Coach will be ‘greatly missed’
Murphy – Murphy High School athletics has a huge hole to fill, as girls track & field coach Penny Johnson is retiring after 27 years as a teacher and coach in Cherokee County Schools.
“It’s going to be really, really hard to replace her and I don’t think you replace her,” Murphy head football coach Joseph Watson said of Johnson. “She’ll be greatly missed by Murphy High School, the students and the staff, there’s no doubt.”
Johnson spent the first 10 years of her career at coaching the girls basketball and track & field teams at Andrews High School before returning to her alma mater in 2007. A 1990 graduate of Murphy High, Johnson coached the Lady Bulldogs’ track and field team for 17 years, but also spent five years as a girls basketball assistant coach for Cissy Bristol Dyer before taking over for Dyer as the head coach from 2012 and staying in the role for the next four seasons.
Her track & field teams at Murphy had the most success, as the Lady Bulldogs won back-to-back state championships in 2018-19, four 1A West Regional championships and seven Smoky Mountain Conference championships. Following the 2018 title, Johnson was named the N.C. High School Athletic Association Track Coach of the Year. The 2018 title was the program’s first since 1995 when Johnson’s mother, Frankie Roberson, was the coach.
Johnson also served as the Smoky Mountain Conference president for 20 years, overseeing not just all the athletic directors in the conference, but also the league’s finances and paperwork as well as setting the schedule for each sport. She was the go-to person if anyone had questions about the rules.
“That’s a humongous job, and that’s the best thing our conference has done since they hired her,” Watson said. “That job is a tough job, and a tough job to do for one person, and I don’t know how she did it. But she
does it, and she was the best at it.”
Besides being an accomplished coach, Johnson is arguably one of the best athletes to come from Cherokee County. As a student at Murphy, she was named All-Conference in volleyball, basketball, softball and track & field.
She then went on to play basketball at Appalachian State University, where she was named Southern Conference Freshman of the Year for the 1990-91 season, All-Conference in 1991-92 and 1993-94, and was named to the SoCon conference tournament team in 1991.
Johnson, then known as Penny Roberson, is still in the program’s record books, sitting 14th all-time in career points (1,259) and seventh in assists (291) entering the 2022-23 season. She stayed in Boone through 1996, working as a graduate assistant while earning a masters’ degree in physical education.
Despite all the accolades, Johnson kept a humble persona as a coach. She declined to be interviewed for this story, saying it was not about her but the kids. That persona rubbed off on all who interacted with her, as they saw she really was about putting the athletes first and trying to help in any way she could.
According to 2021 graduate Sarah Pullium, Johnson was someone you could go to not just for coaching, but for advice on things off the field. She said Johnson pushed her to do track and field and college.
After winning three state titles and setting the Murphy school record in the discus throw, Pullium won the event – and set the University of North Carolina at Charlotte school record in the event during the Conference USA championships this spring.
“Coach Johnson, she’s a special woman,” Pullium said. “She’s definitely a light to everyone around her. She just made me into an athlete, better woman, she’s just a really excellent role model of what I wanted to be. She did a lot for me, and I really appreciate her.”
Johnson’s successor has not yet been named. Her departure leaves an open teaching position at Murphy as well, as she also taught physical education classes.