It’s been a tough year for Arkansas football signee JJ Hollingsworth and his family, but it’s ending well and getting through that adversity is going to make this a special Christmas.
Hollingsworth (6-3, 250) was one of 20 prospects who inked their national letter-of-intent with the Razorbacks on Dec. 15 and he did so with his dad and mom Jaye and Amy Johnson, his younger brother E.J. and what seemed like most of the Greenland community looking on with pride.
He is the first student-athlete from Greenland to receive a football scholarship from Arkansas.
“It’s still pretty surreal,” noted Hollingworth, who joined fellow signee and early enrollee Kaden Henley of Shiloh Christian in practicing with the Razorbacks earlier this week. “…I have a good group of guys coming in with me and it is a great feeling, especially after what we went through to get here.”
Amy Johnson battled a major illness that left her hospitalized and came while she and her family were mourning a death in the family.
“Our family has had a tough year,” Amy Johnson said. “We lost my brother unexpectedly just 12 hours after I had a major surgery and it was right at the beginning of J.J.’s football season. He (J.J.) and I are super close and the best thing about it was that he had already achieved his dream, which he let me know when he was seven years old when he said, ‘I am going to play for the Razorbacks.’”
Amy and her family are thankful for Greenland.
“I got really sick and had been out of work for a long time but our Greenland community rallied around us and rallied around J.J,” Amy said. “When I couldn’t go to his football games, the other moms would go to the games, yell for him and send me pictures.
“His coach (Lee Larkin) was making sure he had everything he needed. Everybody in this community was stepping up. If it wasn’t for them, his senior season wouldn’t have been as easy as it was. It was hard for him because his biggest fan wasn’t there, but they made sure our family was taken care of.”
So when the family wakes up on Christmas Day, it will feel blessed.
“This has by far been the hardest year in my life and there is not a day that I wake up that I don’t think God for my children, for my husband, for my family, for my community and for my health,” Amy said. “People don’t realize how much we take things for granted.
“But when you are laying in a hospital and you are so sick that you are asking God to just take you now and he says ‘no, I am not ready for you, you still have things to do on this earth’, it makes you appreciate things because my kids are my world, my husband is my world and I do everything I do for them. I wake up and everything I do is for my family.
“That’s the way it was yesterday, that’s how it is today that it how it is going to be tomorrow and what I am going to continue to do. Because life is precious, life is so precious and it takes something like being sick and what I went through to realize it. I’ve done it and I am going to take every advantage of what God has given me and now given him. My baby’s dream came through and I got to see it.”
Jaye Johnson remembers driving the short way from Greenland to Fayetteville and J.J. seeing Arkansas’ home stadium.
“This whole thing started way, way back as JJ has played some type of football even before kindergarten,” Jaye said. “In fact, when he was seven years old we were coming down the hill in front of Donald W. Reynolds Stadium in the truck and he looks over and says ‘Dad, I’m going to play in there one day.' I said, ‘OK, it’s time to get to work,’ and since that day he has been straight up in school, doing what he needs to do on and off the field and everything you could ever ask him to do, he has done it.”
Hollingsworth got an offer from Arkansas during the summer of 2020 after he produced a tape of football action and pulling his mom’s vehicle.
“We were thinking about what he could do to be seen and that’s where the video came of him pulling his mom’s Escalade and the box jumps came from and all that stuff,” Jaye said. “We were just thinking of things he could do to put himself out there. He put one video out there and his name started getting circulated.
“Within a month, Coach Pittman calls him himself and says I want to offer you a full-ride scholarship to play for the Hogs.”
Hollingsworth also had offers from Kansas and Akron at the time, but essentially just shut down his recruiting.
“A lot of people don’t know that the day J.J. got that call from Coach Pittman, he took no more calls from coaches from other schools,” Amy said. “A lot of schools were calling and sending letters and he wouldn’t even open them because he got what he wanted.
“Some people said that was a bad thing for him to do, but when you get what you want and it’s been your dream your whole life, why mess around.”
Hollingsworth would have 66 tackles with 13.5 tackles for loss, 8.0 sacks and one forced fumble as a junior to help lead Greenland to a 9-3 record and a state playoff appearance.
During that time, the Hollingsworths were falling in love with Pittman and his staff.
“There is no other coaching staff that I trust more than that group of guys up there,” Amy said. “I am at great peace knowing that he is going to further his life and they are going to help teach him to become a man even more.
“I told Coach Pittman all I need from you is his name on that (graduate) sidewalk. He looked at J.J. and said, ‘If you miss class, I am going to embarrass you in front of the whole team.’ J.J is a straight A student so I don’t think we will have to worry about that, but knowing that Coach Pittman has my back as far as that goes is great.”
Amy believes the addition of Tulsa defensive line coach Jermial Ashley to Arkansas’ staff in 2021 was a special hire for Hollingsworth, who had 63 tackles, 10 stops for lost yardage and 3 sacks as a senior for a 4-6 team.
“Coach Ashley and all those other coaches are like family and have been that way since day one," she said. “When Coach Ashley came, I will be honest with you that it was one of the greatest days for me because he is the coach that was made for J.J. He is going to push J.J., he is going to develop J.J. and I have full faith in him.
“He and Coach Pittman are good men and they are going to teach J.J. to be a good man and a good husband, a good community citizen and that’s who they are.”
Jaye agrees with that and believes he saw that in a camp.
“Since J.J. was little we have seen Houston Nutt camps, Bret Bielema camps, we’ve seen Chad Morris camps and I tell people all the time that the thing that stuck out to me about Coach Pittman himself,” Jaye said, “was that when we went to camp and took little brother E.J., Coach Pittman was out there running offensive line drills with 7 and 8 year old kids.
“For me, just being that personable no matter the age and saying I am going to show my face, I am going to work with you and I am going to show you what it means to be a Razorback and so involved is amazing.
“And that’s from Coach Pittman to Coach Ashley to Coach (Barry) Odom, even guys that don’t even coach his position like Coach (Sam) Carter, running backs coach (Jimmy Smith), receivers coach (Kenny Guiton), they all treat him with so much respect and treat us like family.”
Humbleness and politeness are two things that are often used to describe the Greenland star.
“It makes us as parents proud the other people talk about him, it is always ‘he is such a respectful kid, he is so well-mannered.’ It just lets us know that we as parents are doing a good job. And we have got another one coming right behind him,” Jaye said.
The fact that there will be no University of Arkansas bill in his mailbox makes Jaye smile.
“It is going to be exciting because we know we are not going to pay for his education,” Jaye said. “I don’t care how much money you have, not having to worry about paying for your child’s education makes it the best Christmas ever.”