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Jamie Thompson is trading Wolverine blue for Fighting Blues, exchanging one family for a reunion with another.

For anyone that knows Thompson, who knows how family and faith and a little bit of football are the foundations of his life, that move shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The longtime Polk County coach and educator has turned in all his paperwork and plans to retire at the end of the current school year. But retirement is just a formality – Thompson will not be leaving the classroom or sidelines. He is instead joining the faculty at Parry McCluer High School in Buena Vista, Va., where he will teach social studies and serve as an assistant football coach.

The Blue Ridge Mountains town holds deep significance for Thompson —it’s where his mother was raised, and where extended family awaits his arrival.

“I’ve got five older sisters, so I’ve been surrounded by women all my life,” Thompson said. “Up there, I have male cousins, which is nice. I’m looking forward to being around some male family figures.

“My uncle, Joe, he’s a legend up there. He was the quarterback when they won their first state championship. They have five state championships, and every one of them either had my uncle or one of his sons on the team. The Wheeler name up there is a big deal, and it has a big football tradition.”

Parry McCluer will gain a coach with his own impressive football pedigree.

Thompson began working in Polk County Schools in 1997 and launched his coaching career a year later. Since then, he’s been a fixture on Wolverine sidelines in multiple capacities. He coached football every season since 1998, including a three-year stint as the Wolverines’ head coach. He notched a 19-18 record from 2014-16, making him one of only three coaches in the program’s history with a winning career record.

Thompson also coached Polk County’s softball program from 2017-19 and finished with a 37-24 career mark. As the Wolverines’ wrestling coach from 1999-2007, he won two conference titles and coached two state champions, Jim and Austin Ollis.

Thompson is one of only two coaches in school history to serve as head coach for three different sports (that’s counting indoor track and outdoor track as just track, girls basketball and boys basketball as just basketball and so forth). The other is Jeff Wilson, who offered Thompson his start with the Wolverine athletic program.

“Chris Thompson was the head JV coach, and I came on and Chris asked me to be a defensive coordinator,” Thompson recalled. “I coached linebackers and offensive line.

“Jeff really was the one that brought me in. I learned a lot from Jeff, especially about how important it is to let kids know that you care about them. Ed Foster was the defensive coordinator for the varsity, and Ed kind of took me under his wing. He was a mentor to me.”

Thompson eventually became the head JV coach, and then he took over the wrestling program in 1999 at a moment of turmoil for the program. “Don Millwood was the athletic director at that time,” Thompson said. “It was like the third week into the season, and he said we’re going to have to shut this program down if you won’t coach it. So I said, yeah, I can do it for a year.”

Members of the wrestling program later cornered Thompson and noted they’d had three different coaches in three seasons – so Thompson coached the next eight, winning 69 dual matches, still a program record.

Bruce Ollis arrived in 2002 as the Wolverines’ head football coach, and he made Thompson the varsity defensive coordinator in 2003. The Ollis-Thompson pairing guided Polk County football to its greatest heights, including a five-year stretch from 2006-2010 when the program won 51 games and four conference titles.

Many of Thompson’s favorite memories date to his time working with Ollis.

“Bruce’s second year here, my first year as defensive coordinator, we went from being 2-9 to 11-2,” he said. “Just the newness of that here for the whole community. We’re undefeated and playing Hendersonville here, and walking out at six o’clock and there was not an empty seat. That was great.

“Beating Maiden there. Maiden’s always been one of those teams, so when we beat them there and dominated them after they thumped us the year before, that was big. We beat Owen the first time up at Owen. We weren’t expected to. We had two weeks to prepare and we went up there and dominated them.

“Just the fact that Polk County was not really known for football, and we changed that, to the point where people really started to fear us. Sometimes I felt like we won games just because we were Polk County.”

One of the players that Thompson coached in his two-plus decades stands out more than any other – his son, Trey. The oldest of three, Trey Thompson was a fixture around the Wolverine program for many years, as was Thompson’s oldest daughter, Tori. Both Trey and Tori went on to play sports at the college level, as will Thompson’s youngest child, Natalie, who graduates this year and will head to Randolph College to play tennis.

“I look back at coaching and the amount of time that I was away from my kids, but also when they got in high school, they were with me all the time,” Thompson said. “So it was kind of like I gave up that (earlier) time to have that time. Especially with Trey, football and wrestling, he was with me all the time. The others were here all the time, too. And it gave me the opportunity to go see them all the time and know what’s going on.

“It was a really good time here. I wouldn’t trade anything that I did. I had a couple of opportunities to go different places, and I’m glad I never did. I always consider myself to be a loyal guy, and I always felt like Polk County was loyal to me, so I was loyal to it.”

With Trey working in Virginia and Natalie going to college there, Thompson will be within a couple of hours of both, adding to the attraction of the move to Buena Vista. That, plus the family connection, ultimately convinced Thompson to make the transition, as bittersweet as leaving Polk County will be.

“This is home,” Thompson said. “I wasn’t raised in Polk County Schools, but my adult raising happened here, and I’ve had a lot of mentors along the way, Jeff and Bruce, Ed Foster. And I coached with a lot of guys who I’m still good friends with, David Bollinger, Chris Mintz, Steven Pack, Mitch Davis, Josh McEntire, Brandon Gentry. All these guys I’ve coached with, I still have a good relationship with, a fraternity was built around that. So I’m going to miss this place.

“I’ve been blessed as a man of faith. God’s plan brought me where I am. Whenever Bruce left, this was my plan. I told them right off the bat that I planned to retire in two years. I thought I’d go to South Carolina, but with (Natalie) going up there, Trey already being up there, I’ve got family there, it makes sense. It just makes sense.”