Mountain Lake football coach with stage 4 cancer gives and gets support

MOUNTAIN LAKE, MINN. – High school football players, wearing wrist tape bearing the initials T.K., sprinted against gusts of wind that ripped across the prairie.

Coach Tim Kirk, hands on his hips, watched from the sidelines, dictating practice for his Mountain Lake Wolverines, just as he’s done the past 21 years.

On Aug. 8, just days before football teams could begin practice, Kirk was diagnosed with stage 4 gallbladder cancer after a biopsy that followed tests over the summer. This year will be his last season as head coach.

The shocking news reverberated quickly within Mountain Lake, a tightly-knit rural town with a population of about 1,900 nearly 50 miles southwest of Mankato. Kirk, a 56-year-old teacher at Mountain Lake for 25 years, taught generations of students in town and guided its Nine-Player football team to a 2019 state championship.

“The diagnosis has been pretty devastating to a lot of people,” said Travis Smith, who ran a fundraiser for Kirk at a local bar and grill.

Two days after the diagnosis, Kirk was at his son’s wedding in Wisconsin. Carter Kirk, 29, recalled his father’s speech, congratulating him. His father was telling him to be better than he ever was. But then his father, not known for showing emotion, stopped speaking and started sobbing.

The next day, Kirk told everyone about his diagnosis and how cancer had spread from his gallbladder into his liver and stomach. He was told the disease was incurable.

“It doesn’t really feel real,” Carter Kirk said. “You know, I hate just thinking about life without him.”

Two days after the wedding, the football season began at Mountain Lake. Kirk tried to continue teaching for a bit, but got so sick he couldn’t get out of bed. During one game, he said he had to leave early. He felt so ill, he couldn’t stand up.

Mountain Lake quarterback Jake Evers recalled being in the locker room after that game, which the Wolverines won, and how assistant coaches told players they had something bigger than football to tell them. After hearing of the diagnosis, “the locker room was just straight silence,” Evers said.

Kirk is now on medical leave, he said. He’s been driving around Mountain Lake when he feels better, taking short trips in his car with his two golden doodles, Thor and Toby.

Kirk was born in Mountain Lake, and each trip through town evokes memories.

“I just drive down the streets I’ve been down a hundred times, and just appreciate the trees and the front yards,” Kirk said.

Kirk said he’ll drive by a cornfield, and with a laugh he’ll remember that it belongs to one of his former students. He’ll pass by the high school, where his father, Claire Kirk, was a janitor. His father showed Kirk all the nooks and crannies of the school where he would later teach.

Claire Kirk died when Tim was 16. The grief left him angry as a teenager, Kirk said. That anger sometimes re-emerges, even as an adult, through feelings of how it’s unfair that others get to spend decades with their father. Some of the players on the football team are also confused and angry, he said.

Kirk said he wants to help his players, and his children and grandchildren, see the good in life with whatever amount of time he has left.

“I’m just gonna make sure kids and people realize, ‘Hey, that guy’s getting after it. He’s doing what he can,’ and we’ll kind of go from there,” Kirk said.

Kirk said he usually ends his driving trips at the football field, only a few blocks from his house, and from there, he’ll just look and reflect. The football field is where the town of Mountain Lake celebrated Kirk’s tenure as coach during this season’s homecoming game, where former students came back to greet him, and where members of the community ran fundraisers for his medical expenses and held prayers for him.

Kirk’s Wolverines (5-2) play their last game of the regular season against the Renville County West Jaguars (5-2) on Wednesday before entering the Nine-Player section tournament. His players say they want to win another state football championship for their coach.

“His saying is always, ‘Weather the storm,’” Evers said.

At the end of practice, Kirk gathered his team for a quick pep talk, with their season, win or lose, soon drawing to a close.

“Our hearts will show up,” he said. “Let’s give it all we got.”