Over two decades since beginning his collegiate coaching career at Point Loma, LSU Baseball Head Coach Jay Johnson (01) still calls The Point his “home base.”
It’s a fitting analogy for where it all began for Johnson, first as a student-athlete in 1999 and 2000, then as an assistant coach for the next four seasons, and eventually as head coach in 2005.
Now four coaching stops later, and four trips to the College World Series in Omaha and two national championships to show for it, Johnson credits his experience at PLNU for helping kickstart his record-breaking coaching career.
“I had a lot of autonomy in the program, and that’s probably in my coaching journey one of the things that’s mattered the most, is I was entrusted with so much responsibility at Point Loma at a really young age.” Johnson said. “I was doing all the recruiting, I was running the offense in the games, I was doing all the practice planning. It was like a trial by fire.
“I got an opportunity that young coaches don’t get. I had a large stake in running our program at 25, 26 years old. That was a really impactful time.”
Johnson first came to Point Loma to play his final two collegiate seasons after transferring from Shasta Community College.
“That was actually a pretty easy decision once I got down there,” Johnson said of his decision to play at Point Loma. “It was kind of a divine intervention thing how the whole thing kind of came about really at the last minute. I’d almost taken another opportunity at a different school, literally like two days before and I waited, so it’s really crazy to think how my life kind of forked right there.”
The infielder played two seasons for the then Crusaders, playing in the final year of Carroll B. Land’s legendary coaching career and the first under Scott Sarver.
“I got an opportunity that young coaches don’t get. I had a large stake in running our program at 25, 26 years old. That was a really impactful time.”
“I owe a lot to both of them for really giving me a chance, and I’m very thankful that I have some great friends still to this day that I got to play with,” Johnson said. “It’s hard to picture my playing experience anywhere else now after having been there.”
While finishing up his undergraduate degree but without any remaining athletic eligibility, Johnson stayed involved in the athletic department, helping Athletic Director Land with several athletic projects to help pay for his final year of school.
“I had another full year of school to do, and I couldn’t pay for it without a baseball scholarship,” Johnson said. “I will always be grateful to Coach Land – he basically said, ‘If you do a bunch of work for me, we’ll give you a scholarship for this year.’ I can’t tell you how many times I mowed the outfield grass in Carroll B. Land Stadium.”
A few months into his final school year, Johnson realized where his true passion lay: coaching.
“I was detached from athletics or baseball for the first time in my life, and it just wasn’t quite sitting right,” Johnson said. “I remember it clear as day – we played the alumni game in November, and I just went in to talk to Coach Sarver. It was like, ‘Hey, I want to coach. Would you take me on, and I’ll do whatever you want?’ He did right away, so that was my pay for school to help baseball.”
While knowing he was the low man on the totem pole, Johnson said he did everything in his power to help PLNU Baseball become the best program it could be.
“I owe him a lot for getting me started,” Johnson said of Sarver. “At the end of that first season he was like, ‘I’d really like you to stay.’ I remember getting a whopping like $3,000 the next year to be an assistant coach, and then it morphed into a little bit more. Everybody at Point Loma was so good to me.
“After I started coaching, they found me a couple weight training classes to teach, and I was doing baseball lessons at the cages there at 10:00 at night to make money. I was able to set my life up in a way where I could literally do Point Loma Baseball almost all the time.”
In 2003, Point Loma finished as regional runner-up before placing third at the NAIA World Series in 2004, after which Coach Sarver moved on, opening up the head coaching position.
And while Johnson was ultimately hired to be the head coach of his alma mater ahead of the 2005 season, the now two-time national championship coach at LSU nearly didn’t get his head coaching start on The Point.
“I was like the fourth choice,” Johnson joked of the hiring process. “We had just almost won the national championship, and I’d like to think that it was clear the impact I was making in terms of the caliber of players we were bringing in, how well we were playing, how organized the program was, the winning that had taken place. But I think there was a thought that I was still pretty young, at that time 27 years old.”
“I got far more from Point Loma than I gave back, and I gave everything I had for seven years both as a student athlete and as a coach. I really want to see them be successful. The school means a lot to me and the program means a lot to me.”
Johnson’s eventual hiring paid immediate dividends, as he led Point Loma to a 37-16 record in 2005, which included a trip to the NAIA Region II playoffs after a first-place finish in the GSAC Southern Division.
“They tried to offer it to like four other people and one of them actually accepted the job and then moved to San Diego and was like, ‘I can’t do this, like I can’t make a living off of this.’ There was about a 10-to-12 day period of being totally in limbo.”
Johnson’s eventual hiring paid immediate dividends, as he led Point Loma to a 37-16 record in 2005, which included a trip to the NAIA Region II playoffs after a first-place finish in the GSAC Southern Division.
That’s when one of Johnson’s easiest decisions, attending Point Loma, turned into one of his toughest – leaving the Point to move across town and become the associate head coach at NCAA Division I University of San Diego.
“I really believed I was going to stay there for a very long time and would have been very happy doing that,” Johnson said. “It was almost uncomfortable leaving after one year. I didn’t really want to leave. I liked being the head coach; I loved Point Loma. I just had enough people around me, so to speak, say that if you ever want to kind of get to the point I’m at now, you have to make this move. It was a big-time roll of the dice because I was very happy and at peace and loved Point Loma.
“Looking back now, it was one of the best decisions I ever made, but leaving after becoming the head coach at my alma mater, a place I love, was the ultimate risk-reward type of decision. I mean it worked out, but it still didn’t make it an easy decision.”
Johnson has gone on to make history at every one of his coaching stops since leaving 3900 Lomaland Drive.
As associate head coach at USD, Johnson helped the Toreros to their best stretch in program history by making six NCAA Tournaments in his eight seasons, before the Point Loma alum got his first NCAA Division I head coaching job at Nevada, leading the Wolfpack to its first Mountain West Conference title in any sport.
“I was still kind of growing up in the profession while I was the head coach at Point Loma, but when I left to go to Nevada eight years later, I felt incredibly prepared to do that,” Johnson said.
After his success in Reno, Johnson was hired as head coach at Arizona, where he led the Wildcats to two College World Series appearances in five full seasons, becoming the fifth coach ever to lead a team to the CWS Finals in a head coach’s first year at a program.
That led to him being hired at LSU, where he made history in June by becoming the first NCAA Division I baseball head coach to win two national titles in his first four seasons at a school.
“Arizona was probably the best job in the country for me,” Johnson said. “I left because LSU is the best job in the country, period.
“I value my time at all of these different places. Point Loma is special because it was where I started. San Diego is special just because of the amount of learning that took place over those eight years. Nevada was that first Division I opportunity, and we were successful right away. Arizona felt like you finally kind of made it to the big-time program, and then this LSU thing is just pretty awesome. I mean that’s the only way I can describe it.”
As he’s risen the coaching ranks at the highest level of collegiate baseball, Johnson’s ties to Point Loma still run deep.
That was exemplified in June 2024, when Johnson’s Tigers were playing in the Chapel Hill Regional at the University of North Carolina while Point Loma was competing in the NCAA Division II World Series in nearby Cary.
“I value my time at all of these different places. Point Loma is special because it was where I started. San Diego is special just because of the amount of learning that took place over those eight years.”
On PLNU’s off day, several Point Loma administrators made the trip to watch LSU play Wofford, with Johnson welcoming the Point Loma traveling contingent onto the field after the game.
“It was like two different lives intersecting,” Johnson said. “Twenty-plus years ago I was very young just getting started in this profession. Now, at the time, we’re trying to defend winning the national championship. I remember feeling so blessed that that’s where this whole thing started for me. I always call Point Loma my home base.”
The PLNU group included recently retired President Bob Brower, Athletic Director Ethan Hamilton, Faculty Athletic Representative and kinesiology professor Dr. Tim Hall, as well as Associate Vice President for Enrollment and Retention Scott Shoemaker.
“Tim Hall would have lunch with me and spend time with me as a young coach, and what a quality friendship that is. I was running player after player after player over to Scott Shoemaker in admissions, and he helped us a lot. With President Brower, I was like, ‘Holy cow, this was the president of the university when I was a student there.’ I didn’t even know if he knew my name. Ethan had become one of my best friends when he’d come back to coach at Point Loma right before I left to go to USD. There was a little bit of overlap while I was the head coach there, and we became really good friends because of the quality of guy that he was.
“I remember thinking this is really cool that people who were instrumental in where it started were there, because Point Loma is now in the Division II World Series. I take a lot of pride in that.”
Johnson still gives financially to the PLNU Baseball program, which is now led by Justin James (04), the first player Johnson ever recruited to play at Point Loma.
“It’s just been awesome to see his success, his growth, and the pride that he takes in the program,” Johnson said of James. “It’s awesome knowing that the program is in great hands, and it’s in great hands because of his care level for it and what he’s putting into it. He’s doing a great job.”
Johnson stays up to date on how his former program is doing, as he checks the PLNU Athletics website every weekend to see how PLNU Baseball did in a given week.
“I got far more from Point Loma than I gave back, and I gave everything I had for seven years both as a student athlete and as a coach,” Johnson said. “I really want to see them be successful. The school means a lot to me and the program means a lot to me.”
Because Point Loma is, in fact, and always will be, his home base.
