Jeremy Johnson has long been appreciated by athletes and coaches at Boyle County, and now he has been recognized by his peers.

Johnson, the longtime athletic trainer at Boyle, was recently named the High School Athletic Trainer of the Year by the Kentucky Athletic Trainers’ Society.

He was recognized at the KATS annual meeting earlier this summer in Louisville.

“It’s a big honor,” Johnson said.

Johnson has begun his 15th year as Boyle’s athletic trainer, and he is exactly where he wants to be.

“There’s only so many places I can work,” he said.

He could have worked at the collegiate level, and in fact it was a goal of his to work in a major college football program.

“I didn’t get the chance to do that, but I did get to work in college,” he said.

And he discovered that it wasn’t what he thought it would be.

“It’s just more of a business,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t seem conducive to family life, and I didn’t want to do it.”

Johnson spent a year as a trainer at a South Carolina high school before coming home. His path to becoming an athletic trainer began when he worked as a student aide under longtime Boyle athletic trainer Joan Mann, and he returned to his alma mater to replace Mann when she retired.

Both the days and the seasons are long, but Johnson loves his work. He has no complaints about working a few extra games when Boyle teams go deep into the postseason, saying he is grateful to work for a school with a successful culture that goes beyond sports.

“Some places you lose early and you get more time off and it’s not as demanding … and that’s just not me,” he said.

Johnson teaches an athletic training class in addition to his duties with Boyle sports, and some of the students who have worked under him as aides have gone on to careers in athletic training just as he did after working under Mann.

He has long been active in KATS, which works to increase awareness and education of issues related to athletic training. He serves on the organization’s executive council as one of four regional representatives.

This is the first time he has received statewide recognition from KATS.

“Some people were nice enough to nominate me,” he said.