Once upon a time in the City of Lights, high school football was king among all of our sports. Kids couldn’t wait to be members of their school’s team, and fans of all ages looked forward to Fridays and Saturdays in the fall.
At each of the high schools in the city, there emerged at least one head coach who became synonymous with his school by leading its program for as many as 15, 20 and 25 years — one even longer than that.
Ken Zimmerman, Del Dufrain and Mike Curry live on in our memories as the longest-serving head coaches at West Aurora, East Aurora and Aurora Central Catholic, respectively.
Zimmerman served at West for an impressive 27 years. Curry served for 23 years at East Aurora and Dufrain for 18 at Aurora Central Catholic. Paul Murphy is the “dean” of this Aurora coaching fraternity, having served 15 years at Marmion Academy, and another 15 at Waubonsie Valley.
Aurora Christian began its football program only recently (1998) and was notably led by Don Beebe for 10 years.
I was lucky enough to become friends with some of these men either as a teaching colleague or in my years covering games as a sports writer. Each was a class act — true gentlemen who cared about their athletes, school and community.
In a low-key announcement at the end of the 2023 football season, Dan Thorpe announced his retirement as the Marmion Academy head coach after 19 seasons and 103 victories. He becomes the third longest-serving and second- winningest coach in Aurora history. And he is every bit the class act as the others in the legendary group he now joins.
I visited with Coach Thorpe recently, and learned many things about his career as a player and as a coach. I learned about his amazing success which began as a player in high school and continued until his retirement from coaching last fall.
He led his Antigo, Wisconsin, high school team to the state championship in 1976 as its quarterback and a defensive back. He was honored as the Wisconsin State Player of the Year that season. He became a student at the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point, and was a three-year starter in football there as a defensive back.
During his college years, Thorpe decided on a career as a teacher-coach, and in his early years was an assistant college and high school coach in Wisconsin. In 1987, he became head coach at Turner High School in Beloit and one year later, Turner won the Wisconsin state championship. Thorpe was the first person in Wisconsin to win a state football championship as a player and as a (very young) head coach.
Because of his wife’s career as a museum administrator, his family relocated to the Cleveland, Ohio, area where Thorpe served as head coach at two different schools from 2000 to 2005. The family moved to the Aurora area when he became head coach at Marmion in 2005.
The Cadets reached the postseason playoffs in Thorpe’s third season, and qualified for the postseason nine more times during his tenure. In 2010, Marmion ran all the way to the state championship game at the University of Illinois, and finished second.
Thorpe has also served as head track coach during his time at Marmion, and his team won the 2A state championship in 2018. This honored him as being a state championship coach in two different sports in two different states.
Talking with him about his successful career as a football player and multi-sport coach was a lot of fun for me. It would be hard to find anyone as successful as he has been as a player and coach. But the way Coach Thorpe has carried himself as a teacher, counselor, mentor and gentleman has been most impressive of all.
Other than drawing the X’s and the O’s, I asked him to summarize his philosophy in dealing with high school students.
“I believe in being honest with the kids, supporting them, and believing in them. I tried to instill confidence through hard work and preparation,” he said. “I also believe in ownership. The program should not be parent-driven or coach-driven. The more successful teams are athlete-led teams.”
Thorpe has been Marmion’s college guidance counselor during his years at the school (he will continue in that role and as track coach) and I asked his thoughts about that aspect of his career.
“I always took pride in the classroom and in counseling, and didn’t want to be ‘just’ the football coach,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to do my very best to help our juniors and seniors and their parents with the college process.”
Asked his thoughts on leaving his football career, Thorpe thought for a minute before answering.
“I embraced the opportunity to hopefully impact kids’ lives to a greater victory, and I could do that at a school like Marmion,” he said. “We always told our boys that we want to win. But we also want you to be good husbands, fathers and employees. We want you to be successful through preparation and not giving up.”
Tom Strong is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.