Hard work pays off: Baylor receiver Josh Cameron rises from walk-on to superstar

All Andrea Cameron could hear were the cheers.

As she was riding through the concourse at Rice-Eccles Stadium in a golf cart, she was only partly paying attention to the game on her phone as she talked to the medical person helping her get back to her hotel.

“I look at my phone and I say, ‘Huh, it looks like we scored.’” she recalled. “Then I said, ‘Gosh, that looks like my son.’ Then I realize it was Josh, and I’m yelling and screaming, ‘That’s my son!’

“It was one of those moments that I’ll never forget.”

It was the culmination of hours of hard work and a moment that was a long time coming.

For both of them.

Josh was an unranked prospect after a star-studded career at Cedar Park, where he helped the Timberwolves reach the state title game in 2020. Instead of taking one of the multiple offers he had from smaller schools, he bet on himself and walked on at Baylor.

Andrea had been battling pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that scars the lung tissue and makes it hard for oxygen to get to the bloodstream, for more than 15 years. She had a double lung transplant a little over a month after the Bears finished the 2023 season.

Two weeks after that procedure, she went into cardiac arrest, and her heart stopped for 20 minutes. She spent months in physical therapy relearning how to walk and talk, with the biggest goal of seeing Josh play football again.

“Before every game, dating back to middle school, one of the first things he does when he walks on the football field is he looks around and he figures out where I’m sitting,” Andrea said. “We have our eye contact moment, and I blow him a kiss and tell him to go get it, even when we’re at away stadiums.

“I was determined to get back and get to those games because I didn’t want him to look around and me not be there.”

Josh’s touchdown against Utah was the first of his Baylor career, which spanned a little over three seasons and included more than 50 receptions across 30 appearances for the Bears.

The game was Andrea’s first road game since having her double lung transplant and going into cardiac arrest nine months earlier, and the thin air in Salt Lake City forced her to head back to the hotel early.

Luckily, she was still in the stadium when Josh took a screen pass 47 yards for a touchdown.

“It’s such a God story,” Josh said. “She didn’t miss any games. She promised me that she was gonna be at the first game and she was gonna make it to every single game. (My family) drove to every game, even the far ones. Especially that first touchdown at Utah, my whole family just broke down crying, especially my mom. My family’s reaction, I’ll never forget that, for sure.”

The beginnings of 34

When Josh first strapped on a football helmet as a 5-year-old with the Mighty Mites Pop Warner team in Cedar Park, all he said after every game was that he wanted to be a running back.

Game after game, the coaches put Josh and the other younger kids on the offensive line.

That continued until the final game of the season, when the coaches finally let Josh line up at running back like he always wanted.

“The first time he got the ball, he just froze,” Andrea said. “He didn’t move, didn’t run, didn’t do anything.”

That was the last time he slowed down.

After competing in track over the summer, he came back and was the star running back for the Pop Warner squad. He continued to play running back all through middle school, so he had a number worn by running backs like Bo Jackson and Ricky Williams.

He only transitioned to receiver as a freshman at Cedar Park, but when his desired digit was taken, he decided to be a little different and keep jersey No. 34.

“I think I make it look good,” Josh said. “That’s all that matters.”

After missing most of his freshman year with a knee injury, he spent the majority of his sophomore season on the junior varsity before getting called up for the playoffs and the Timberwolves’ second-round against Shadow Creek.

He led the team in receptions, yards and touchdowns in his first varsity game.

“That’s where he started to open the eyes of everybody, especially at the high school level, of what he could do,” said former Cedar Park quarterback Ryder Hernandez. “I went to him five or six times in a row.”

In his first-ever varsity game for Cedar Park as a sophomore, a playoff game against Shadow Creek, Josh Cameron led the team in receptions, yards and touchdowns.

Scott W. Coleman, Special to the Tribune-Herald

Josh’s junior year was when he really broke out, finishing with more than 1,000 receiving yards and catching 14 touchdowns.

He followed it up with another 1,000-yard season and had 12 touchdown grabs as a senior in 2020, helping Cedar Park advance to the state title game.

“I had him on one side and my son on the other,” former Cedar Park head coach Carl Abseck said. “It was literally like having two coaches on the field because they were so smart. Teams need a lot of reps to master something or get something, but those two kids, you told them to do this or that, and they would do it.”

Even now, when the players on the Baylor roster talk about their high school experiences, Josh can’t help but smile.

“Looking back at all the memories, even the summer workouts that we had, it got really intense and everything,” Josh said. “But it really prepared me for what it is now. Coming into college, I always said, ‘This is just like Cedar Park.’

“And, yeah, those teams were electric.”

‘Get Burly’

The mornings of fall camp leading up to the regular season at Cedar Park began at dawn.

Everybody in the system, from the first-year middle school players to the senior varsity players, came together for a two-day boot camp called “Get Burly,” where they would pair up and rely completely on each other.

The final stage of the event involved carrying a log many miles along a trail with a teammate. The only rule was that the log couldn’t, under any circumstances, touch the ground during the trek.

“If your partner needed to take a break or go to the bathroom or anything, you had to carry it on your own,” Hernandez said.

At the end of it all, the entire team would have a big campfire. Everyone was exhausted and sweaty but filled with a sense of accomplishment.

“You kind of pour your heart out to your team,” Josh said. “That helped us really grow as a brotherhood, understanding what the guys next to you were going through. It taught me the importance of getting to know your teammates on a deeper level, holding each other accountable and working hard.”

Work ethic was something that Josh had in spades, but colleges weren’t noticing.

Even when he was putting up big numbers and Cedar Park was winning a lot of games, only a few smaller schools and Football Championship Subdivision programs offered Josh a spot. Penn offered a scholarship only for the Ivy League to cancel the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I know he was frustrated, but he never showed it,” Hernandez said. “He was like, ‘I’m going to come out this week and put up even more numbers and show them that this is who I am, come get me.’”

One Division I school in Texas was in near constant conversation with the Cameron family during his senior season and even said they were about to send an offer, only to go silent at the last minute.

“As a mom, I knew he was disappointed because this was his dream, and he was watching everyone around him get offered to play here and there and everything,” Andrea said. “We used our faith as a building block to remind him that God’s got you.”

Abseck and his son were joined by Josh and Andrea for a recruiting visit to UT Permian Basin when they had their longest talk about the challenges that were going to come with being a walk-on, especially at a DI school.

He explained that it takes a lot for a coach to admit that a walk-on with no scholarship is better than a player into which a school has invested time and money.

“As a coach, you can see the kind of work ethic a kid has, the skills they have and their intelligence,” Abseck said. “All those things, we see on a daily basis. The recruiter sees what they do on film, and then they use the measurables and they determine what fits for them. It was frustrating.”

Almost like he was carrying logs through trails in Cedar Park, Josh decided to do the hard thing.

So he took the walk-on spot at Baylor.

After playing in the final three games of his freshman year and making a significant impact on special teams, he got a call that Baylor head coach Dave Aranda wanted to talk to him in his office. His DI scholarship dream had been achieved.

The ensuing phone call with his parent was a mix of tears, excitement and relief.

“People really hit a wall in college at different times, but I was already on the wall coming in,” Josh said. “Being able to break through off the rip was really important to me. It was a good experience, and I’m honestly really glad for it.

“It’s really propelled me to face whatever.”

The Bears and beyond

Even though Josh accomplished his main goal of getting put on scholarship, he didn’t slow down.

His touchdown against Utah last season was the first of 10 on the year, and he became the first Baylor player with double-digit touchdown grabs in a single season since 2021. He also led the team in catches (52) and yards (754).

Josh is on the watch list for the Biletnikoff Award (best receiver), the Burlsworth Trophy (best former walk-on) and the Hornung Award (most versatile player).

Even with all the added attention, Aranda said the most impressive thing about Josh is that he doesn’t let it faze him, and he listens intently when a coach makes a correction.

“What that allows you to do is to continue to get better,” Aranda said. “You never die. Everything that comes at you is for your own good, and you improve. Cross over into football talk, you tell him one time, they get it. Josh is very much like that.”

Josh has been able to form a deep and lasting connection with every quarterback he’s played with.

He and Hernandez first started playing together in sixth grade and finished with a 25-3 record over their final two years at Cedar Park.

Josh and Baylor quarterback Sawyer Robertson were one of the biggest reasons the Bears finished last season on a six-game winning streak. The decision by both to come back is partly why they have such high hopes for this year.

“We came into everything together,” Robertson said. “He started as a walk-on, and I was going into my fourth season last year as a backup. There wasn’t a whole lot of success. But he continued to work hard, and we continued to grow up together.”

Abseck has continued to coach high school football since leaving Cedar Park, first at Barbers Hill and now at Lufkin, so he doesn’t get the chance to go see his players in action on Saturday very often.

But he did get tickets to the Texas Bowl in December, and Josh caught a touchdown right in front of him.

“I threw my hands up,” Abseck said. “We were sitting on the LSU side because that’s where I happened to get tickets. They didn’t like us cheering for a Baylor touchdown, but I said, ‘That’s my kid, man.’”

When Josh was in elementary school, he did a project on how he was going to be a professional football player when he grew up.

His dream is soon going to become a reality.

While Josh focuses on the last year of his college career and helping Baylor get back to its winning ways, Andrea has taken on the responsibility of communicating with NFL scouts and agents.

“Every time I get those messages, it tickles me,” Andrea said. “Because this kid said when he was as young as I can remember that he wanted to play in the NFL, and now we have these teams that are sending messages. It blows my mind.”

Is she going to keep following him?

“Oh yeah, of course,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You already know Momma Cameron will be there. I’ll always be there.”

Waiting eagerly for her son to cause another stadium to erupt.