Longtime Midlothian coach hangs up his whistle

Midlothian High School Coach Jack Olsen reflects on his upcoming retirement while talking to quarterbacks (from left) Josiah Shelton, Jimmy Kraye and Ryan Barto during a recent football practice. Coach Jack Olsen puts a match to a very long cigar, digs into his locker and claps a University of North Carolina hat onto his head. "I wear a different college's hat everyday," he said.

And the cigar? "I treat myself to one before practice and one after," he admitted.

Olsen will not be lighting up those pre- and post-practice stogies much longer. After 35 years of coaching football at Midlothian High School, the 60-year-old will hang up his whistle and clipboard at the end of this season.

While Olsen currently coaches the Trojans' quarterbacks and defensive backs, he's also put in time as head basketball coach and golf coach at Midlothian High and baseball coach at Midlothian Middle. He retired from a 33-year stint of teaching government at Midlothian High in 2004.

Olsen matriculated at Division 3 Texas Lutheran University where he lettered in an amazing six sports. When he wasn't leading the university's football team as quarterback, he was playing basketball, baseball, golf and running track for the Bulldogs. He also lettered on the tennis team, although he admits, "I was just a backstop for the opposing player to hit into."

Now, he enjoys a round of golf whenever he can and plays baseball in the over 28-year-old league with his 37-year-old son Chris, also a football coach at Midlothian High.

Olsen began facing a different kind of opposition in 2002 when he was diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia, a rare form of cancer that occurs in only 2 percent of all leukemia patients. While he's almost reached remission, he's still being treated for the disease. "It's been a real personal achievement to be able to come back [from the cancer] and coach," he said.

But fighting cancer is not why Olsen is retiring from coaching. The youngest of his four children, 16-year-old Chris, is the junior varsity quarterback at Clover Hill High School. Next year, he will move up to varsity, and Olsen wants "to be a dad on Friday nights."

"The experience at Midlothian has included a lot of very fortunate things. It's been a labor of love, and I'd be hard-pressed to find someone luckier than I was to experience it," he said. "I'll miss the band, the cheerleaders, the coaches and the players. Even after all of these years, I still get butterflies on Friday nights, and I don't think I'll get the same feeling being part of the crowd in the stands."

Olsen has coached under six different head coaching regimes at Midlothian High. "They've all been fabulous guys, and the camaraderie has been great," he said.

As his coaching career draws to a close, Oslen is open in his assessment of the Midlothian football program.

"We generally have size, but we always lack speed. [The exception is Willis "Weegie" Thompson, who graduated from Midlothian in 1979, starred at Florida State University and went on to a six-year career as a wide receiver for the Pittsburg Steelers.] Our kids are intelligent, well-behaved, embrace the values of the game and take those learned lessons into their lives."

His biggest disappointment is "for as hard as they worked, we didn't win as many games as they deserved to win."

So, what words of wisdom will Olsen leave as a legacy? "That's easy. I've said it so many times: Don't ever quit. The only sure thing you know is that when you quit, you lose."