Mark Freeman looks to lead Thompson High to another Alabama Class 7A state championship

Published On: 12.04.24 |

By: Solomon Crenshaw Jr.

Mark Freeman looks to lead Thompson High to another Alabama Class 7A state championship

In the past five years, head coach Mark Freeman has taken his Thompson Warriors to five Alabama 7A state championship games and won four of them. The Warriors are back for tonight's championship contest with last year's winner, Central-Phenix City. (AHSAA Photos)

Mark Freeman didn’t see it coming.

Born and raised in Fairfield before moving to McCalla and playing high school football at Bessemer Academy, the current Thompson High School football coach never envisioned himself living the life of a coach.

“I never wanted to be a coach,” said Freeman, whose Thompson Warriors (10-3) face defending champion Central-Phenix City (10-2) at 7 tonight in the Class 7A championship game of the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s Super 7 at Birmingham’s Protective Stadium. “Probably the last thing on my mind was to be a coach. I just didn’t think that I would enjoy it.”

Freeman played football and every other sport he could. He loved athletics but just didn’t see himself as a coach.

“It just never entered my mind,” he said. “Truthfully, if God had called me at that age to do it, I would have felt led to do it. I just never felt led to do it.”

But, Freeman said, God had a plan for his life. “I had to go through some things. Once God got in my life and I figured out that was my calling, it was over,” he said. “I was full speed, and the Lord has really blessed my journey as a coach.”

Indeed. Ten of the 26 seasons that Freeman has been a high school football coach have ended in state championships. There were four at his alma mater Bessemer Academy in the Alabama Independent School Association, two AHSAA crowns at Spanish Fort and four in a row at Thompson.

That string of success was interrupted last year when the Warriors fell 21-19 to Central-Phenix City in the 7A final at Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Freeman has led Thompson from a football program that struggled to win at all to one that annually contends for a state title. The coaches who immediately preceded the current coach had win-loss records of 19-33, 1-9, 2-8 and 7-23.

Two of those coaches were at the helm for only one season.

Mark Freeman has won 10 state championships at three schools, including four at Thompson High School. (AHSAA Photos)

Why not be great?

Alabaster school board member Derek Henderson said Freeman (104-23 in four seasons) has led the Warriors to a major turnaround.

“In talking with him, it was his vision,” Henderson said. “It was his vision of what we could be. Thompson had some success back in the ’80s.”

It helped, he said, that Alabaster split from the Shelby County School System to form its own system. “It made it a little bit easier to decide that this is the direction that we want to go,” he said.

Said Freeman, “I think what we sold these people, these young men on, is if you’re going to do something, why not take a chance on being great? When I got here, we hadn’t beaten Hoover in 20 years. We just hammered them on belief, hard work and that we loved them.

“We knew it wouldn’t be easy,” the coach said, “but we knew it was time to try to make this place a great place. Man, it was God blessing us all along the way. I think this place was about as down as you could get at the time.”

That, Freeman said, is when the Lord does his best work, “when it looks like something can’t be done. He gets every bit of the glory for every win we’ve ever had here. The Lord has really had his hand on everything here that’s been successful.”

Freeman’s early life was molded by tragedy as he lost his father in his final days as a seventh grader. He says that helped equip him to guide some of the young men in his charge.

“I was kind of a hurt, angry young guy,” the coach recalled. “All the way through, I was kind of angry and didn’t understand why my dad was not with me anymore. All the way through my early 20s, you live life thinking your dad died young (and) you probably will die young.

“I kind of did some things – nothing against the law,” Freeman said. “I hung out too much and hung with the wrong crowd a bit. It all changed when I met my wife (Vicki). She wouldn’t tolerate it anymore. I had to make a decision, and she wins every decision in my life. Thank God that the Lord put my wife in my path.

Thompson coach Mark Freeman talks with quarterback Trent Seaborn. Freeman believes God placed him in a position to influence young men. (contributed)

On a mission

The Thompson coach said he navigated his life’s path by attacking his career as a coach as though it were his mission.

“I’m far from a preacher, but I do love the Lord,” he said. “When I got in this, I felt the Lord put me in this to be a mission to win young men. I look back on all of my experiences that God put me through, and it made me a lot more understanding of some of my kids who might not have fathers.

“I think I’m a lot more attentive to some of their needs, some of their situations when they act up a little bit,” Freeman said. “I think God let me go through all that and I think he had his hand on me. I think I just fall back on the hurts of my life so many days in coaching and all these kids, all these young men. I’m really blessed every day I get to do this.”