Dwayne Johnson educated at President William McKinley High School
Early life
Johnson was born in Hayward, California, on May 2, 1972, the son of Ata Johnson (née Maivia; born 1948) and former professional wrestler Rocky Johnson (born Wayde Douglas Bowles; 1944–2020). Growing up, Johnson lived briefly in Grey Lynn in Auckland, New Zealand, with his mother's family, where he played rugby and attended Richmond Road Primary School before returning to the U.S.Johnson's father was a Black Nova Scotian with a small amount of Irish ancestry. His mother is Samoan. His father and Tony Atlas were the first black tag team champions in WWE history, in 1983. His mother is the adopted daughter of Peter Maivia, who was also a professional wrestler. Johnson's maternal grandmother Lia was one of the first female pro wrestling promoters, taking over Polynesian Pacific Pro Wrestling after her husband's death in 1982 and managing it until 1988. Through his maternal grandfather Maivia, Johnson is a non-blood relative to the Anoa'i wrestling family. In 2008, Johnson inducted his father and grandfather into the WWE Hall of Fame.Johnson attended Montclaire Elementary School in Charlotte, North Carolina, before moving to Hamden, Connecticut, where he attended Shepherd Glen Elementary School and then Hamden Middle School. Johnson attended President William McKinley High School in Honolulu and then Glencliff High School and McGavock High School, both in Nashville, and then Freedom High School in Bethlehem Township in the Lehigh Valley, where he graduated in 1990.At Freedom High School in the Lehigh Valley, Johnson initially struggled and was drawn into a culture of conflict and petty crime. Before the age of 17, he was arrested multiple times for fighting, theft, and check fraud and was suspended two weeks for fighting. The local newspaper later described him as "a troubled teenager with a history of run-ins with police." Freedom High School football coach Jody Cwik, however, saw athletic potential in Johnson, and recruited him to join Freedom's football team, where he played defensive tackle. The experience proved the beginning of a personal transformation for Johnson. "My thought process started to change. That's when I started thinking about goals and what I wanted to accomplish," he has since said about his high school football experience.In addition to playing football at Freedom High School, Johnson also was a member of the school's track and field and wrestling teams. Like the school's football team, its track and field and wrestling teams competed in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference (EPC), a high school athletic conference known for being among the nation's best. The EPC's wrestling programs have been ranked best in the nation by WIN magazine and have been described as "among the nation's best in the sport for nearly three decades", and Johnson quickly found himself facing some of the nation's most accomplished high school wrestlers.By his senior year at Freedom High School, Johnson had only played two years of high school football but the fact that he had excelled on a team in an elite high school athletic division known nationally for producing a long list of professional and Olympic-level athletes, including future NFL stars Andre Reed, Saquon Barkley, Kyzir White, and others, drew the attention of NCAA Division I collegiate programs. College football recruiters ranked Johnson as one of the top ten high school defensive tackles in the nation. He opted to accept a full athletic scholarship offer from the University of Miami, whose football program was then one of the best in the nation.
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