OGDEN — Ever since a leading neurologist in Minnesota confirmed his worst fears, Erik Thompson has known what will be next.

Recent deterioration in body movement and strength in Ogden High’s head football coach was indeed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Everyone around him knows what’s next, too. There’s a tacit understanding of what those three letters imply. It’s why Thompson is brought to tears many times a day, why he broke down in that doctor’s office a time zone away.

It’s the one thing he doesn’t want to think about.

“It’s been really hard for me to dive in. I just can’t look at the pictures, I can’t imagine myself like that right now,” Thompson said in a wide-ranging interview with the Standard-Examiner.

ALS is a degenerative nervous system condition that slowly erodes nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to loss of muscle function and basically paralysis.

It usually starts with something like a muscle twitch, a weak arm or leg, or slurred speech.

People with ALS most often end up in wheelchairs unable to move on their own, and have problems speaking, eating and sometimes get a form of dementia, according to the Mayo Clinic.

It’s eventually fatal and researchers have yet to find its cause or a cure.

“For my own mental health, I can’t go down that road,” Thompson said. “I just think, OK, I don’t know how many years I got with what I can do so I’m going to coach as many of my kids’ things as I can, go on vacations and quit doing AD stuff and driver’s ed and spend as much time with my family where I’m actually, other than my right arm, doing stuff.”

Despite all of the current and future challenges facing him, Ogden High’s football coach said he is determined to do just that: coach football until he physically can’t.

His oldest son will be on the Tigers’ team this year and Thompson, who turned 49 in July, said he wants to coach nine more years so that he can coach his two younger sons in football.

Coaching is something he has felt called to do.

•••

In 2017, Thompson was in his first year coaching the Tigers after 13 years at Northridge. During the Iron Horse Game against Ben Lomond in October, his fingers felt numb. He couldn’t write or hold anything.

Thompson said he thought it was the cold. Later that year, he and Irving Gastelum, an OHS football player, were lifting weights and Thompson felt the strength leave his right arm halfway through a set.

A physical therapist friend suggested to Thompson it was a torn labrum or rotator cuff. That spring after practice, Thompson couldn’t turn his car keys with his right hand, nor could he zip up his coat or grip a football.

“I’ll never forget, it was graduation of my first year here, so 2018 … I was at the Ogden Clinic and they did an EMG test on me, and I could tell they were kind of concerned and they started doing more tests on me than I thought were necessary,” Thompson said. “And they sat me down and said we think you have Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS. And that was heartbreaking.”

For the next three years, it was both ALS and it wasn’t. Doctors at the University of Utah told him it wasn’t ALS because of the lack of progression, though they told him they weren’t sure what was going on.

Thompson had a “lucky” outfit, which he wore to each football game one season because it was the same clothes he wore when he had gotten some good news from a doctor, but things seemed to get worse with each year though and he knew something was wrong.

Earlier this year, he connected with a neurologist at the Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic, the same one that diagnosed the former New York Yankees superstar Lou Gehrig with ALS in the 1930s.

The neurologist, Anthony Windebank, confirmed Thompson had ALS, but there was a consolation. Windebank told Thompson he has what appears to be a rare form of ALS that progresses slower than in most cases.

Instead of the 2-3 year timeline many ALS patients have, Thompson has a longer one, potentially 10-20 years — but still with some uncertainty of how the disease will progress and what things will look like by then.

“I’ve lost pretty much all use of my right arm. They tested my left arm, it’s 30% gone so it’s kind of attacking those things right now and it seems like it’s going to go to the neck next,” Thompson said.

Thompson told his football team the news in June, putting a name to the unnamed thing which some players had observed plaguing Thompson over the last year. The most difficult part came when he had to tell his wife the final news, and particularly his own kids. His two youngest children are 12 and 9 years old.

“I don’t think the two younger ones quite get it but they know the changes … things are going to happen to dad and that I don’t want them to happen, I’ll be sad and you’ll need to help your mom out more and there’s going to be people in our lives that’ll help us out,” Thompson said. “Right now I don’t know when that’s gonna happen, and we’re going to live each day to the fullest.”

He views the diagnosis as a blessing and says he’s grateful for what he can still do — and tries to avoid thinking about what he can’t do.

•••

Thompson has been amazed by the support people have shown. He and about 20 people he played football with or around at Snow College got together at Rooster’s and shared Snow football stories for four hours.

In June, Thompson took the Ogden team to a 7-on-7 scrimmage at Roy High where the Tigers played against Roy, Farmington and Tooele. Once there, Thompson saw that coaches and players were wearing shirts that said “F.A.M.I.L.Y. Erik Strong.”

Then, a Roy City Fire truck showed up, extended the ladder over the field and sprayed all of the players and coaches down on the field to simulate the viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge from 2014, something Thompson himself did with a little league football team, according to a video shared on Facebook.

There are two benefit golf tournaments happening in the coming days and weeks.

The first is Monday, Aug. 16, at Valley View in Layton. The other is Sept. 1 at the Ogden Golf & Country Club. More information on the tournaments can be found by calling the respective courses.

There’s also a website, thompsontough.org, where people can reach out with messages, share memories and read Thompson’s story. Many have spoken about the impact he’s made on their lives.

“I mean, he’s one of my best friends. He’s a guy that really kind of saved me when he and Luke Rasmussen talked me into coming to Northridge,” said Lyndon Johnson, now Ben Lomond High’s football coach. “I was at a job I was not doing well mentally and other things, and not making a difference on anybody but myself. I owe them forever, those two guys.”

Thompson commended his assistant football coaches at Ogden High who’ve taken on more responsibilities so Thompson can be more of an overseer, even if he initially hated the thought of people walking on eggshells around him.

Those coaches have done things like taken over weight training, speed training and even learned the hand signals that Thompson can no longer do.

“I really feel that I’m surrounded by a lot of talented people that are going to allow me to coach longer than maybe someone else could. I’m highly motivated in that I want to coach my three boys, that’s nine years. In my mind, I’m coaching for nine years,” Thompson said.

•••

ALS is out of a patient’s control. No diet change or surgery is going to significantly alter the disease’s course, at least not yet.

Thompson still said he’s changing his diet so he can be as healthy as possible so he can continue to coach.

“I’m a man of faith. I believe in God and that he knows I need to be down here for a while longer, I need to be able to coach and that he’s going to help me get there somehow. I don’t know what thats going to look like but I’m confident that I’m going to be able to do it,” Thompson said.

Thompson views himself as a happy and positive person, passionate about serving others, helping others and he wants to keep it that way despite what’s in front of him.

“I don’t want to become a person that’s not that and of all the things that someone can tell me that you have, this is probably the one thing that could take me to that spot,” Thompson said.

Then he briefly mentioned the future, a specter of mortality.

“When it comes time that I can’t do things anymore …”

Thompson paused as he tried to stop from crying.

“I pray to God that I can have a good attitude and find a way to still be productive and find a purpose and be involved, and help out with Ogden High in some way.”

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