CIRCLE PINES, Minn. — The Centennial High School softball team operates on one motto.
“Be one, be family,” said Centennial head softball coach and heartbeat of the Cougars family, Rick Thomas.
“We have this acronym in family that is: forget about me, I love you,” said the fifth-year coach.
“Rick is someone who eats, sleeps, breathes Cougar softball," said junior pitcher Riley O'Connell.
Only time can tell the impact you have on others along the journey.
“If I could say to anyone about my hero, I would honestly say it would be Rick, because that man is so strong,” said junior Peyton Corbin.
And for Thomas, his time is spent on the diamond, measured in love, pitch calls, and encouragement.
“He’s always going to give you everything he can. Whether it’s at practice or at a game. He’s one of a kind. On and off the field," said O'Connell.
Holding court beside third base, brimming with passion and joy, you’d never know that Thomas is in the fight of his life right now.
“I was just having some back pain. Back then, I was really big into working out. I loved to go to the gym five days a week. I just figured I pulled a muscle in my back, so we just kind of let it go, figured a pulled muscle,” said Thomas.
When the back pain persisted into early 2023, Thomas and wife Anne were sent to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
“Got into Mayo and got with our oncology team and basically was told we were a unicorn case and something they hadn’t seen yet,” said Thomas.
A case so rare, Doctors have unofficially called it grade four carcinoma, something he’s been fighting for the last 17 months.
“Somebody that’s so strong can go through something so hard, it’s really hard to think about,” said Corbin.
“Rick has been one of the most constant people in my life, and such an important person to me. So, finding out that something like that happened to such a good person, it broke my heart,” said O'Connell.
“I stayed up a lot of the night, and cried and cried and I sat in my bed and thought what’s going to happen to my dad? What’s he going to have to go through?” said Thomas' youngest daughter, Bella.
Not even surgery or radiation has kept Thomas from being there for his two families.
“It’s such a drive to keep going and going, every single day for him,” said Corbin.
“We are a family together. If he’s down, we are going to pick him right back up,” said O'Connell.
“It’s been really inspiring. There’s times where I don’t feel like I have the strength to do something, and then I remember that my Dad has the strength to get up everyday and go to school and go to softball and coach people, even with everything that he’s going through,” said Bella Thomas.
“We got this. We are going to get through this together,” said Rick's wife, Anne.
Fresh strength found with each base hit, strikeout, and support from the greater softball family in the Twin Cities.
“In softball, we’re all family. When someone, especially like our coach is going through this, just like we’re family, we’re fighting with you, we are always going to be by your side,” said O'Connell.
“That support has been so helpful for me to keep pushing on,” said Anne.
“They (doctors) told me, I can tell that you love softball. You can’t give that up, that’s what’s going to carry you through a lot of this, is being able to get out and do those things, so super thankful for the game of softball,” said Thomas.
Thomas' next scheduled scan to see how treatments are working is later this month. A GoFundMe for Thomas has been set up.
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