15 Year Old Jersey Kid Josh McKenzie Being Engineered To Be A Super Athlete

NJ.com – He is 15 years old, 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds of cartoonish muscles on top of muscles. He had six-pack abs when he was 6. Today, he bench-presses one-and-a-half times his body weight and can leap from a standing position to the top of a car. He averages four touchdowns per game and hasn’t lost a wrestling match since 2012, making him the nation’s top-ranked football player and wrestler for his grade. And even though he doesn’t begin high school for another two weeks, he already is one of the most talked about athletes in New Jersey. His name is Josh McKenzie. But people just call him Man-Child, D-Train, Animal, Machine or Beast, and he is a once-in-a-lifetime physical specimen who looks like he was engineered in a lab, each piece meticulously sculpted, tested and refined. Josh also embodies the runaway free-for-all youth sports have become. Specialized training. High school coaches lining up to woo players. Working out to the point of total exhaustion. Repeating a grade for athletic advantage. Bouncing from team to team. It’s all part of his family’s all-in, college-scholarship-or-bust gamble. Sound extreme? Consider: This past year, Josh’s family spent more than $15,000 on specialized training and thousands more to parade him around at showcases, tournaments and all-star events from Florida to California. Most of the 10 specialized personal trainers he will see during the year — that’s right, 10 trainers — rely on state-of-the-art techniques and put Josh through futuristic workouts. He takes it a step further by wearing a Darth Vader-like elevation mask to restrict breathing and simulate training at elevations. 

Even his most mundane activities are meticulously planned and closely monitored. So, for example, he will record every morsel he eats in his iPhone app or log book, making sure to consume exactly 4,500 calories and 175 grams of protein each day. “In this stage of my life, football’s my main focus,” Josh says. “My friends and all that partying can take a side seat for now.”  Just after 3 on a humid afternoon 15 months ago, Josh and 316 eighth-grade classmates from Wall Intermediate School take their seats in the high school gym. The graduates, wearing royal blue gowns, tap their phones and crane to find their families. Josh, 14 at the time, strides confidently across the stage when called. He wears a pink shirt with a black-and-silver striped tie and stylish blue-tinted Ray Ban glasses. He takes his diploma, smiles, hugs a teacher and steps off stage. Three months later, Josh returns to the eighth grade. The controversial choice to voluntarily re-enroll at a new school and repeat is based mostly on athletic benefit, and Josh calls it another “business decision.” Josh’s uncle and legal guardian, Bill Green, is the mad scientist behind the Man-Child. He says an extra year of middle school will help Josh “grow mentally and physically,” and hopefully “get him noticed” by college recruiters. Green also says Josh, with a March birthday, is young for his current grade.  “It was kind of my choice, but I did bring it up to him,” Bill explains. “I mean, I gave him an option. I told him, ‘Look, this is what I want to do. Are you OK with it?’ He usually doesn’t fight me on much.” Josh admits “it was embarrassing to tell people that I was staying back in eighth grade.” But adds, “I just don’t really care what other people think. It’s, like, my career.”  The family is anxious for Josh to receive his first offer, even if there is always that one nagging concern: his height. During an interview last summer, Josh was asked his biggest fear. For once, he abandoned the carefully scripted responses and admitted he worries that he won’t grow to 6 feet tall, roughly the average height of defensive backs in the NFL.

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Josh McKenzie seems like a savage. Just a complete monster. He’s 30-0 as a wrestler. Hasnt lost a match in 4 years. He plays D-back, linebacker and running back in football and is going to Bergen Catholic. He’s the number 1 wrestler and number 1 high school football prospect in the country. I’m sure he’ll go on to play college sports and live like a rockstar on campus.

But honestly if this kid doesnt make it pro, is it worth it? I mean this kid’s life sounds like it sucks. Repeating the 8th grade, calculating every single piece of food he ever eats, taking ice baths all time. Running on a treadmill with that Bane mask on? That mask would be enough alone to make me give up. I dont know nearly enough about this kid and his Uncle to say whether or not Josh is happy or not living his life basically as a soldier in boot camp every day. Who knows? The kid may love it. The competition and the achievements and the possibility of being a big time college and maybe pro athlete may be all this kid has ever wanted. So I’m not gonna sit here and judge how he lives or how his uncle raises him.

I’m just saying from my point of view, if youre not turning pro one day, living your life like this when you’re 15 years old sucks. When I was 15 I was riding my bike around town just trying to get a hand job. Ripping cigs and sneaking booze and playing Nintendo 64. Basketball practice in the winter, baseball practice in the spring, and on the weekends sneaking into bars or drinking fucking Hooch in someone’s basement. No pressure. No expectations. Literally not ONE single care in the world. Theres really only one time in your life that you can do that, and thats your high school and college years. After that, there’s about 50 or 60 years of worrying about a career and money and providing. Just seems shitty that this kid missed out on that time in his life and basically became an adult at the age of like 9. Kid doesnt even have his braces off yet and lives a more regimented, pressure packed life than a lot of adults out there. Yea, he’ll go to college for free. And thats a huge accomplishment. And he might get a look at the pros, thats more than any of us could ever ask for. But just cant help but feel like its all still more unlikely than not and it comes at a huge cost.

PS – I genuinely hope for this kid’s sake his height isnt a problem. But topping out at 5’9 is tough. To make it big the stars and the moons and the planets all have to align and your God given height is one of those things that usually needs to be there. Would suck to go through all of this your entire childhood and not make it because of the one thing you cant change.