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Strawberry Manor resident O’Shay Johnson doesn’t just coach student athletes on how to dribble a basketball or throw a football.
The 52-year-old sees sports as an opportunity to teach life skills from discipline to money management, and guide children down a different path from the one he took.
Johnson works as the director of I Am ManPower Academy, a youth development program using sports to teach anger management, conflict resolution and financial literacy to participants between ages 8 and 17. He officially started the program in October 2021 with a focus on Sacramento City Council District 2, which includes the Del Paso Heights area where he grew up. The program and his connections serve as a platform for him to share city of Sacramento resources as an alumnus of the Community Ambassador Program.
As a child, Johnson said he played football and baseball in addition to hunting crawdads and jackrabbits for fun. But he also gradually got involved with gangs, starting with selling drugs in seventh grade. Fights at school sports games developed into activity at the bowling alley and skating rink.
Eventually, Johnson said he co-founded two gangs in the area. At age 20, he found himself on trial for attempted murder. Johnson remembers the time as a stressful blur.
“That’s why today I can be happy all the time because I’ve already been through something that was so strenuous,” Johnson said. “I mean, it molded me. It didn’t make me bitter, but it made me conscious.”
He was sentenced to prison and was incarcerated for nearly 27 years, including in Folsom, Vacaville and Pelican Bay. When his father and grandfather visited, Johnson said they would update him on their involvement in youth sports back home, from Grant Little League to the Grant Jr. Pacers football program.
Hearing his grandfather talk about professional athletes not returning to the community to give back made him want to try to help. Johnson said he started writing concepts to teach youth workforce skills and guide them on neighborhood cleanups. Instead of just sending them home after playing sports, he wanted to add another level of mentorship and experiences.
Johnson knew he wanted to try implementing his curriculum after he was released from prison in January 2019. Today, Johnson said the root of his lessons for I Am ManPower Academy come from what he wrote while incarcerated.
The lessons are mandatory in the program’s Sacramento Saints youth football league. Through a city of Sacramento Measure U grant, Johnson taught youth how to use landscaping tools and paid them a work stipend.
He also incorporates the curriculum when he facilitates the Kings and Queens Rise summer basketball league, which is centered around violence prevention. Johnson said he embraces his past because it allows him to recognize the language, mannerisms, signs and tattoos associated with gangs.
“By being in a gang, I started looking at studying myself in gang activity,” Johnson said. “So, now when I’m out here and I’m seeing these young people doing the things they do, it’s like I can read them real easy,” Johnson said.
His sister Kanisha Johnson said that compared to people who haven’t been incarcerated, he has an advantage in youth violence prevention work. He is able to share what he missed and how he had to cope, she said.
“He don’t want that type of life or consequences for the generation today,” Kanisha said. “He want them to see, basically, it’s other things out there besides being in a gang.”
She serves as a cheer coordinator for the Sacramento Saints and said that her brother shows youth how to turn negative energy into something positive. He encourages them to find compromises and work together with others, she said.
O’Shay Johnson believes youth are the future and said he wants to see more people genuinely work to improve the District 2 community.
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