Inside the St. Thomas weight room on a June morning, amid the slamming of. Today is a new day to get better, says the Eagles head football coach, Tim

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1 This is a profile I wrote of St. Thomas High School s head football Tim Fitzpatrick for the Eagles Pride magazine during my time as St. Thomas High School Communications Intern. Inside the St. Thomas weight room on a June morning, amid the slamming of dumbbells and heaving breathing of athletes spending their summer vacations at school, one voice stands out. Today is a new day to get better, says the Eagles head football coach, Tim Fitzpatrick. From now until the end of summer. Fitzpatrick calls days like these teachable moments. Despite not lifting any weights, Fitzpatrick is as sweaty as any player in the room, and he couldn t be happier. He s doing exactly what he wants, meeting his goals and grinding towards the ones he has yet to achieve. - Fitzpatrick grew up in the Chicago area. The son of a former Navy officer, he was the fourth of five boys and the sixth of seven children. As a child, he was a self-described punching bag for his older brothers. That was until football became Fitzpatrick s escape. I decided I did not want to be a doormat anymore, Fitzpatrick said of his high school days. I became bigger and stronger than all of my brothers. Fitzpatrick excelled at football in high school, garnering the attention of multiple Division I programs. He was going to play college sports, a goal of his. However, when

2 the Chicago Tribune falsely reported that he committed to play at the University of Missouri, other programs in the Midwest stopped recruiting him. Fitzpatrick s father wanted to sue the Tribune for its error, but his son refused. No, that s not how I want to do this, Fitzpatrick said. I want to earn what I get; I ve worked hard. I don t want someone giving me something I didn t earn. Fitzpatrick maintains the attitude of earning everything one receives, instilling it in his St. Thomas football program. We have to create our own destiny and our own history, he says. Fitzpatrick ended up playing football at Rice University in Houston. It was 40 below [in Chicago] when I came down [to visit Rice] and it was 70 here, Fitzpatrick said. So the decision was very easy. After graduating from Rice in 1993, Fitzpatrick served as the vice president of a local Houston company. But his successes didn t matter in his eyes; he was unhappy. He would go to Rice to watch football practice after work. He missed the game. He wasn t achieving his goals. As a little kid I d always known I wanted to be involved in athletics, Fitzpatrick said. Getting out of college I chased what a lot of people chased, and that s the money. A lot of people think that money is going to bring them happiness and joy, and it didn t. Fitzpatrick made a career change. He accepted a graduate assistant position at Rice, going to school in the morning and coaching in the afternoon.

3 He worked seven days a week, 85 hours a week and he made little money and he was happy. After three years as a coach at Rice, Fitzpatrick took an assistant coaching position at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. He and his now wife, Katie, eventually moved back to Houston, though, and Fitzpatrick looked to coach at the high school level, where job security was higher and it was easier to raise a family. Fitzpatrick took a full-time job at St. Thomas as P.E. teacher and assistant football coach in 1996, the last year the Eagles won a state championship. He worked at the school until 2004, when he decided to start his own fencing company, an item he said was on his bucket list, while also serving as a part-time coach at Episcopal High School. Fitzpatrick came back to St. Thomas after the Eagles 2009 football season, working as defensive coordinator for his former college teammate and then Eagles head coach Donald Hollas. When Hollas resigned in 2011 following an up and down 8-6 season in which the Eagles made it to the TAPPS state semi-finals, the school hired Fitzpatrick to be the head football coach. That s another thing that was on my bucket list, Fitzpatrick said of becoming a head coach. You always want to be in charge and be the one who makes decisions. When Fitzpatrick was the Eagles defensive coordinator, spectators in the stands of Granger stadium could hear him yell from the coaching office next to the press box. He admits his coaching style aggressive, but with a purpose.

4 I m old school, he says. There s a right way to play and there s a wrong way to play. I have high expectations for myself, the coaches and the player You want them to have high expectations of themselves. Fitzpatrick s coaching methods have been effective. St. Thomas ranked among the top defenses in TAPPS each of the past two years in yards allowed, and five Eagles who played on the defensive side of the ball for the coach in the past two years now play at the collegiate level. Parker White, 12, is one of those players. When Fitzpatrick arrived White was a 180 pound sophomore offensive lineman. Now he is a defensive end at Division I Miami University in Ohio. Mentally I ve changed a lot as a player, White said. That s where coach Fitz comes in as a position coach. He s helped me learn a lot of different moves to become a lot better of a player. He wants to see St. Thomas become the dominant football power in the state, and he really cares about the kids becoming great football players. Like anything else in his life though, when it comes to his patience, Fitzpatrick is putting work into it. I m getting softer, he says with a smile. I m learning. On a hot June day Eagle football players make their way to the field of Granger Stadium. They have work to do. In Fitzpatrick s first year as the Eagles head coach, the team posted its best record since 1969, winning ten games. St. Thomas topped rival Strake Jesuit for the first

5 time in 14 years a shot heard around the world according to Michael Reul, the Eagles senior quarterback. But the Eagles season ended in a loss. They fell in the second round of the TAPPS football playoffs to Bishop Lynch of Dallas. Tim Fitzpatrick had many individual goals in his life: playing college football; starting his own fencing company; being a head high school football coach. His latest goal, though, is a collective one. It s the reason he comes to the school every weekday during the summer. When we re out here in the heat and in the weight room and busting our tails, that [loss is] what we remind the kids, Fitzpatrick says. That s why we re working as hard as we are, because we definitely want to win our last game, and hopefully that s in the playoffs, and if you do that then you re going to be state champs. That s our goal.