‘Like Christmas morning’: Raven Johnson gifts A’Ones to former high school team
The Westlake High School girls basketball team got a late Christmas gift from one of its best alums last week.
South Carolina star guard Raven Johnson, with a little help from her mother and Gamecock great A’ja Wilson, gifted her entire former high school team in Georgia with Wilson’s signature Nike sneaker: the A’One.
“We’ve never had anyone do anything like that as part of the alumni at Westlake High School,” long-time Westlake head coach Hilda Hankerson told The State.
Hankerson was approached by Johnson’s mother one day after game with the proposal. She was surprised .
“(Raven’s mom) said, ‘Raven wants to get you all some shoes.’ I said, ‘What?’,” Hankerson recalled. “I said, ‘You sure we’re gonna do this? Are you getting them for everybody?’”
Johnson did, in fact, get a pair of A’Ones for everybody including Hankerson, who joked she might put hers in a frame. The shoes are all black with silver accents.
“What better way to give back to my high school alma mater than gifting them the A’Ones!” Johnson posted on X/Twitter on Jan. 10. “Huge thanks to (A’ja Wilson) for helping me do something meaningful for them … Westlake, Westlake, Westlake!!!!”
The team knew the shoes were coming after their sizes were taken beforehand, but that didn’t stop them from loving the gesture, Hankerson said. Her players were “over the moon” opening up the Nike boxes, which was much to the envy of Westlake’s boys basketball team, Hankerson joked.
“They were ripping the boxes open in the hallway,” Hankerson said. “The boys are screaming, ‘Wait a minute. What about us? Tell Raven, what about us?’... The guys were so funny when they watched them tear into the boxes. It was really, really nice. It was like Christmas morning.”
Johnson enjoyed a prolific run during her four years at Westlake. During her time there, Westlake went 110-4, won four state championships and the Geico National Championship in 2021. Johnson was a three-time Atlanta Journal Constitution Player of the Year during high school and earned Naismith Player of the Year and unanimous All-America honors her senior year.
Having a former player like Johnson give anything, let alone sneakers for the entire team, meant “an awful lot” to Hankerson. She hopes Johnson giving back inspires children in the community so maybe “they can do what Raven did one day.”
“To have Raven do what she did, it was just a remarkable situation,” Hankerson said. “Nobody else has had the opportunity to receive any type of gift from a former athlete. She was the first in Westlake history to do something like that. So it was just really touching, especially for me too.”
Johnson is averaging career-bests across the board in her fifth and final season with South Carolina. She has career-high in points per game (10.2), field goal percentage (51.4%), 3-point percentage (37.5) and assists per game (5.2).
She’s also reunited with her former high school teammate Ta’Niya Latson, who she won 82 games with at Westlake. Latson made her return from an ankle injury Sunday after missing three games and is second in scoring for South Carolina with 16.3 points per game.
Hankerson has enjoyed watching her two former players together again at South Carolina.
“We are just over the moon watching it,” Hankerson said. “They bounce off of each other and read each other so well, especially in that transition game. They are something special to watch. I knew that it would look great, even at the next level, and that’s what’s been so exciting.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2026 at 7:00 AM.
