This week in HS Sports: Mike Thorsen’s legacy of toughness, love won’t soon be forgotten

This is an opinion piece.

This week, there is a void in the Mountain Brook football program that won’t be filled anytime soon. In fact, it might not ever be totally filled.

Longtime assistant coach Mike Thorsen died this week just five months after he announced his retirement and two months after he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Spartans’ head coach Chris Yeager knew him better than most. The two spent more than two decades together at Mountain Brook.

“Working with kids and loving them was Mike’s love language,” Yeager said Thursday. “Nick Saban had that philosophy that every day it was 4th-and-1. Heck, that’s child’s play for Mike. He had been in a foxhole in Vietnam. Mike was a no excuse guy. He embraced difficult things, embraced adversity. He thrived in challenging environments and that rubbed off on our kids.”

Thorsen, a former Marine, spent 51 years in coaching. He was the interim head coach at Hoover for one year following the sudden death of Bob Finley in the 1990s. But mostly he was an assistant coach, and that was just fine with him.

For the last seven years, he coached the Spartan cornerbacks. Yeager said he’s had five defensive coordinators in the 19 years he’s been the head coach at Mountain Brook and, each time the position opened, he spoke with Thorsen about filling it.

“That wasn’t what he wanted to do,” Yeager said. “He wanted to be that first-class private that took his marching orders and got the job done. He was bound by duty. That was so unique. Mike was not about titles. He was a true leader. He knew you didn’t have to have a title to lead, and he personified that.”

Yeager said, though Thorsen decided to retire in January, he hadn’t planned to stop working until this month. He said he was still active and still taking care of the school grounds through the spring. Everything changed suddenly when he went out for a round of golf in April, Yeager said.

“He went to play golf and fell out,” he said. “They thought it might have been a seizure, so he went to the doctor. A scan showed five lesions on his brain. They removed two and started radiation. But when they did another scan, it was everywhere.”

The week prior to Thorsen’s golf day, he did a podcast with Yeager. It wasn’t something he would normally do, but he did it with the promise there wouldn’t be any fanfare around his retirement.

“I remember I asked him what his plans were now that he was retiring,” Yeager said. “He said his goal was to stay healthy until he died and darned if he didn’t basically do that.”

Yeager credits Thorsen in large part for creating part of the mindset Mountain Brook football is known for around the state – tough, disciplined, hard-nosed football.

“I think it all came from his military background,” Yeager said. “He was in Vietnam. He probably saw our country at its worst. He told me that fighting for your country and your community is one thing but you learn to fight for that person in the foxhole with you. He brought that attitude to our team.”

Yeager brought most of his staff to Thorsen’s home around 3 p.m. Tuesday.

“We just all hung out as a staff and with his family,” he said. “The people he loved the most were all there. When you think about football coaches, I know a lot of people think about lockerroom talk and testosterone and toughness. It’s something to see 10 coaches walk up to a guy in his bed and share with him. It was a life-changing moment for me.”

Ten minutes after Yeager and his staff left, Mike Thorsen died.

“It was like his job was done,” Yeager said.

A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. Monday at Spartan Arena to celebrate Thorsen’s life. The family will receive visitors starting at 2 p.m. Yeager said the support from coaches in multiple sports around the state in the last three days has been amazing.

“It’s such a great lesson about your circle of influence and the legacy you can leave behind,” he said.

Yeager said he hasn’t felt like he has this week since he lost his father in 2013.

“If you were lucky enough to have Mike Thorsen cross your path once, you were fortunate,” he said. “I was with him for 25 years, and I feel incredibly blessed. I’m trying to envision what it will even be like without him. I really can’t imagine it.

“Even though he was retiring, I knew he would only be a phone call away. Now, I don’t have that. You can’t replace him. You just have to find away to live on with that void.”

Maybe the most poignant statement about Thorsen came from a text message his wife received from an unknown number after his death.

It read, “Coach, thank you for believing in me when no one else would.”

“That was Mike Thorsen,” Yeager said. “He believed in all our guys.”

You can bet that a quarter century of Spartans and five total decades of student-athletes who played for Thorsen won’t forget the belief he had in them and the messages he taught them.

Thought for the week

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6

Ben Thomas is the high school sportswriter at AL.com. He has been named one of the 50 legends of the Alabama Sports Writers Association. Follow him on twitter at @BenThomasPreps or email him at [email protected]. He can be heard weekly on “Inside High School Sports” on SportsTalk 99.5 FM in Mobile or on the free IHeart Radio App at 2 p.m. Wednesdays.