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WILLOW SPRINGS — With 500 career wins under his belt, Mike Wilson didn’t think anything would get in back into the gym again.
“The best laid plans go array sometimes,” Wilson said who retired last year from Strafford High School.
Sure, he missed it. Coaches are always teaching and molding.
“The kids here are awesome,”Wilson said, “just like at Strafford, they come to practice, and play hard and they’re good students.”
Coaches are father figures to many teens. So when one of Wilson’s actual sons needed help, he gratefully traded in his old rocking chair for a seat on the Willow Springs bench.
“It’s worked out with Derek quitting his job,” Wilson said, “there’s a little something in case somebody needs something some money.”
A decade ago, Derek was one of those kids playing for his dad.  But something happened at Strafford High School that changed the rest of Derek’s life.
“(Derek) broke his arm and maybe got a staph infection, but they’re not really sure, and that led to his kidney disease,” coach said.
Derek’s kidney’s started acting up while he was playing basketball at College of the Ozarks. After a short stint on dialysis, he received a kidney transplant.
“The first two years after the transplant was great,” coach said.
Derek was able to follow in his dad’s footsteps as a basketball coach. But within the last year, his kidneys started shutting down again.
“He had to go to a center every other day, three days a week, four hours a day, so he had to quit his job,” coach said.
And so a father did what he could for his son – putting his own retirement on hold.
“And that was the plan all along when he got sick again was for me to find something,” coach said.
Now, Wilson cannot imagine not being a coach at Willow Springs. He can imagine what life would be like without organ donors who’ve helped his son Derek twice now.
“It’s meant them world to him. I could never tell whoever did it what it means to me and my wife, that someone is giving him the chance to live a normal life.”
“Sign the back of your driver’s license and give every organ you have.”
Coach Wilson says Derek is doing well; recently completing follow-up exams in Kansas City.
