I met Damon at some point during the first year of Founders Classical Academy of Leander, 2014-2015. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he started his gym, White Tail Crossfit, the same year I moved to Texas and helped found the school. I was focused on building our athletic programs over the long run, and I called him to talk about getting our students access to some weights and lifting equipment. It just so happened his gym was a couple hundred yards from our campus, and I had crossed off the possibility of getting a weight room or equipment on campus anytime soon, so this was up next on my list of creative solutions. [Side note: the only other landmarks that qualified as being a couple hundred yards from our campus are a tree nursery, a steel factory, and railroad tracks. So, this coincidental proximity was highly significant!]
Damon invited me to stop by between classes he was leading, and I immediately liked him. Not only was he open to the idea of working together, but he was totally flexible on the details. From the start, I got the feeling he cared about helping us out more than he cared about the bottom line of his business. Our brief chat ended without any solid plans, but I knew if the problem could be solved, Damon would be up for it.
Over the next few years, we coordinated various unsuccessful attempts to get a weight lifting program up and running. There was an afternoon iteration, but it conflicted with practices and turnout was inconsistent from season-to-season—weight-lifting needs months of consistent training to get results! We also tried something I branded as “Archer Muscle” (A.M.) in the mornings before school, and it was an improvement, but ultimately I concluded it was asking too much of our students to add an hour at the start of their day, as nearly all of them were involved in multiple aspects of our school community after school (plus jobs and homework and church and family), and the cost was a hurdle for many who would have been interested. On top of these difficulties, our school doesn’t have showers, and the proposition of getting sweaty in the morning then changing into a school uniform for the rest of the day was a tough sell, even for me.
Finally, once our high school was full and we had started adding electives, I decided to pursue the only remaining option: having students leave campus during school to lift weights. Taking a field trip three days a week is a long shot and I anticipated the request getting denied for a dozen different reasons when I proposed it to my administration, but, against all odds, it was approved! Advanced Personal Fitness was established in fall 2017, and it has been the highlight of my work day ever since.
I can’t fully explain why I love it so much, but I’m going to try. First, I value its unique-nicity. Second, I value its separation. We get to leave campus, get away from everything, and be in our own space together. It’s like teleporting to a different world, and it never gets old for me. I’m a private person, so I like having a place that feels isolated from the hustle and bustle of a K-12 school, but I also appreciate the trust put in me to run an operation like this without oversight. Third, since it’s an elective, everyone in the class has chosen to be there, so it’s a natural filter that results in people who care about the same things I care about being in the same place and doing the same things together. Shared experience isn’t everything, but it’s close. This is a reason why Damon and I connected, I think—we are the only two people in the world who knew and lived the entire eight-year history of Advanced Personal Fitness at White Tail Crossfit, and going on such a long, exclusive journey together had a bonding effect.
The original intent was to decrease the competitive disadvantage our teams faced when competing against public schools with “Athletics” periods and private schools with donated weight rooms (and increase our advantage over charter schools with neither), but the class is by no means elitist. If we had room for every student in the school (or if I could snap my fingers and make it a requirement), then there would be no hesitation. As it is, the class is about half Varsity athletes and half students who are curious about lifting weights and want to get their P.E. credit (two semesters required in Texas). And it’s awesome. As I occasionally remind the students, I had zero exposure to lifting weights through high school. Even once I went to community college and enrolled in a weight lifting class, the entire grade was based around how many times my name was on the log at the fitness center. No guidance, no accountability, no instruction. I learned by watching the people who looked like they knew what they were doing, and then trying to imitate them. I did the same thing with Damon, and he recognized that I was absorbing his knowledge and techniques. Once I proved myself, he treated me like one of his coaches on staff. If you observe the average high school football team lifting session, it’s going to involve loud music and questionable form while adolescent boys risk injury attempting to out-macho each other—Advanced Personal Fitness is the opposite of those things. Great instruction, emphasis on technique and safety, and a focus on individual improvement and excellence, separate from unhealthy comparison or competition.
Like anything else, there is a temptation to focus on the short run when it comes to physical education. I know of private schools whose middle school P.E. consists entirely of practice for their sports teams (hey, it frees up gym space after school, too!), and high school programs who prioritize checking off the state requirement over actually providing real, challenging physical education. My goal is different, because I begin with the end in mind—our mission is to prepare our students to live good lives. Yes, I want our teams to be excellent, but the priority is to teach all of our students a healthy approach to fitness that can be sustained over the long run. A lot happens after the age of 18, and you need to be ready for anything!
As part of my overall constant push for effort and excellence, I spend time in class each semester talking about gratitude and how it relates to living well. Specifically, I attempt to invert the default human approach to physical discomfort. Rather than cut corners and avoid pushing yourself during a hard workout, the way I see it, you have a responsibility to do your best to be in your best physical shape simply because you are capable of it. I remind them they aren’t always going to be young, they aren’t always going to be healthy, and the things they take for granted are things that other people would do anything to have. Don’t waste the gift.
Sometimes we have relevant examples in front of us, and sometimes I reach into my past experiences or use examples of people they are familiar with. This semester, the assistant in the class tore his calf while teaching a 6th-grade P.E. class and was out a couple months. A former classmate tore her ACL at her college basketball practice, the second time suffering the same catastrophic injury. Why do you think this can’t happen to you? You’re not special. The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, was an aspiring pro golfer before being paralyzed on a jog when a tree limb fell on his head. He didn’t let it ruin his life and actually turned it into a positive, which is admirable, but the point remains. And yes, I do clarify my goal is not to make them afraid or paranoid about freak, low probability occurrences, but rather to be aware. Be aware bad things happen, often totally out of our control, and it’s crazy to think these sorts of things will never affect us personally. You shouldn’t assume the way things are right now is the way they will always be. Your goal should be to live life to the fullest every day so you don’t ever find yourself looking back wishing you had appreciated what you had. I tell them—and this is true—that every time I run or workout I take a moment to be grateful I can, rather than focus on the discomfort. If they still aren’t getting it, I tell them about Danielle. Danielle was a former student of mine who was diagnosed with brain cancer as a freshman and died a year later. Death at 15. These things do happen.
You might be getting the impression that I’m a fear-monger or pessimist, but I don’t see it that way. I try to learn from my experiences and mistakes, but I would rather learn the hard lessons secondhand. So, when I have learned something about living well or being happy, I am highly motivated to at least give my students the chance to benefit, too. They aren’t always going to listen or learn, but at least I provided the opportunity! And, ultimately, this topic is a small aspect of the class—most of the time we are focused on what is in front of us, I just find it helpful to inject awareness and perspective from time to time.
One of my favorite things about this class is the gift of confidence. Once you know how to lift weights, how you look at the world changes. You can walk into a gym and know what you’re doing, and all of a sudden you have agency and authority. So much of our lives revolve around looking at screens and attempting to solve theoretical problems—how satisfying is it to be able to assert dominance over real, material weights and make them go where you want!? Beyond that, if you’re strong (or stronger than you were, even), it changes how you carry yourself. The same goes for thinking you are intelligent or attractive or whatever else, but strength is such an inherently physical characteristic, and something anyone can improve at, that I see it as the single biggest game changer we can control. In recent decades, the American answer to all fitness / fat loss questions has been to go for a jog, and I think that has been a huge mistake (though I would take it over nothing!). The pendulum of public opinion seems to agree with me—Advanced Personal Fitness is years ahead of the curve. Weight lifting is for everyone!
This is why I made sure to emphasize weight lifting when I gave the faculty address at our graduation in 2020. The fact our Valedictorian voluntarily chose to be in our class his senior year was no small detail, as far as I was concerned, and our Valedictorian the next year was also an Advanced Personal Fitness graduate. More than a few of our class veterans have gone into the military, and others I see at the gym outside of school. Last year, we had a student switch from remote learning in the fall semester into the class in the spring, and he could barely move the next day. His mom called me, suggesting I hadn’t given him the proper attention and had let him get injured as a result, but she withdrew her case when I was able to tell her exactly who he had been partnered up with, how much weight he was lifting, and what feedback we had given him on his technique. Turns out he was just sore, not injured, and going from months of total inactivity to a real workout meant that he felt every muscle in his body the next day. This year, he came back and recruited some of his friends! Those are the stories I love the most, because I know they are the least likely and the biggest game-changers. For the record, our class has had exactly zero injuries at White Tail Crossfit (*knock on wood*), though we have had two minor injuries on the jog to/from the gym, plus one broken flatscreen TV!
I appreciate things that are good, because good things are scarce, but this class falls into a whole different category. It shouldn’t exist. Every day it happens, I am full of wonder and gratitude. In the wake of Damon’s death last Saturday, this lesson has been driven home times infinity. I keep thinking about all of the sacrifices he made for our students—his time and money and coaching expertise, for starters—and how many lives were changed for the better, forever, as a result.
It has been humbling, too. I liked to think Advanced Personal Fitness was my creation, and I was wrong. It was Damon’s. I remember when I first asked him if we could just focus on the basic lifts and not get heart rates up too high, since it’s hot and humid in Texas for most of the year and the kids had to go back to class afterward, and he didn’t bat an eye. Your average Crossfit box owner is conditioned to sneer at this prospect, since doing bench press doesn’t fit their definition of “functional fitness”, but Damon started creating custom workouts for our class that were designed around our priorities and schedule. We lift Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and focus on deadlifts (sumo and regular), squats (front and back), and press (bench and strict) with mobility/accessory work on the side. He designed the program and coached the majority of classes himself, and he was great at it.
I am in awe of what he gave to our students these last five+ years. Personalized lifting programs, expert coaching, and access to all the free weight equipment you could ever want. Squat racks, med balls, kettlebells, foam rollers, sleds, ropes—all of it for us. No restrictions, no catch. Your average Crossfit member pays a couple hundred dollars a month for a couple classes a week, and our students were getting all of this for free, with the school paying an hourly rate that Damon could have surpassed by driving for Lyft (or at least outsourced to a new coach eager for hours). He wanted to be there; he loved it. It was never about the money, it was the community. [Side note: another reason I identify with Damon is his unusual educational background and financial independence: Criminal Justice major, tested law school then decided to pivot into joining the family business instead, and he founded White Tail Crossfit as a passion project rather than a primary source of income—not what you would expect from a guy spending his mornings teaching teenagers proper squat form!] Damon spent his life doing the things he cared about with the people he cared about, he always had his priorities in order, and he helped the people around him realize what their priorities should be. That is true greatness, in my book.
I feel like I failed him. I should have done a better job at getting him recognition from our school for his contributions. At the end of each semester, I would have our students write him thank you cards as part of their final assignment, but I could have done a lot more. He never asked for anything, and he never let us down. I think I’m the only one at our school (besides Aimee!) who comes close to understanding what he did for us and why, and it shouldn’t be that way. Damon was part of our coaching staff for seven years, worked with several dozen students per year, and he didn’t have to do any of it. It wasn’t his primary job or close to it, and he always gave us his best. He was almost never on campus, unless he was dropping off something a student left at his gym during class, so the average student or staff member wouldn’t even have recognized him. The kids who took his class knew him as Coach Damon, and beyond that he was a name, just another coach.
Honestly, I also feel like I have no right to feel as devastated by his death as I do. He grew up and went to school and college in Central Texas, had his whole Crossfit community and family here, and the vast majority of our interactions were business. I went to his funeral today, and I only knew a handful of the hundreds of people present. Over the years, we would share updates and small talk when we could relax for moments during class (when we weren’t paranoid about a freshman backsquatter needing a spotter), but it was mostly things like what the school sports teams had accomplished that week, or what was going on with his gym. The quality time and middle ground that most good friendships have was missing, yet we developed a real, deep connection. There was an understanding our core values were the same—both our lives were built around faith, family, and fitness, and we were both in leadership positions we created for the sake of being a part of good, healthy communities who valued the same things we did. Damon was better than me at it in many ways, and I admire him for that. He could interact with anyone on any level and form a connection, whereas I tend to need more reps and more time to get to a point of mutual understanding (and I still fail a lot, but writing helps).
As I listened to some of his closest friends eulogize him today, my unstated instincts were reinforced. Damon was a great man, and I want to be like him. Several of the people who spoke referenced a eulogy Damon gave for his grandfather, a responsibility he described as “the most important thing he’s ever done” (similar to how I approached my 2020 graduation speech). In it, he highlighted four main points: sacrifice, leadership, love, and finally, family (community is the family you choose). Beyond those connections, I identify with him because he married later, and married well. I knew him before he met his wife Paige, and I got occasional updates as their relationship progressed—he did it right. One of his childhood friends highlighted today how long Damon had waited for Paige, and he specifically mentioned how confused their friend group was over the years because Damon never showed interest in the girls they would try to set him up with… that resonates with me, strongly. Patience is a virtue, unless you’re an eligible bachelor.
Damon’s role as a husband and father might be biggest reason his death has left me heartbroken. He was one of the good ones, and he had everything going for him and his family. To have that taken away so unexpectedly at age 38, just as all his patience and hard work was starting to pay off, is crushing. Thursday, I was sitting in the room outside my assistant headmaster’s office, waiting for a meeting to discuss important things like whether my most recent classroom evaluation met various state standards in various categories, and I decided to check my phone. I saw Damon had taken a turn for the worse after a few weeks of stability, and it wasn’t the update that sent me reeling, it was the fact that his daughter’s first birthday was that day. Lauren was born several months premature after an emergency C-section, and she spent her first 124 days in the hospital. Damon was there for her each and every day, while still teaching our classes without complaint. I started crying sitting on the couch next to our nurse’s office, beside a kindergartner who needed a lollipop for her headache, and I walked into the meeting with tears still streaming down my face. Life, man.
Damon had it figured out. Even seeing this tragedy play out in all of its awfulness, the one recurring thought I’ve had is “this is how response to tragedy should be”. The community, the support, the values—it’s all right and good. This is how it is supposed to work. As much as my heart breaks for his family and friends and what should have been, I can’t stop thinking about all of the people who don’t have those things. Damon lived a full, good life, and he had a massively positive influence on the world. How many people are out there without strong family ties, or good friends, or a community to give them support and purpose? Way too many. Aside from the grief and frustration, that’s my takeaway. This is the right mission, and this is the right process. We need more converts and more buy-in. The more people who are inspired by Damon and his values and his actions and his life, the quicker we can get to the good place.
Be like Damon.
When I addressed the Advanced Personal Fitness class the Monday after his death, I kept it brief. I don’t understand why bad things happen, but I do believe everything works out for good in the longest run. I’m choosing to be inspired by his life, and the things he built—his family, friends, White Tail Crossfit, Advanced Personal Fitness, to name a few—are going to continue being a force for good. It’s not going to be easy to move forward without him, but I can keep going because he set the standard.
Coach Damon is survived by his wife Paige and their one-year-old daughter Lauren. If you would like to support them, please consider buying a shirt or contributing otherwise at the links below:
White Tail Crossfit / Team Damon:
https://www.whitetailcrossfit.com/teamdamon.html
Be Like Damon tank top:
https://whitetailcf.pushpress.com/open/purchase/prd_84ee73381799eb
If you would rather donate without purchasing a shirt:
https://whitetailcf.pushpress.com/open/purchase/prd_daf1164727555c
Damon’s GoFund Me:
www.gofundme.com/f/damonjohnson
