By Zach Erwin

For the Salisbury Post

KANNAPOLIS — If you are reading this testimonial, chances are you have already heard about the legend of Empsy Thompson.

Empsy, who I affectionately refer to as “Coach,” might be the most well-regarded, non-celebrity person I know. From every corner across the state of North Carolina, I’ve encountered numerous people who have sung Coach Thompson’s praises. From his infectious personality to his zeal for baseball and life, everybody has something overwhelmingly positive to say about him.

There’s good reason for such responses. To know Coach Thompson is a blessing, as it doesn’t take much to discover that he is one of the most genuinely kind-hearted people on planet Earth.

As a young child growing up in Kannapolis, thanks to my family’s connections to the program, I was able to run the sidelines during Friday night football games at A.L. Brown High School. It was there that Coach Thompson, then the wide receivers coach, gave this rambunctious kid the moniker “Little E.” Even amidst the grind of a Wonders football season, Coach Thompson made time for me.

We remained loosely connected for several years until I made it to A.L. Brown as a freshman in 2006. I was delighted to have Coach as my world history teacher. However, it set in quickly that I would receive no preferential treatment. He was ever the professional in his role, offering every student his time and attention. Once baseball season came around, it was more of the same: Coach was the captain of the ship, yet we were all in the boat together. Each member of the team had to pull their weight if we were going to succeed.

There are certain people in life that you least want to disappoint, most often due to the amount of respect and admiration you have for the person. Coach Thompson was that guy for me.

Baseball is a game of failure. It will humble you in a heartbeat. For his part, Coach Thompson and his staff worked tirelessly to help us minimize mistakes. He taught us the game in a way very few understand it: situational awareness and the opportunities that exist to take extra bases, move runners forward and cut opponents down on the base paths. While I did learn an immense amount about the strategy of baseball from Coach Thompson, what has stuck with me the most is the level of appreciation I have for the game and its nuances. Nobody loves the game and its finer details more than Coach.

As for my career — that of a promising, tall, lefty arm with an anxiety problem — I let the game pick me apart mentally. I was no stranger to failure on the mound and at first base, which cost me playing time at several points throughout my high school career. I felt like I had let Coach down numerous times and beat myself up for it routinely, but Coach was always there to remind me that baseball cannot be taken personally. You can’t win against two opponents (the other team and yourself) at once. It was a lesson that finally clicked years later, and it is one that I regularly pass on to current athletes today.

To the surprise of many, I actually took my sophomore year off from baseball. Life circumstances at home had made helping my family the priority. Still, informing Coach Thompson of my decision to sit out the year was one of the most difficult moments that I can recall from that time. Coach could not have been more supportive throughout the entire process, and he gladly welcomed me back to the team the following season. That show of grace was not lost on me.

On weekends when I was home from college, I would be a frequent attendee at football games in the fall and baseball games in the spring. Catching up with Coach Thompson was always a highlight. If I recall correctly, I even helped Coach out with stadium cleanup a few weekends on Saturday mornings (which the baseball team was tasked with following home football games as a fundraiser). Cleaning up trash isn’t my idea of an exciting Saturday morning, but it was worth it to stay connected to Coach and the team.

In 2017, I began my teaching career at A.L. Brown. I like to joke that I took Coach Thompson’s job! (In reality, he had been recently hired as our athletic director, and I filled the vacancy he left behind in the social studies department.)

Coach helped me a lot through those early years. He gave me the assignment of being the head coach for the Kannapolis Middle School baseball team, which proved to be an extremely valuable experience in some of the strangest ways (a story for another time). It was, nonetheless, a sign of trust that he had in me to prepare the next crop of Wonders for the experience ahead. As for teaching, Coach would help me to process the daily challenges of managing relationships and building camaraderie with students. On the hardest of days, I knew I had a rock to lean on.

The next year, I was given an assistant coach position at A.L. Brown. It was an honor getting to work alongside Coach Thompson, but more importantly, it was also a challenge. He got after us coaches much like he did his players, challenging us to be better each day to the next. If I was struggling to hit ground balls or run a drill properly, he had no problem calling me out for it. It was a reminder that even us coaches were in the boat, too. Likewise, it was an opportunity to demonstrate to the team how to take the challenge head-on and make adjustments to better ourselves and the team.

In my seven years of coaching with Coach Thompson, we’ve seen our fair share of struggles. Walks, errors, strike outs, questionable calls… we were no strangers to the toils that baseball can incite. There were many moments, though, where we saw major breakthroughs among our teams and players. In times of triumph or tribulation, Coach Thompson had a unique ability to put forward the same energy every day. As assistant coach Ka’seim Black puts it, “The ability to be the same guy every single day is hard, but Coach T makes it look easy. A true ‘thermostat’.” After each game, we would sit and chat into the night about every positive moment, every missed opportunity, and about life in general.

Those are some of the times I will miss the most.

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As I write here today, we are days removed from having celebrated Coach Thompson’s final home game at A.L. Brown High School as head coach of the Wonders baseball program. He is set to retire as both athletic director and head baseball coach at the end of the 2024-25 school year.

In my life, I have never known what A.L. Brown High School is like without Empsy Thompson being a part of it. Truth be told, I’m not looking too much forward to finding out.

That said, I am so thrilled for Coach and his next phase of life. He will assuredly continue coaching baseball with the South Charlotte Panthers organization, of which he has been a part for the last several years during the summer and fall seasons. His wife Nicole has taught at A.L. Brown alongside him in recent years while his daughter, Brynn, is set to graduate from A.L. Brown this May as part of the Class of 2025. I had the pleasure of teaching Brynn last semester and have formed a bond with both Brynn and Nicole, whom I consider to be family along with Coach. I imagine they all will spend a fair amount of time at the beach in celebration of Brynn’s graduation and Coach’s retirement.

Everyone who knows Coach Thompson (which, again, is quite a lot of people) has an Empsy story to share, some far more compelling and entertaining than mine. Each story is its own testament to the amazing man that Empsy Thompson has been throughout his life.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned from Coach Thompson is how to be a positive male role model that others can look up to. I truly believe that the example he has set for me has made me a better teacher, coach, and mentor, a more devoted husband, and a more loving father to my own “Little E.”

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To Coach Thompson:

Thank you for sharing the wonderful game of baseball with me. More importantly, thank you for teaching me and so many others the game of life.

Congratulations on your well-deserved retirement, my friend!

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Zach Erwin is an A.L. Brown graduate from the Class of 2010. He has been a social studies teacher and coach at A.L. Brown since 2017.