Micah Johnson sat inside an arena at the University of Massachusetts Lowell on a June morning and watched a surgeon perform a full shoulder replacement, live, on a screen in front of hundreds of students from across the country.

“You would think that they’re more delicate during surgery but they’re really not,” Johnson said. “They’re jerking it around, drilling into the very middle of it. It’s very visceral.”

Johnson said the experience only pulled him closer to the field.

“I want to be a part of that to just help someone,” he said. “To be able to help save someone’s life, or help change someone’s life for the better, indefinitely.”

Johnson, a senior and a Captain on the football team at Fort Walton Beach High School, was a Delegate to the Congress of Future Medical Leaders, a three-day honors program held June 25-27, 2025, on the UMass Lowell campus just outside Boston. The program brings together top high school students from across the country who are interested in becoming physicians or going into medical research.

His nomination to represent Fort Walton Beach High School was signed by Dr. Mario Capecchi, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Science Director of the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists, based on Johnson’s academic achievement, leadership potential and determination to serve humanity in the field of medicine.

Johnson said the nomination arrived in the mail, and he was immediately interested.

• “I looked it up online, and saw that you get to go to Boston, to the college and look around, and you get to go to this medical conference,” Johnson said. “I was sold. I was ready to go.”

Johnson’s roots in the area run deep. His father, Tommy Johnson, is a former state champion at Niceville High School, has coached football at Fort Walton Beach High and Crestview and is now Head Flag Football Coach at FWBHS. Johnson’s mother, a former Teacher at Edwins Elementary, is an EEG Technician at the hospital on Eglin Air Force Base. His younger sister just started her freshman year at Fort Walton Beach High.

“This is my home. I love this place,” Johnson said. “I grew up going to Friday Night Lights. This town means everything to me.”

Beyond football, Johnson competes in weightlifting and lacrosse and is in his fourth and final year of the school’s biomedical science program.

He didn’t start out with any interest in medicine.

“I’m going to be honest, I didn’t really have that much of a passion for it,” Johnson said, laughing. “My mom pretty much forced me to take the biomedical class when I was a freshman.”

The spark, however, came during his first lab, when students dissected sheep lungs.

“I think that really sparked my interest because I just thought it was so cool that we get to see the inside and how it works,” he said.

Johnson said the program’s teachers have kept him engaged over the four years. He called his first-year Teacher, Mrs. Megan Mueller, now Assistant Principal at Meigs Middle School in Shalimar, “a really great teacher.” Dr. Shelly Langshaw teaches the program’s third year, and Johnson credits Ms. Lauren Paizes, who taught his sophomore year and is back for his senior year, with helping him stick with it.

• “She understands that she’s not going to always have our attention for an hour straight,” Johnson said. “She’s going to try to keep us engaged and wanting to learn, and I think that really helps me a lot.”

The surgery wasn’t the only part of the congress that left a mark. Over three days, students heard from Nobel Laureates and National Medal of Science recipients, received advice from Ivy League and top medical school deans, and heard from patients who have benefited from medical breakthroughs. Johnson said he was struck by how young some of the presenters were.

“Some were way younger than me, and they’re making airplane windows that stop laser pointers,” Johnson said. “One kid from Africa started his own foundation for polio. He had a really bad polio outbreak in his town, and he figured it out how to solve that problem for everyone.”

The message he took home was about problem-solving.

“They told us, if y’all keep problem-solving, the sky’s the limit,” he said.

Johnson put that to work over the summer, volunteering in the emergency room at HCA Florida Fort Walton-Destin Hospital from the start of summer break until school and football season started back up. The work was largely hands-on: making beds, bringing patients water and warm blankets, and handling other tasks. But it put him alongside the medical professionals he hopes to work with one day.

“It was also very cool to talk to some of the triage nurses and the doctors that were taking care of the patients,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he’s leaning toward anesthesiology, though he’s also considering work as an MRI or CT scan technician.

His path to college may come through lacrosse, something he never envisioned would be his sport having played football most of life. But he’s had promising conversations with a few colleges, one of which has strong medical facilities.

“Lacrosse definitely has my heart because it’s just the fastest game on two feet, he said.

Fort Walton Beach High’s biomedical science program is part of the national Project Lead the Way curriculum, a four-year sequence that puts students through hands-on, real-world problem-solving from day one.

• Freshmen start with Principles of Biomedical Science, where activities include dissecting a sheep heart and investigating a fictional death.
• Sophomores study Human Body Systems, working through projects like identifying a skeleton using forensic anthropology and DNA analysis.
• The third year, Medical Interventions, has students designing prosthetic arms and investigating how to prevent, diagnose and treat disease.
• Seniors cap the program with Biomedical Innovation, where they design their own solutions to real health care challenges.

Johnson said the program’s teachers go beyond the coursework, sitting down with seniors to help them build a plan for life after graduation. He said Paizes pushes her seniors to think beyond the classroom and have a direction in mind before they graduate.

“We should have something lined up, and if we don’t, that’s okay, but we can work towards that,” he said.

Now into his first full week as a senior, Johnson said he’s grateful his mother pushed him into the program as a freshman, even when he had no interest.

• “I think it really opens up lanes for me to go somewhere, and to have a plan to think about what I’m going to do after high school, after college,” he said.

For students or parents weighing whether the commitment is worth it, Johnson says “just take it.”

“If you get through your four years, you’re a pre-pre-doctor,” he said. That’s how I look at it. This is pre-pre-med school. So why not take it?”