Our guest for this week’s ITG Next Alabama “4 Questions with the Coach” spotlight is Thompson High head football coach Mark Freeman, who has led the Warriors to four state championships, including last season’s exciting comeback win with eighth-grade sensation Trent Seaborn at quarterback.
This season, Coach Freeman has led his Thompson football team through a successful regular season with an 8-1 record, including a perfect 7-0 mark in Region 3-7A, which secured the region championship and No. 1 seed heading into the Alabama state playoffs. Freeman’s Warriors shut out the Florence Falcons 42-0 in Round 1 to begin what they hope is a march to another state title. What does Coach Freeman think about this year’s Warriors team? Let’s find out.
Q. Coach Freeman, last season ended on a great note with you and your Thompson football team winning the state championship. Now, as we catch up with you here late in the 2023 season, how have things been going for you and your team?
A. It’s gone really well. There’s always the difficulty of maintaining the standards we have established here, and each year the kids seem to have a hard time working through that, but in the end, they come around to how we want things done. We’ve had a good year. We stumbled against a good Clay-Chalkville team, but then we bounced back and have played really well since then. We’ve had really good practices. Everything leads me to believe that we can have some success in the postseason and continue to maintain that standard that I spoke of earlier. God only knows, but we are going to give it a really good try.
Q. You mentioned that one stumbling block with Clay-Chalkville. Take us back to that game? It back-and-forth, and you guys had an early lead, but a lot happened after that, right?
A. Those games, when you are fairly equal to one another, are always going to come down to six or seven plays. I think they have a few more players on their roster than we do, but really that game was there for us to win and we just didn’t take advantage of the opportunities we had. They are a really good 6A school, a power school, and their coach is a good friend of mine.
They have a huge offensive line, and they have a back, Jaylen Mbakwe, who has All-American speed. He’s a really good player, and he had a big game against us. But we missed a field goal late that could have sent the game to overtime, and that’s just how it goes sometimes. We thought we had a great shot at winning it, but we just didn’t take advantage of some things during the course of the game.
Q. Coach Freeman, we all remember last season, when you had the situation of two good quarterbacks to work with, and it worked out when your Thompson football team won a state championship. Your starter, Zack Sims, went down with an injury, and that gave his backup, Trent Seaborn, a chance to come in and take over. When you have two or more talented QBs, how do you approach the battle for the starting job and playing time?
A. Well, we had senior Zack Sims, who was our starting quarterback last year, get injured, so that opened the door for Trent Seaborn, who was an eighth-grader, and he came in and helped us win a state championship. We move into this offseason and they battled back and forth, and Trent has started every game for us, but Zack comes in and also does a great job for us.
They are two different players, Zack is a big strong guy who can throw, but he’s really good with his feet. He’s thrown 2 or 3 touchdown passes this year, but I am blessed to work with two really good guys at that position every day. We do film every week, and we grade them every week, and we process it through. We know what each guy can do for us. They both understand how things work, and they are really good friends and encourage each other. That’s very unique in this day and time. I’m very grateful to have both of them.
Q. Coach, I know every team is different from year to year, but what do you think is the biggest difference between this year’s team at this point compared to last year’s team at this same point heading into the postseason?
A. I think experience is the biggest difference. Last year we had a lot of guys who had their hand in the dirt in state championship games coming into the season last year, and this year we did not have that luxury. We have a lot of younger guys now, and most of them will be back. So, while we had a lot of experienced guys coming in here to start the season last year, this year the guys have been getting that experience as the season has gone along. The luxury is knowing that each week we play we are getting better, so let’s go and do great things this year, then come back with that experience next year and see what happens.
