SOUTH WEBER — Erik Thompson’s heart is overflowing with gratitude.
The longtime high school football coach is so thankful for the wonderful opportunity he’s had to spend the past 29 years on the sidelines with a front-row seat for those entertaining Friday Night Lights.
He is tremendously appreciative of all the players, coaches and school administrators he’s been able to work with over those 29 years, and for all the rewarding relationships he has built with so many people that have enriched his life in so many ways.
Thompson is extremely grateful for his incredible wife Skye and their three sons, along with his parents Helen and Fred, his siblings Bryant, Jenny and Kalani, and so many other tremendous family members and friends who have always been there for him, good times and bad.
And finally, he is most thankful to God for giving him the life he’s been given, and for all the countless blessings he’s received along the way.
Yes, Erik Thompson is one mighty grateful guy, and as we prepare to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, his attitude of gratitude is made even more amazing when you consider that, over the last seven years, he has been battling the devastating effects of a deadly foe — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly called ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In medical terms, ALS is a progressive neurogenerative disease that affects a person’s motor neurons, the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement and breathing. In essence, as motor neurons degenerate and die, they stop sending messages to the muscles in the human body, which causes the muscles to weaken, twitch and waste away.
In real-life terms, ALS is a ruthless, cruel and fatal disease that steadily and relentlessly robs a person of their ability to use their arms, their legs, to use the restroom on their own, to walk, to stand, to sit, to eat, to chew, to swallow, to speak, to breathe. And alas, for Thompson, to coach.
If there is a proverbial fate worse than death, certainly this is it.
And yet Thompson, who recently retired as Ogden High’s head football coach, refuses to see it that way. Instead, he remains upbeat and positive, grateful for all the good things that he’s been blessed with, even since ALS reared its horribly ugly head seven years ago. For him, the glass always remains half-full instead of half-empty.
“ALS is such a difficult disease in that it’s like a constant grieving process,” he said, “where normally someone will lose something or be in pain or something’s wrong, and then they get used to that and then they live with that. But with ALS, you get used to what’s happened one week and then the next week something else changes and it gets worse, and the next week it’s the same thing.
“So the goalpost always keeps moving and there’s no time where you feel you’ve got a handle on it. You’re always trying to figure out how are we going to deal with this and how are we going to deal with that.”
Silver linings
Thompson, who was a two-sport standout at Roy High and went on to play football at Snow College, has actually been able to find some wonderful silver linings in the dark cloud that has come to cast a shadow over him.
“Coaching has always been such a huge blessing for me, and every day physically it was getting a lot harder for me,” said Thompson, 52, who has lost the use of his hands and arms and now spends most of his time in a wheelchair. “But emotionally and spiritually, I was feeling so much more hopeful. I’ve just come to appreciate the daily and knowing that every day coming in the future is gonna be worse than the one you just had.
“So now I try to think of what can I do today that maybe a year from now I’m not going to be able to do, and instead of being sad about it, being very grateful that I can still do that right now.”
— former Ogden High football coach Erik Thompson
“So now I try to think of what can I do today that maybe a year from now I’m not going to be able to do, and instead of being sad about it, being very grateful that I can still do that right now.
“I’m at the point right now where pretty much almost every muscle in my body doesn’t do its job any more and you’ve got to have almost everything done for you, and that can be very mentally and physically challenging and uncomfortable all the time,” he said.
“... One of the blessings of ALS — it’s like that (short, locally-produced) movie ‘The Luckiest Man on Earth’ — is that I don’t know how many of my former players, coaches and friends where we’ve reconnected and had these conversations and strengthened our relationships, and that’s been a beautiful thing. I’ve just had so many former players who’ve reached out and come visit me.”
Coaching journey
Thompson was a lead assistant at Northridge High for six seasons under head coach Fred Fernandes, who guided the Knights to three straight state 5A championships from 2000-02. Thompson took over the head coaching reins from Fernandes in 2004 and guided the Knights’ football fortunes for 13 seasons, racking up a 79-60 overall record and earning 10 state playoff berths in 13 years.
Then in 2017, he made the somewhat surprising move to Ogden High, a long-suffering, struggling program that was mired in a 33-game losing streak. Indeed, it was a program filled with doubt, despair and disarray. He was determined to make a positive difference in the lives of those young inner-city kids who played at Ogden, in hopes of bringing fun and joy back into the program, and he certainly did that.
In just his second season there, he guided the Tigers to their first winning season since 2009. His OHS teams wound up going to the state playoffs in four of his last five seasons there, winning four playoff games and compiling a superb 7-4 record this year.
For the sake of perspective, in the 15 years prior to Thompson’s arrival as head coach, Ogden’s program won a total of just 32 games, went winless in five of those seasons and won three games or less in seven other seasons.
Make a positive difference indeed.
“It’s crazy how time can fly so fast, and it seems just like yesterday that I made that decision, and I’m really grateful for the decision that I made,” said Thompson, who thoroughly enjoyed the time he spent coaching and learning the craft at Northridge.
Inspired move
“There comes a time after 19 years at one place that like maybe you need a little change, and I didn’t really know what that was. I feel fortunate and, for lack of a better word, I feel like I was steered by God to go to Ogden, because I didn’t want to go there. When I was looking to make that career decision, I felt that change was going to be somewhere that’s easier to win, maybe at a bigger school, and I’d been working so hard to get a break and have it not be so hard.
“But ironically, I felt a lot of happiness and joy going somewhere where it was a lot harder to win,” he said. “The relationships I made there and the connection with the kids and to see the pride they had in going from losing 36 straight games to we go 7-4 this year and had a handful of winning seasons in there. Seeing the pride and the respect they received and felt about themselves was really fulfilling for me.”
As the 2024 season approached, Thompson made the difficult decision that this would be his last year as a head coach. The debilitating effects of ALS were making the job more and more difficult, and he realized it was time to step down at the end of the ′24 campaign.
“Ironically, this year was the least stress I’ve ever felt because instead of worrying so much about winning games, I was able to appreciate all the little things about this great job that I got to do every year.”
— Erik Thompson
“Going into the season and knowing this was it, I was able to stop and smell the roses along the way this year. ... Ironically, this year was the least stress I’ve ever felt because instead of worrying so much about winning games,” Thompson said, pausing momentarily to try and control his emotions, “I was able to appreciate all the little things about this great job that I got to do every year.
“I’ve loved everything about watching film, creating a game plan, figuring out who your best players are, how to create unity, having a great culture, how to be on the same page and be aligned with your principal and AD and coaches, all the many things that go into building a football team.
“Coaching is stressful, and it takes a lot of time. I’ve always really enjoyed most every part of it. So I was able to savor the beautiful moments along the way, share the lessons I wanted to pass along to the team and my assistants,” he said.
“And so there were so many things I couldn’t do because of my struggles with ALS, there are so many people that had to help me so I could do what I needed to do, like physically carrying me up to the press box on game day, getting the golf cart out at practice, taking me to the bathroom, everything had to be orchestrated in great detail so I could go to practice every day and run a football program. So I’m really sad because, man, I really love this, but I’m not going to be able to do this any more.”
‘A breath of fresh air’
“More than anything, I realize that this will be a breath of fresh air to focus on the relationships and have less to deal with day-to-day as a head coach,” he said. “I do have sense of peace that this is the end of the line as far as being a head coach, but not for creating something with other people, being part of a team, and really working on, focusing on relationships. I know that I had made the right decision.
“I know the program is in good hands and the core values in our program will stay the same. I look forward to seeing it be better than it was during my tenure there. I really felt strongly that I wanted to leave the program in a better place than I found it, and I feel proud that I did that. And I’m confident that my staff will continue to build and take the program to another level of success.”
Thompson said he had an epiphany that he no longer needed to be in charge any more to still get joy out of coaching, whether that’s helping with his 13-year-old son Kael’s little league team next year, or continuing to advise, watch game film and share his insights with the Ogden High coaching staff.
Thompson maintains a wonderful perspective about the great game of football and all the things it teaches those who are fortunate enough to play it or coach it.
“I think this is true about all sports, but mainly football more than the rest because of everything that goes into it,” he said. “Football is really not about football. All the memories you make, the relationships, the team spirit, learning to do hard things, being challenged physically, mentally and emotionally, and creating a culture where the kids feel seen and heard, and they feel that they matter, that they have a purpose.
“For the past 29 years I have tried to focus on the fact that we are learning lessons that will help carry us through some of the real challenges in life. Each week, I share a message with the team or have someone I admire share a message that focuses on serving others, trusting the process, paying more attention to who you are becoming than what you are getting, being grateful in your circumstances, living in the present moment, being humble, paying it forward, leaning into love and casting out fear, and giving your time and attention to the relationships that matter the most to you.”
Football is unique
“Football is really an amazing game, and it can teach all those things,” Thompson said. “There are not very many sports where you find someone who’s 300 pounds and slow and someone who’s 120 pounds and skinny, fast guys, slow guys, tall guys, short guys. They might each have a different job that they do, where they’re serving each other and if one part of it is off, the whole thing can crumble.
“So the level of teamwork and sacrifice, learning to place yourself past your fears and your willingness to give, working together with others and trust in each other that they’ll do their job so you can do yours. I really feel and I’ve always been enamored by what football builds in people, and I was always proud to coach it and I have just tried to pass on what I was taught.”
Thompson has benefitted greatly from having the experience and expertise of his father, Fred, who was a longtime baseball and football coach at Roy and Fremont high schools before serving as an assistant on Erik’s staff for the last 21 years at Northridge and Ogden.
“It’s incredible to see the love that these kids have for Erik,” said Fred. “They hunker down and listen to what he has to say at the end of every game.
“I quit coaching at Fremont the moment he became a head coach, and it’s great to be able to spend that time with him for the last 21 years.”
Erik said the key thing in any football program is the culture that you build.
“There is no way to do it alone. I’ve been so blessed to have great assistant coaches, principals and athletic directors. We were aligned and cared about the same things, and we’re working together and we’re trying to create a culture. The atmosphere in my home growing up was the atmosphere I tried to build on my teams, where we could have a lot of fun, where we would work hard and we cared about one another.
“The thing I’m most proud of is that it truly takes a team, not just our football players and assistant coaches, but parents and community members and administration for that to happen. I spoke to those people and they all wanted to get on board and work hard, so I really feel it’s not something that I did, but it’s something that we all did. We all did something really hard and we did it together, and there’s not many feelings that are better than that.”
A blessed life
Despite the terrible, crippling effects of ALS, Thompson feels he has been truly blessed.
“Every day ... there’s been so much love that I’ve felt of going down memory lane with people I’ve had experiences with — family, community members, former players, coaches,” he said. “So I have felt this overwhelming feeling of love that really has helped compensate for the obvious down times that you’re going to feel when you can’t do much for yourself and you’re fearful of the future or you’re in pain or uncomfortable.
“Another blessing of ALS has been — I thought I was doing a good job of this before, but not a great job, and I think we’re all capable of doing a better job — of really taking the time to spend time with your wife, your kids, your family, your close friends. That’s quality time, whether it’s having real conversations with them or having the joy of sharing time and experiences with them.
“ALS was like getting hit by lightning, and you’re usually told you’re probably only going to have two or three years to live,” Thompson said. “My doctor just might’ve been giving me the miracle diagnosis, but he said, ‘Hey, you’ll have 10 to 20 years,’ and I’m seven years into this now. I felt I made an immediate change in my heart of doing a better job of being thankful and focusing on finding real joy in serving others, and I’ve tried to be a better husband, father, son, brother, leader and community member.”
This is not to say that Thompson’s life is easy by any means or without very difficult challenges every day. But he has found an amazing way to turn a terrible negative into a glorious positive, and he and his family created a terrific slogan from the acronym F.A.M.I.L.Y. — Forget About Me, I Love You.
“From my perspective, I’m the most miserable I’ve ever been, obviously, with the disease as far as physically and some of the emotional pain,” he said. “But I’m also the happiest and feel the most peace and joy that I’ve ever felt. ... I feel like I’ve been a better coach in the last eight years and have built better relationships, and it’s been the most fulfilling than even when I was more physically capable of burning daylight, doing hands-on coaching and demonstrating to the kids what they needed to do.
“I miss being able to do the physical things that I used to be able to do, running with the kids, racing them, playing quarterback and having fun on the practice field.
“But when I started focusing more on the relationship part, trying to be a better person. I’ve joked that I just try to be the person that my Mom thinks I am. That’s my motivation. But I’ll always fall short of that,” Thompson said with a smile. “So those are two blessings that have come from ALS — my focus on being a better person and my focus on building better relationships. I’m a lot happier and I’ve grown as a person with a lot of joy. I don’t think I could’ve had that growth without dealing with this disease.
“I think that’s the spiritual side of this is God has given us parents, siblings, friends, a wife, kids. My support system is really unlike any other. I’d like to think that maybe God said his support system is there and I’ll be able to get through this and help other people.”
— Erik Thompson
“I hate this disease so much. But don’t I think I could have made the same positive impact on others if I didn’t have this disease. I think that’s the spiritual side of this is God has given us parents, siblings, friends, a wife, kids. My support system is really unlike any other. I’d like to think that maybe God said his support system is there and I’ll be able to get through this and help other people.”
To be sure, since his diagnosis and the steady decline of his health, there have certainly been many “Why me?” moments along the way for Thompson.
Making the best of things
“Now it’s more like, ‘Well, if it’s gonna be me, how can we make the best of this?’” he said. “What kind of service can I provide to others with this terminal disease? And every week, every year, we try to figure out what that is. We’re constantly striving and looking for ways to help others who are dealing with this.
“You really have no choice. Sure, you can be in pain and be miserable and ungrateful, but I choose not to do that. So that’s the kind of mindset I have is I’m going to try to control the things I can, and we hope that research will find ways to make it better. But you’ve just gotta learn to deal with some hardships. ... Try to focus on the things in your life that are positive and bring you gratitude.
“You hope that when those hard days come, your focus is in the right spot that not only can you withstand it but you can thrive and turn it into something positive and help others in that situation,” Thompson said. “This year, knowing it was my last year, after practice every day we would talk about where our focus should be, and I wanted the kids to be grateful and look for opportunities to serve others. Those are two great things I got out of coaching. ... Winning games is our job, but when we focus on the process and not the result, that way it becomes easier to create that love and that brotherhood and that culture of accountability, respect and service on the team.”
Skye Thompson, Erik’s loving and devoted wife of 22 years, has taken on the difficult responsibility of being her husband’s primary caregiver over the last few years as his health has declined.
Thankfully, she has received plenty of help from her sons Kire, 18, currently serving a mission in Mexico for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Jack, 15, who just finished up his sophomore football season with the Tigers; and 13-year-old Kael, along with Erik’s siblings, parents and friends.
Skye said she sees such wonderful qualities in Erik that have made him such a difference-maker as a coach.
“Erik has a gift to help everyone around him feel important: his family, his players, and everyone he meets. We all feel it,” she said. “Erik is so genuine and just loves you for who you are.
“With his players, he takes time to talk with them about life and not just football. He sees more than players — he sees people he loves. His job as a coach has been like a calling in his life. In many cases, he is a father figure to those he coaches. Erik takes that responsibility seriously and loves the opportunity.
“I have never seen anything like it. Erik is a remarkable mentor and friend to his players. He takes time to teach them, ask about their struggles, and show them love and support no matter what they are going through,” Skye said. “We have had more than one of his former players live with us for a time. We welcome them in just like another member of our family. They have blessed our lives. Erik’s love makes an important difference in all of our lives and creates a ripple effect that goes on and on to others.”
Dayan Lake, one of Coach Thompson’s former Northridge High players who went on to have a solid career at BYU, is one of them. He moved in with the Thompsons three months ago to help out with the physical chores that Erik is no longer capable of doing.
Lake also helped out at the team practices and noticed Thompson’s positive impact on the Tigers’ team.
“The way he talked to them was like he’s their friend,” Lake said, “and they came to him for advice both on the field and off-the-field advice, too, because a lot of those kids don’t have father figures. He encouraged them to be better people.”
Co-head coach Skye
Indeed, his wife Skye has been one of the greatest blessings Erik has ever received.
“I’ve coached for 29 years ... and the thing I’m the most proud of is my best, most important co-head coach, my wife Skye,” he said. “It’s been so much fun to do this together, her giving me great advice, calming me down, and loving and supporting me.
“The joy she’s had watching her own boys play, and these kids I’ve coached have become like kids to her as well. So it’s really been fun to be together in this. Probably the most important thing I’ve found is when you have a hard job like being a high school football coach, having an amazing wife is the most important part of it. My mom was that for my dad, and I feel very fortunate I found the same thing.”
Erik’s mother, Helen Thompson, is mindful of all the wonderful things that have come into the lives of the entire Thompson family through Erik’s illness. She is also very aware of the way his ALS has impacted their family spiritually.
“We have seen more blessings and tender mercies come into Erik’s life and Skye’s life and all their boys, and our life as a family,” she said. “From the people around him, their friends and their neighbors, there have been blessings poured out on all of our lives. People have been so good to him and have helped him so much, and it has trickled down to all of us.
“We have become a closer family. Erik and Skye’s boys are marvelous. They’ve stepped up to every challenge. I’ve seen the good that has come from a really hard thing. I didn’t know how it felt before, but I know now how it feels to have a broken heart, a really broken heart, and at the same time feel so much joy and gratitude because we are so grateful for the way Erik and his family have handled all of this. We’re grateful for the blessings that have come, and we’re grateful for the closeness it has brought to everybody in our family and his friends, players and coaches. It has touched a myriad of people.
“We’re always praying for a miracle,” Helen added. “We believe in miracles, and we never got the miracle we were looking for. But sometimes the miracle isn’t the healing that comes. Sometimes it’s the miracle that comes into everybody’s life because of how you respond to the challenge. Erik knows that we all pray for a miracle, every day. It’s always in the shadow of our minds. We want what’s best. We don’t know the end from the beginning, we don’t know the Lord’s plan for each of us, but we know there is a beautiful plan for all of us.
“And Erik said to me one time, ‘Mom, you can stop praying for a miracle for me to get healed, because the Lord is using me in a way that I didn’t think of before.’ Sometimes the Lord will change a person’s life that is filling and use them for good in ways that they just didn’t know before. So to be a family and to be the mother and father of a son that’s going through this has been such a great blessing for us. There is no greater joy than to see your son and your kids are putting the Lord first in their lives.”
‘Tuesdays With Brother’
Erik’s younger brother, Bryant, organized a weekly family gathering he calls “Tuesdays With Brother,” patterned after the bestselling book “Tuesdays With Morrie” by Mitch Albom, which was also adapted into an Emmy Award-winning television movie. The book is based on Albom’s weekly visits with his former college professor who was dying with ALS.
“We gather together every Tuesday, and we get together and we spend a day together, and it’s usually right here at Erik’s house, and we talk about the blessings in our lives that we didn’t anticipate,” Bryant said.
“One thing we get to do on ‘Tuesdays With Brother,’ and we would never get to do this under normal circumstances, is every Tuesday we get to listen to him and we get a front-row seat of a guy going through the most horrible thing you could ever imagine, and he’s funny, he is light-hearted, and he’s got a great sense of humor.
“We have some real conversations at the end, and it’s something I’m so grateful for because I get to spend the day with my brother every week and I look forward to it,” Bryant added. “I don’t see it as caretaking as much as I see it as bonding with my brother. And we tell funny stories and we cry and we talk about how hard the week was, and we have real conversations about how painful and devastating this disease is. We laugh, we have fun and, to me, it’s a little slice of heaven.
“Going into Erik’s diagnosis, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a person on the planet who admired Erik more than I did. ... Ever since I was little, I’ve been following him around and he’s been my hero and he has had a profound influence on me. ... I didn’t know I could admire and love somebody, Erik, more than I already did. But ‘Tuesdays With Brother’ has shown me that I could.
“Someone who has every reason in the world to be angry and bitter, and he is the life of the party, he’s emotionally fluid, he will cuss, he will laugh, and he will cry all within 30 seconds, and he will do it again a minute later,” said Bryant. “You just walk out of here and think wow, what did we get to watch today and witness these memories that will be with us forever. And that’s a great blessing. We can be absolutely devastated and delighted by our circumstances all at the same time.”
