By Fred Jeter

Damon “Redd” Thompson, admitting “the fire came out of me,” has stepped down as John Marshall High School’s football coach following three disappointing seasons.

“It stopped being fun,” said Coach Thompson, whose Justices were a combined 4-26, including 1-9 this year.

The team’s only victory this season was over 0-10 Armstrong High School.

Overmatched against much larger Division 5 and 6 schools from Henrico and Hanover counties, John Marshall was outscored 458 to 70.

On a level playing field, John Marshall held its own. Against similarly sized Division 3 foes, the Justices defeated Armstrong 23-15, lost to Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk 22-14 and lost to Thomas Jefferson High School 21-16.

“I’m cool with losing, as long as we lose at the end of a game — not when we’ve lost before the game starts,” Coach Thompson said.

His three-year stint with the North Side high school team ended with a 48-0 loss to Henrico’s Mills Godwin High School.

Coach Thompson is not a John Marshall High faculty member. He has his own business as a youth counselor and athletic trainer.

Before taking the John Marshall coaching position, he served as an assistant coach at Benedictine and various county schools.

“The difference (between the haves and have not’s) is the offseason – January to June,” said Coach Thompson. “At Benedictine we’d have 60 boys waiting to work out each day” in the offseason, he recalled. “At John Marshall, sometimes we would have 10. Another day, 10 to 12 and then, maybe four or five. We didn’t have enough to play in the 7-on-7 tournaments” in the spring, he said.

Coach Thompson felt the lack of offseason preparation — more than the schedule — led to the poor record.

“I’ve got no respect for anyone’s comments or opinions unless they were there January to June,” he said.

Coach Thompson is revered as one of the area’s premier all-time players, starting with an All-Metro receiving career at Highland Springs High School in Henrico. From there, he went on to become the greatest pass receiver in the history of Virginia State University and the CIAA. He is a member of the VSU and CIAA halls of fame.

Coach Thompson’s 262 career catches also set the NCAA Division II standard.

After college, he starred many years on the pro-arena circuit.

Although Coach Thompson looks to get back into coaching, he says his immediate future will be grooming his athletic son, Damon “Redd” Thompson Jr., a sixth-grader at Binford Middle School.

“Right now, I think I’ll just concentrate on Redd Junior, Little Man,” said Coach Thompson.