Hoops is also part of the Thompson bloodline
There is a large sector of Gopher football fans that remember number 39 Darrell Thompson as their first Minnesota football hero. Those are the same fans who received one of the “Darrell Thompson Growth Chart” posters that remained on the…
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Continue ReadingThere is a large sector of Gopher football fans that remember number 39 Darrell Thompson as their first Minnesota football hero. Those are the same fans who received one of the “Darrell Thompson Growth Chart” posters that remained on the wall throughout their childhood.
This winter those same fans have been introduced to the fourth of Darrell’s children Race Thompson, a sophomore at Robbinsdale Armstrong who was recently offered a basketball scholarship to the University of Minnesota as a 6-foot-8, 210 pound combo forward who can play several positions.
This scholarship offer was special to the Thompson family considering the close ties to the school. Darrell, who graduated from Rochester John Marshall High School in Minnesota, is the all time leading rusher in Gopher football history and currently teams with Mike Grimm every fall Saturday to broadcast Gopher football over the radio.
“It was exciting for Race to receive that offer from Minnesota, we are honored by it, and I am proud of Race for what he has been doing,” Darrell explained. “Race has been working hard at everything he has been doing but he is still young, he has a long ways to go, and Race has a lot more potential to tap. I think the offer is a great honor, he is excited about it, and we are excited about it as a family.”
Thompson is currently averaging 16 points and seven rebounds a game for the Falcons in his second year with the varsity program (Race started in the frontcourt as a freshman on a senior dominated club providing six points and five boards a game for the 20 win team).
This past summer Thompson excelled with the D1 Minnesota 15 and Under AAU club which rated as Minnesota’s best at that age level and they were consistently ranked nationally as a top ten team. At both levels of play (high school and AAU) Race has shown fast development of skill inside and out.
“Race has had very good coaching coming up,” Thompson said. “He has been lucky to have been coached by people that have been on him. I’ve talked to coaches and we’ve talked about how Race is tall, he is long, but we have been working with him and we want Race to have the opportunity to not just sit on the block and just work on a drop-step.
“That is important and Race needs that skill, he does a lot of that now. But Race also has the opportunity to push up the ball and hit shots from the outside. Race has had those opportunities growing up playing for his coaches from about fourth grade and on. And I think that was part of the development for him plus he has played several other sports. Race played baseball for a long time, he played football up until this year, this will be his last year playing football.”
Race played football this fall alongside his 6-foot-5, 200 pound older brother True Thompson who caught 38 passes for 646 yards and eight scores this year.
“I think I will have one football player,” said Thompson with a bit of a laugh. “I have one football player and one basketball player. True is going to play football but he has not made a decision yet.
“He has recently visited the University of Minnesota, he has talked to some other schools like Northern Iowa, Wisconsin, and Iowa a little bit. Syracuse has talked to him a little bit. True is a late bloomer. He is all of 6-foot-5 right now, is vertical, and is very very athletic.
“Last summer was the first year he has ever done football training and it paid off because True had a great season. My wife and I believe in being well rounded and obviously True has played basketball, ran track, and played baseball too until about 8th or 9th grade and that part probably made his development for football a little bit slower because we never really focused on any one sport.”
True is a defensive stopper for the Falcon basketball team who produces 10.4 points and four rebounds a game for the team. So each night this winter Darrell and his wife Stephanie, who played volleyball at Iowa, they as mother and father get to watch both of their sons compete together.
“I tell people how fun it is to watch both our boys play together all the time,” said Darrell. “We are blessed to have two boys playing, True is a senior captain and he and Race are very tight. They play video games together, they ride to school together, they eat breakfast together, they eat dinner together, they do basketball training together, they do everything together so I know next year they are going to miss each other a lot.
“My wife and I sit there in the stands and it’s just wonderful to watch them play together. Watching the hand gestures they do towards each other, and with others, watching them on the floor together is a tremendous blessing for us.”
Race and True not only learned from their parents who were Big Ten athletes but also from their sisters who have starred as volleyball players at the Minnesota high school level.
“My wife and I have our oldest daughter Dominique who played volleyball and graduated from Madison (University of Wisconsin) and we have a younger daughter Indigo who is a red-shirt freshman at VCU this past fall and she was on their all rookie team for their league.”
The daughters playing volleyball makes sense as mom competed in that sport. True playing college football isn’t a surprise as dad was a Gopher legend and played five years for the Green Bay Packers. But what about basketball? There is a definite history there too.
“I played basketball and I loved it,” Thompson said. “I played back in the older days when you just played what was in season and I loved it. Played basketball, ran track, and played football. There was no AAU back then to play basketball besides a couple tournaments but I loved basketball, that is what my parents played in college.”
The Thompsons are one of the more athletic and educated families you will find in Minnesota and that continues with Race who has become a key recruiting target of the Gopher basketball team going forward.