By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports
Haughton coach Matthew Sewell talked and talked about his star wide receiver Ethan Johnson in glowing terms, as you expect a coach to do for one of his players who had caught about a million passes during his career as a Buccaneer.
All sorts of adjectives were thrown out there to describe the senior star who is a key component in the Haughton offense which has already scored 137 points this year.
And after going on and on about Johnson, Sewell stopped and realized something: He hadn’t said a word about his ability on the field. Instead, the lengthy conversation was about what Johnson meant in so many other ways.
“Oh, yeah,” Sewell says, “and he’s been pretty productive.”
You might say that.
In 2025, all Johnson did was catch 102 passes for 1,477 yards. Not only did that lead the area, it just so happened to lead Louisiana as well.
But if you ask Sewell, the 5-9, 180-pounder also leads the state in intangibles as well. Ask him about what Johnson means to Haughton football and you’ll get these quotes —
“He’s somebody that we can depend on.”
“He’s just kind of a pillar of the foundation of what we want Haughton football to be.”
“He’s been somebody for us that we’ve been able to lean on and is a great role model for not just the younger players in our program, but for everybody in our program.”
Not bad stuff for a guy who grew up being an offensive lineman.
“It was pretty fun,” he says. “I enjoyed playing football with my teammates and my friends and was happy to celebrate other people’s success.”
Once he made the change to receiver, folks have been celebrating Johnson’s success, even if he does say that the best part of playing his position is “blocking for my teammates.”
Seems as though old habits don’t die that easily after all.
The position change came about during middle school when one of coaches, after noticing that Johnson had lost weight during the off-season, asked if he had ever played receiver.
“He asked if I could catch the ball and I said ‘Yes sir,’ “ Johnson recalls. “Then he asked me to run a slant (route). Then he asked me to run a hitch and I did that.”
From there a receiver was born, and for a very young-generation reason.
“I realized I could do it because I wanted to get into the zone, just like in Madden (video game),” Johnson says. “I figured that was my future.”
Well, not exactly. When Johnson got the Haughton High, Sewell knew he had to find some way to get him on the field. He quickly found a way in Johnson’s first varsity game as a sophomore.
“We had a guy hurt and another senior running back who couldn’t hold on to the ball,” Sewell says. “So we put Ethan back there and he scored three rushing touchdowns.”
Johnson has also played fullback, safety (“that didn’t work out too well,” he says) and all four receiver positions.
After 1-2 starts in ’24 and ‘25, the Bucs are 3-0 this season heading into a Friday night home game against Captain Shreve. This season, Johnson had caught 14 passes for 233 yards and three touchdowns.
Haughton has suffered through a couple of tough seasons recently, but Sewell knew that Johnson and the others in the senior class were the building block the program needed.
“I became close with that entire group, but especially those guys on the offensive side of the ball, and we still work pretty closely today,” Sewell says. “Ethan’s been one of his guys from the start. He’s scored touchdowns from the first day he came on our campus and he’s still doing it. He means a lot to me from a production standpoint, and just as much from a personal standpoint too.”
Johnson says his greatest pleasure from a game isn’t how many catches he had or how many touchdowns the scored. Instead, the response falls right in line with what you’d expect.
“It’s that we executed what we learned in practice,” he says. “What you do on Monday and Tuesday is what you are going to do on Friday.”
And those Fridays have been pretty special.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com