state line.
Johnson’s first teaching and coaching job after graduating from Fort Hays State was at Kingman, Kansas, where he was for two years. Then, he took over the job at Norton in the 1991-1992 school year.
“Most my family is from the Wichita area, so I thought I may come out here (Norton) for five or 10 years and then go back to civilization,” Johnson said with a bit of jest.
He arrived at a school that had some tradition, winning six titles between 1959 and 1973, but the Blue Jays saw unprecedented success under Johnson. However, for a while he was beginning to wonder if he would be able to add title No. 7 for the school.
From 1996 to 1998, the Blue Jays finished third, second and second. Then, another runner-up finish came in 2003.
“I was thinking man, are we ever going to win a state title around here,” Johnson said looking back. “We had come close. We were in the hunt.”
Norton then won three in a row from 2004 to 2006, won back-to-back in 2010 and 2011, then the streak of five in a row happened and the final one came in 2020.
Norton now has 17 team championships, the only school more in KSHSAA history is Arkansas City’s 21.
“I look back on it and wow, that was just an amazing group of coaches and I’m proud of the athletes that went through, some of which knew nothing but success,” Johnson said. “Some of them were all four years on state championship teams. That is so rare and we thought of it just as the expectations and everybody strived to achieve that.
“I feel so fortunate and so blessed to have such a long and successful career as a coach in Norton. I feel very blessed to stay here and serve as the junior high principal and AD at a place where all my children went and all of them were involved in wrestling, even my daughter, who was a manager and all of my sons ended up being state champions.”
Eric Johnson was a four-time finalist and two-time champion, but wasn’t part of any state championship teams. His daughter, Kelli, was part of two team state championships. Skylar was a three-time medalist and 2016 state champion. The youngest, Ryan, was on a pair of championship teams and was a four-time medalist and two-time state finalist and a champion as a junior. All three of the boys went on to wrestle in college – Eric at Central Oklahoma, Skylar at Barton County Community College and Ryan is currently a wrestler at Nebraska-Kearney.
The eldest Johnson was an All-American wrestler at Fort Hays State and is a member of the Tigers’ Athletic Hall of Fame.
Johnson was a three-time medalist at Flint Hills High School, though the school didn’t have a program his freshman year. Johnson had been wrestling since he was five years old, so he kind of knew what he was doing when the program was introduced over Christmas break his sophomore year.
The head coach of the program? Well, not so much.
“He had never seen a match before he coached one,” Johnson said.
He and his younger brother, Mark, also an accomplished wrestler, were the ones that helped the head coach with working on moves with the other wrestlers.
That also played a part in what led Johnson to go into coaching. Now, he is starting his new career and he won’t be on the sidelines when the Blue Jays open the season on Saturday at the St. Francis Tournament.
New coach Billy Broeckelman will guide the Blue Jays, a former assistant coach for the Blue Jays the past three years and he also wrestled for Johnson. His brother, Nathan Broeckelman, is the head coach at Great Bend.
“I don’t want to hang around past my usefulness and I didn’t want to be a paper pusher,” Johnson said. “It was time to pass the torch onto someone else. A lot of people found out they were kind of shocked or happy that I was moving onto a promotion and happy I was staying in the community. I have grown to love Norton. I raised my children here, my wife is a business lady in the community. We do a lot in the community with our church, clubs and organizations that we are part of and try to help out.”
Johnson’s exit wasn’t the only one for the Blue Jays’ program. Longtime assistant Tony Fiscus, who was part of the program for 20 years over two stints, moved to Nebraska to coach and teach. Shane Miller was with the program for 15 years – after serving as Eureka’s head coach, took a job at Louisburg.
“It’s a major change of the guard,” Johnson said.
