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North Tama senior Zach Greiner named recipient of Ed Thomas Award

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE - North Tama High School senior Zach Greiner was recently honored with the Ed Thomas Faith, Family & Football Award for Class A as presented by the Iowa Football Coaches Association.

TRAER — To an outsider, it looked like a family celebrating a big win on the football field.

On the inside, the victory was shrouded in pain too raw to bear.

North Tama High School senior Zach Greiner found out earlier that day that his mother’s cancer had returned, and as the final horn sounded on the Redhawks’ rally to a ranked triumph over Grundy Center, he let it all out.

“It was bad news, it was back, and they didn’t know if they should tell us before we had a really big game that night,” Zach recalled. “And even with that weight on you, we were down 13 at halftime and it’s like ‘can this day get any worse?’ And all of the sudden we came back.

“We won 14-13, last-second touchdown, one-handed catch, and God played a part in that. I know that, He brought us all up, and I’ve never been more emotional after a football game than I was. I started crying right on the spot because everything that had happened that day all came out at once. The win, the news, everything all came out at once.”

PHOTO PROVIDED - The Greiner family — (from left) Blake, Adam, Laurie, Zach and Craig — poses for a picture after North Tama's 14-13 win over Grundy Center in a Class A District 7 football game Oct. 4, 2019, in Grundy Center.

There on the football field, the Greiner family shared their joys and tears together with God. And the resolve that Zach showed through it all is only part of the reason he was recently presented with the Ed Thomas Faith, Family and Football Award by the Iowa Football Coaches Association.

Named after the longtime football coach at Aplington-Parkersburg, the Ed Thomas Award is presented annually by the IFCA to one student-athlete in each of six divisions of Iowa high school football. The Ed Thomas Family Foundation, created after Thomas was shot and killed by a former player on June 24, 2009, rooted its mentorship program in Thomas’ three primary pursuits: faith, family and football.

On May 27, retired North Tama football coach Tom McDermott announced that Zach was the recipient of the award for Class A.

“He’s just a good all-around young man,” said McDermott. “He wasn’t necessarily the person who got a lot of attention, he didn’t get all the good recognition that he deserved. He had a lot of tackles and scored some touchdowns but probably wasn’t the spotlight athlete on our team. I think that’s why it’s so neat he received this award. The IFCA says this is the highest honor they present to a football player, and we were fortunate to have Zach as the Class A recipient.

“It’s been a tough year for the seniors, they’ve had a tough go of it, so Zach winning this award is very good for him and his family and I think our whole school.”

Zach was fishing in Minnesota when his father, North Tama assistant football coach Craig Greiner, called to inform him of the honor.

“So I’m telling him about it and he says ‘Dad, I’ve got to let you go, the cell service is terrible and the fish are biting,'” Craig chuckled. “That’s just the kind of kid he is.”

Craig’s wife Laurie, mother to their three boys, was diagnosed with a form of head and neck cancer in 2014. She had fought off the disease with surgeries and treatment before finding out on Oct. 4, 2019, at the University of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City that the cancer had returned and had spread.

The Redhawks, ranked third by The Associated Press, were facing off with No. 4 Grundy Center in a battle of unbeaten District 7 teams. That night Laurie was there for her boys Zach and Adam, a sophomore, as she always is, in spite of the day’s painful news.

“I can tell you this, Laurie and I were in Iowa City that day and we were fully aware that it had returned,” Craig stammered. “We had a football game that night at Grundy Center and it’s a big game, so mom always wants to be straight with her boys so she said we’re going to sit them down and tell them.

“We had a family meeting and we told them ‘it’s back’ and you could see their body language, their shoulders sagged, and she said ‘I want nothing more than to go watch you two play football tonight and dad coach, because that’s what you love to do and that’s what I love to do, and I want you to go play hard and I want you to win.’

“That was heavy. We tried to keep it private but people knew, and then we go out and win one for the ages.”

It was a cornerstone moment for the family, for their faith and for North Tama’s football season. The Redhawks eventually went 10-1, recording their fifth unbeaten regular season in school history before advancing to the playoffs and picking up their first postseason victory since 2012.

It was a moment that both challenged and recharged Zach’s faith.

“You get bad news some days and I’m the guy that’s got to lead, I can’t show weakness,” said Zach, a team captain. “This is the biggest game of the year right now and I can’t fold no matter what’s going on, I’ve got to stay tough, and that was really hard to do. It was really hard to not get upset at somebody for missing a block and freaking out on them, but I stuck with it and I was leaning on God a lot that game and he was there for all of us.

“That’s the one that really sticks out in my mind as just a tough game emotionally, mentally and everything else. She was so strong. You’d look at her last year and you wouldn’t know anything, but she never liked to talk about it and she always just liked to spend as much time with us as she could.”

Laurie’s cancer, Craig said of its return, is now inoperable.

“Everybody saw the Greiners bawling their eyes out after the (Grundy Center) game but a lot of it was just the emotion coming out of what was in our world,” he said. “Life’s not easy. Easy is not in the Bible. Storms will come, not if but when, and so you build your house upon that rock. You will deal with difficult times, and it’s not going to be fair, but what are you going to do, turn away from your faith?

“A young man like Zach, he’s learned life’s lessons. And really that’s what you want as a father. Coach Thomas said it the best: ‘If all I have taught you is how to block and tackle, then I have failed as a coach.'”

Zach learned some of those lessons through the Ed Thomas Leadership Academy, which he attended twice during high school, as well as with Nt BASIC (Brothers and sisters in Christ), a youth fellowship program that Craig leads.

Receiving the Ed Thomas Award was quite the surprise, Zach said, but also a testament to his unwavering faith, his family foundation and his love for football.

“It means a lot,” he said. “I remember that day as a kid in 2009 [that Thomas was killed]. My dad coached against [Thomas] for a number of years when dad was coaching at Reinbeck and I heard a lot about him. It’s just a real honor to win something in his name.

“It symbolizes that God comes first, obviously, and then your family is right there with it, and then comes football. You can’t get it mixed up, that’s what Ed Thomas always preached no matter if he was on the practice field or on ESPN, that’s just the way things were with his teams.”

Zach has served as a maintenance assistant at the high school the last few summers, and he plans to be an electrician for Shaw Electric in Waterloo after completing the apprenticeship program.

“We’ll see where life takes me from there,” he said.

Until then, Zach said life’s rollercoaster will follow God’s plan.

“You just try and make the best of what you’ve got, spend time with family, do what you need to do, that’s all we’re doing,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate that mom has been feeling really good for the last six years and now she’s in a lot of pain. Her body’s really starting to tire fighting it for this long, you know, and nothing can really prepare you for what’s probably going to happen and we don’t know how long …

“You get mad and you tell yourself you can’t do that but you do anyways, but God’s always got a plan and I don’t know what that plan is, nobody knows what that plan is, that’s what dad always tells me. You’ve got to tell her you love her every day because she could be gone tomorrow.”

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