NSU lineman finds himself back in Thibodaux, on other side of ball

From the first day he stepped onto Nicholls State’s football field in 2001, former defensive lineman Michael Young left his mark.

After receiving a redshirt during his first year with the Colonels, the former De La Salle High School product stepped on the field as an active member of the 2002 roster.

In the first game of his collegiate career against West Virginia Tech, Young recorded three tackles, one sack and had one pass breakup. In the Colonels final game that season against McNeese, he recorded 11 solo tackles and recovered a fumble. He finished the 2002 season with 21 tackles, two sacks and one pass breakup.

His performance landed him on the All-Southland Conference Honorable Mention team.

Then came his sophomore year, in which he notched 46 tackles and led the team with 11 sacks. He set the NCAA I-AA record with the most sacks recorded in a single game after recording six sacks against Bethel College. That performance earned him Division I-AA National Player of the Week, only the second player in school history to receive such an honor.

He finished his career with over 120 tackles before leaving the field for the last time in 2005 against Furman in the first round of the playoffs, following the school’s first Southland Conference Championship.

The success the Colonels attained during his senior season is something he is grateful for to this day.

“I was just glad that it (conference championship) happened during my last year there because all of the guys in my class that I was recruited with worked hard,” Young said. “We started off with about 30 guys or so and finished with only about 12. All of the guys had put in the effort. The hard work we put in that year really rubbed off on the rest of the team. Very few people can end their career the way I did. I was blessed.”

When his playing career as a Colonel was over, Young hung around, becoming a student assistant coach during the 2006 season.

Then he graduated and it was time to leave Thibodaux for the first time in five years.

He accepted a job at Hawthorne Middle/ High School in Hawthorne, Fla., where he coached the defensive line. Since the school, located on the outskirts of Gainesville, was smaller, he also had to work with the offense a bit.

“It was my first coaching experience,” he said. “I was grateful for the opportunity to be able to stay around football. It was a chance for me to learn the ropes.”

What he wasn’t used to was teaching, as he also had to teach a couple of classes at Hawthorne.

“My first day I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he joked. “I thought I was going to quit. Eventually, I got used to it. I stayed the first week and everything got much better after that. It wasn’t as much of a disaster as I thought it would be.”

Young said he made one thing clear to his students on the first day: He was to be called “coach” and not “mister” because he didn’t want to feel old.

Following last season, the 25-year-old decided it was time to move on. Young wanted to search for something a little closer to home. Being from New Orleans, he began looking for jobs when an opening popped up at Thibodaux High. He was asked by new Thibodaux head coach Dennis Lorio to coach the Tigers’ defensive line. Young jumped at the opportunity, as it was a chance for him to return to the city he called home for his four years in college.

“I love Thibodaux and had a great time here when I was at Nicholls,” he explained. “I liked the community and was looking to come back. I had this opportunity and I took it without hesitation.”

For the Tigers, Young will focus specifically on the defensive line. He looks to bring what he was taught by Colonels head football coach Jay Thomas to the young high schoolers in an effort to make them better.

“Coach Thomas is a great defensive line coach,” he said. “He’s the head coach now but his true coaching position is defensive line. He taught me a lot when I was there and hopefully I can pass it on to the guys here in Thibodaux and hopefully they get the same thing out of it that I did when I played.”

Young will also have to teach an Access GED class at Thibodaux High, but that doesn’t concern him since he has a year of teaching under his belt.

In fact, he is just so overjoyed at the chance to return to the city he has grown to love that he is looking forward to the school year just so he can get back out on the field and do what he loves.

The season is still early and Young hasn’t fully seen what his defensive line is capable of yet. However, based on what he has already seen and experienced, Young hopes he can bring the same tenacity he was a part of during the 2005 season to the Tigers, who are one of the favorites in District 8-5A this season.

“It’s important for us to develop a lot of the hard work ethic and the family atmosphere,” he said. “I see that from where we were at the beginning of this year it looks like everybody is starting to gel a little bit and starting to act like a family. That’s the big thing. Whether it’s offense of defense, everybody is one big unit, so hopefully that rubs off on them.”

Ironically, even though he loves being around football, Young said at the moment he has no desire to be a head coach. He said he wants to focus on the task at hand and enjoy his time back in Thibodaux.

“I’d rather give a few athletes all of the attention than all of the people a little attention,” he said. “I am better off coaching my position-the defensive line-rather than the whole team.”

Of course, it’s not the same. Even though he enjoys being on the sidelines as coach Young, he still misses the game every day he is around it. Football takes up so much of his life that all he does in his free time is sleep.

Young wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I miss it every day, all the time,” he explained. “Everybody’s sun rises and sets and mine has already set so I am just trying to help out somebody else’s success. I’ll always have those memories. It was fun while it lasted.”