The Sunshine Coast soccer and athletic community suffered a great loss last week with the passing of Reg Thomas.
Thomas, known to many on the Sunshine Coast as "Mr. Soccer", passed away on Thurs-day, Nov. 12, surrounded by his family at St. Mary's Hospital after a long and courageous battle with cancer.
Thomas was 75.
Born in Manchester, England in 1933, his passion for the game of soccer or "football" as he called it, was instilled in him at an early age.
"My great-grandfather was one of the founding members of Manchester United," recalled daughter Ellen. "It was natural for my dad to bleed red and white. He ended up on their junior program just like David Beckham."
When he was 13 or 14, Thomas's parents decided to move to Canada to be closer to his sister. The move did not sit well with Thomas.
"It devastated Dad because he wanted to play for the big team and he knew then that he couldn't," Ellen said.
The family moved to Van-couver where Thomas grew up playing soccer and cricket. He graduated from Kitsilano Secondary School and, a year after graduation, met Carole through mutual friends. They married Nov. 12, 1955.
He worked for Woodwards for a while then got a job with General Electric in their accounting department.
Following that he got a job with Imperial Oil in their accounting department. He was living in Richmond at the time and continued to follow "the beautiful game" both playing and coaching. The family moved to Edmonton where Ellen was born, and then Thomas got a call from one of his close friends, Dick Clayton, who needed an accountant at his store on the Sunshine Coast.
"His next transfer with Imperial Oil would have been to Toronto. He had the choice of that or raising his kids on the Sunshine Coast. He chose here," Ellen said.
Thomas worked at Claytons right up to retirement at age 65.
"He stopped coaching for a while when I was growing up because he worked a lot, but the game was always a part of his life," said Ellen. "I grew up on Sundays on his knee watching the English league and the German league. I knew all the German players when I was like four. He was always teaching me and explaining the game to me."
When Ellen moved back to the Sunshine Coast, Thomas's coaching juices started flowing again, and he helped Ellen with the Trail Bay Thunder where she was a player/coach.
"He asked me one day if he could run the subs and I said definitely. He was the assistant coach and got back into coaching that way," she said. "When I started coaching up here at Chat, I got busy with teaching, so he took over the team."
Sunshine Coast Youth Soccer Association (SCYSA) president Laurie Miller remembers her first introduction to Thomas like it was yesterday.
"The first time I ever spoke to Reg was in 1995. I had heard that he had a daughter who played soccer and my women's team was short players," recalled Miller. "Ellen ended up coaching and playing for Thunder, and that meant that Reg became our greatest fan, and I got to know him really well.
"In the '90s, all youth soccer on the Coast was co-ed. Reg, a father of two daughters, understood that girls needed a field of their own,and he started a girls-only seven-a-side league within the SCYSA."
Miller said in the early days, high-school girls could choose between playing co-ed and playing in the seven-a-side league. After a few years, the number of girls playing soccer was sufficient to go the next step; a senior girls' division was formed with full teams of 11 per side.
"Reg was behind the development of senior girls' soccer from day one. He championed, organized, coached and did whatever was necessary to get girls on the field," said Miller.
When he retired, Thomas formally joined the SCYSA board and took on more duties. He continued to co-ordinate all aspects of soccer for the senior girls' division, including the annual Old Boot indoor tournament, numerous trips to Vancouver Whitecaps games and the year-end tourney. As a board member he took on organizing the annual general meeting, equipment co-ordination, volunteer co-ordination, field lining, advocacy and many other jobs.
"Reg had a big hand each year in putting up the registration road signs, a physical and challenging job for a young man. A day did not pass without Reg doing something for soccer," added Miller. "Reg has not been fully well for some time. The SCYSA board wanted to recognize Reg's contribution to soccer and his community while he was still with us. In December of 2008, the SCYSA announced to Reg that in his honour they had named their scholarships after him. In June 2009, five Reg Thomas soccer bursaries were awarded to graduates from the Sunshine Coast.
"When I called Reg back in 1995, I had no idea who I was calling and no clue that our lives would become entwined through our involvement with youth soccer. And now he is gone, and I shall miss him. Our community is a better place for Reg having been a part of it. His legacy is played out every weekend on soccer fields up and down the Coast. We can keep Reg's spirit alive by continuing his work."
And that work includes the new soccer field behind Chatelech Secondary School.
According to Ellen, a week before he died, Thomas attended a meeting about the new pitch.
"When he got sick and couldn't coach, he always still had his projects, and the back field was a big one," Ellen said. "He was always thinking about the community and making the community better. He told me he didn't want the new field named after him, but rather Pioneer Park because of all the pioneer families that lived here and continue to work for the betterment of the community. The only thing he wanted was that one end of the field be called the Stretford End because the Stretford End is the end of Stretford Street in Old Trafford where he and my grandfather watched all the Manchester United games."
Thomas was diagnosed with cancer three years ago. The doctors gave him three to five years to live, but that didn't seem to slow him much.
"He hated being sick, but he was driven when he was out with people that I think he kind of forgot how sick he was," said Ellen. "He's had an impact on so many people and so many different ages from youth to adults to seniors. He just had a passion for people and that's how he showed it working with kids, soccer, sports and athletics. He just had this way with people. His goal was to always make life better for people."
Besides his work on the field, Thomas always talked about soccer off of the pitch. He became a regular columnist for Coast Reporter and his weekly columns became staples in the sports section.
"I don't remember the first time I met Reg Thomas. It just seemed like he was always there," recalled former Coast Reporter editor Neville Judd. "When I worked at Coast Reporter, I took Reg to lunch at Gilligan's Pub to thank him for his weekly soccer columns. We watched his beloved Manchester United on the big screen and he expounded on his footballing philosophy.
"The ball, he told me, should be treated like a woman, as something to cherish. 'You don't boot the ball, you stroke it, you caress it,' he said. 'Be good to the ball and the ball will be good to you.'
"Reg was as passionate and as committed to winning as the next player," Judd said. "He wouldn't have been offered a contract by Manchester United as a schoolboy had he not been. But ultimately Reg believed the game was more important than the result, that playing it with style and grace was what made it beautiful, which is why he gave so much back to the game and to theSunshine Coast."
Reg's love for the community extended well beyond soccer and athletics. He worked for 25 years at Chatelech Secondary School at their annual graduation ceremonies.
"It's always about what is good for kids. That is what I think of when I think of Reg Thomas," recalled School District No. 46 superintendent Deborah Palmer. "He was always full of boundless energy for what was good for kids. From setting up the stage for graduation at Chatelech, 25 years running, coaching soccer in the community or standing on the sidelines watching the kids play, he always dreamed big about the possibilities for sports facilities on the Coast and never tired in his quest for nothing but the best.
"As a parent, I was always impressed with how much he knew about each one of the players on any given team. He was a wonderful example of 'it's all about relationships'. The sidelines will be forever changed without Reg there."
Teacher Sean Smith recalled his first interaction with Reg.
"My first year at the school on the day after the ceremony and during the middle of our year-end staff party, I was walking down the hall when I came across Reg who was exiting one of our classrooms," Smith said. "He was muttering under his breath something to the effect of not having enough guys who were strong enough to help him with the dismantling of the stands, when he asked me, 'Are you a new teacher here?' When I replied in the affirmative, he exclaimed, 'Well, thank heavens. I've been looking all over for some male teachers who have the brawn to help me take down the grad stands. The guys in that room [the classroom he exited] just don't have the muscle. It should only take about 10 minutes; can you give us a hand?'
"Well, not many people have ever accused me of being a man of brawn," Smith said, "so naturally my ego took over (obviously I'm not a man of brain either), and I proceeded to the gym to help three or four male students who were dismantling the stands.
"Thirty minutes later I returned to our year-end staff party in a sweat from all that work, when I overheard one of my colleagues say to another, 'Ten bucks Reg got him to help with the stands with that old man of brawn trick.' Little did I know that not only had he cleverly manipulated me into helping him, I found out later there were no men at all in the classroom he exited it was a storage room. I truly admired Reg. I've never met someone not directly connected or employed by the school who did so much to help us. He was one of a kind and will be sorely missed by so many."
A celebration of Thomas's life will be held at Chatelech on Sunday, Jan. 17, at 2 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a donation be made to the Reg Thomas Youth Soccer Bursary at the Sunshine Coast Credit Union.
