Marquette, MI – July 18th, 2025 – After 25 years, legendary head coach Harvey “Bucky” Johnson announced last year’s season would be the end for him at the helm. Johnson would lead his team into a regional semi, but Westwood would end his career with a game-winning put-back by Ethan Marta. Johnson finishes his career with a fantastic record of 392 – 170. For this reason, he led the Mountaineers to two state championship appearances, but they fell short in both. In Johnson’s 25 years, winning wasn’t an issue as he earned 10 Mid Peninsula Conference titles, seven West Pac titles, eight District titles, was a seven-time regional finalist, and a quarterfinalist three different times.
In Johnson’s time at Iron Mountain, he had the opportunity to coach many college basketball players, with the biggest name being Foster Wonders, who is currently playing Division 1 basketball at Cleveland State University, also his brother Carson Wonders who played basketball at Northern Michigan University, and Oscar Kangas, who signed to play college basketball at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Lastly, he had the opportunity to coach his sons, Marcus and Kyle. Marcus became the all-time leading scorer before Foster Wonders scored 2,286 career points and claimed that. Marcus continued to play basketball in college at Bay College.
In the last few seasons of Bucky’s career, he had the opportunity to have his two sons, Kyle and Marcus, coach alongside him. With Kyle knowing his dad was going to retire after the season, he wanted to step up and become the next head coach. Yesterday, Kyle was named the next head coach for Iron Mountain basketball.
Kyle will have big shoes to fill as his father, won about every award possible, being named a five-time U.P. Division 1-3 Coach of the Year, a Region 15 Coach of the Year twice, and a five-time West Pac Conference Coach of the Year. Bucky plans to volunteer as an assistant coach for his son, Kyle, making the transition as smooth as possible.
