This column is going to fail. I'm 100 percent, no question, hand-on-my-heart guaranteeing it. Why? Because there is no way on earth I could possibly do justice to the subject of this column in a few dozen lines of newsprint. Period.
But here it goes anyway.
If you talk to his friends -- and he has more of them than any other person at the University -- men's lacrosse volunteer assistant coach Joe Thompson,?? known to everyone simply as Joe T, doesn't sound real.
He's been in school for almost a decade.
Half his face is held together by titanium plates.
He would jump in front of traffic for someone he met a few hours earlier.
He's one of the most selfless people you'll ever meet.
He'll change the way you look at varsity athletes.
After sitting down with this real-life Van Wilder, I can honestly report that all of this is true. I have interviewed dozens of athletes of all shapes and sizes throughout my four years in Charlottesville, and not one of them has come anywhere close to Joe T. He's not the smartest guy, he's not the biggest or the strongest or the best athlete, but whether he's jumping into full-contact lacrosse practice wearing nothing but sweats and a helmet, hurdling the bar to stand up for a friend or taking notes in class four years after his peers have graduated, Joe Thompson is the epitome of everything that is right with Virginia sports.
Thompson's story, however, is not the easiest to tell. After all, he has had every reason to give up.
First, there was high school. As a standout senior in 2000, Thompson had recruiting offers from virtually every lacrosse powerhouse in the country.
"While the other places told me I would play right away as a freshman, Coach Dom [Starsia] said, 'Joe, I love you. I think you're a great player, but I don't need midfielders,'" Thompson remembers. "He said, 'I'm armed to the teeth with good young middies. I don't have a lot of scholarship money for you.'"
In Thompson's mind, however, there was no question he was going to the school he had dreamed of ever since his days as a bobble-headed kid at Starsia's lacrosse camp.
"Dom's basically telling me he doesn't know if I can play for him," Thompson said. "Still, I'd rather go to the best place and throw my chips in and see what happens than start somewhere else and wonder if I could have made it at Virginia."
Then there was Halloween night his freshman year. In a freak accident during a game of pickup soccer, Thompson tripped and smashed his head into the knee of another player. One whole side of his face was shattered, and even after doctors reconstructed it with bolts and plates, Thompson was told he would probably be blind in one eye and would never set foot on a lacrosse field again.
With Starsia's full support and after redshirting the 2001 season, Thompson returned to score three goals for the Cavaliers in 2002.
"[Coach Starsia] and I really bonded during that and really got to know each other," Thompson said. "It wouldn't have mattered if I had never been able to play again. I would have been able to be on this team."
After the 2002 season, Thompson thought about giving up. He had been having academic trouble and decided to withdraw from the University for two years and coach lacrosse at the nearby Woodberry Forest School.
Then, in 2005 , he came back to finish what he had started.
"When the opportunity came to come back [to the University], I knew I had to finish school," Thompson said. "That's number one. That's something Dom's instilled in me. One of the coolest parts about this program, and I firmly believe this, is that Dom wants to make you a better guy, wants to make you a better person, wants to make you better for the community and the people you're going to meet the rest of your life. And he really believes that. He doesn't just pay lip service to the papers and he's not just saying that stuff. He tells me that when it's just he and I in the shower."
Still, the question remained about Thompson's playing status. Starsia was ready with the same speech he had given his midfielder back in high school.
"When I talked to Dom about coming back to play, he said, 'Joe, you're one of the most competitive kids I've ever known. You realize at this point that you're 23, I've got tons of younger guys, there's pretty much zero chance that you're going to have an impact on our first two midfields this year,'" Thompson said. "And I said, 'Coach, I'll play goalie. I just really want my locker back. That's all I want. I just want to be back with these guys.'"
Starsia shook his head and agreed.
As the elder statesman, Thompson was elected captain of a 2005 team that went all the way to the Final Four in Philadelphia before losing to eventual champion Johns Hopkins on a last-second goal in overtime.
"For me, every day I would just go out to practice and say, 'This is it,'" Thompson said. "It didn't matter what else was going on in my life, struggling with school or whatever. [The other players] all laughed, but I knew it was contagious. I wanted those young guys to say, 'Why does he care so much? He's never going to be out there anymore. He's the clearing middie. It's a token job because he's a senior.' What I would want to say back to them is that it's not 'why does he do this,' it's more like, 'he has no reason to do this and still does it every day.' That is the reason. Because I have the chance to."
After Thompson's resurrected playing career ended Memorial Day weekend, he was faced with another chance to quit. Still short on credits for graduation, the fifth-year senior decided to come back once more to work for the program he loved as a volunteer assistant on Starsia's staff.
"One of my favorite things to kind of preach to the younger guys is unless you join the army or something of that nature, you're never, ever in your life going to do anything like this again where you're collectively giving everything you have for the group," Thompson said. "You might work for a company, and you want the company to do well, but ultimately it's about putting food on the table. We're not going on to play for millions of dollars. Some of us might go coach, some of us might play pro a little bit, but ultimately you're going to go on and move on with your life. For these four years (and some of us a little longer) you're completely unselfishly giving everything you have in whatever role you have, whether you're [star attackman] Ben [Rubeor] or the last guy on the team."
Members of the 11 classes of students with whom Thompson has attended the University say the unselfishness doesn't stop there.
"Joe T is everybody's buddy," fourth-year Pat Cronin said. "He's changed the way I look at athletes."
"He is an amazing person with the drive to accomplish whatever he wants in life," senior attackman Drew Garrison? said. "As a freshman, I played ahead of him in the eyes of Dom, but I always felt that his drive on and off the field meant that I played far below him."
That drive has defined the selflessness and loyalty Thompson incorporates into so many aspects of his life.
"In terms of my friends and the people I've encountered at this place, absolutely I'd do anything for anybody," Thompson said. "I'd jump in front of a car for you. I'd give you the last dollar out of my pocket. But at the same time, I think all those people would do that for me."
As a coach, one of Thompson's last acts of loyalty will be to finish what he started in the classroom back when today's fourth-years were freshman in high school. Eight years after he first came to Grounds, Joe T is graduating this summer.
"I've hated school my whole life," Thompson said. "Practice is my favorite part of the day. Class isn't. Still, I couldn't come in here as a 25-year-old coach on the U.Va. lacrosse team and bark and yell and hoot and holler and motivate these guys and give speeches and send them e-mails and pick them up when they're down and have them take any of that seriously if on the side I just threw in the towel and say I was done with school. There's just no way."
And Thompson's teammates are quick to give Thompson that same support off the field.
"I have guys e-mail me all the time," he said. "Guys from before, guys that were here with me, who ask, 'Coach T, are you getting it done?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, I'm in class right now. Stop e-mailing me.' And they'll say, 'It makes my day. Just let me know when your graduation party is.'"
If you ask him, Thompson credits all this and more to the lacrosse program that first put a jersey on his back so long ago.
"For me, I look at it like, all right, we're here, we might as well give it our best," Thompson said. "I get to look at myself in the mirror every night when I'm brushing my teeth and say, 'You gave it all today.' It doesn't always work out. I'm not the best student, was not the best athlete, but I gave everything I had every single day, and I'd like to think I'll continue to do that. And that's kind of what I want these young players to realize, 'Man, look at Joe T. That guy's been through a lot. It's almost taken him a decade to graduate.' But I'm going to. And when I'm done, I'm going to go get a great job, and whether it's in coaching or whatever, I'd like to think my life will work out. And I think this program has a lot to do with that."
And that brings us to the moral of this story.
When you're in class wishing you were just about anywhere else, when you find yourself doing something with less than full enthusiasm, when life tries again and again to take you down and when the chance to stand up for a friend presents itself, think about Joe.
Think about the guy who has had every reason to give up. Think about the guy who was never the most talented at anything but who stuck it out for the love of the game and for the love of his friends. Think about the guy who would take a bullet for his teammates if they didn't take one for him first. Think about the guy who loves practice so much it borders on insanity. And think about the guy who would much rather rip a crank shot than take a midterm, but is finally getting his college degree because he doesn't believe in giving up.
That is the mark of a good athlete and a good man.
That, my friends, is the legend of Joe T.
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