The Hall of Famers:: Thatcher Szalay

After a Montana Grizzly comeback attempt in the 2000 1-AA championship game against Georgia Southern fell short, UM junior lineman Thatcher Szalay looked around the locker room in Chattanooga to scenes of despair. Raw emotion from his senior teammates as they processed the loss and recognized this was the end of the ride.

At that very moment, he made a decision. A decision that would help change the course of Grizzly football history. One that would cement his legacy as one of the best to ever wear maroon and silver and one that would lead to his induction into the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame two decades later. Call it the butterfly effect.

"I saw some guys shed tears I had never seen shed tears," recalls Szalay of that night.

"Right then, at that moment, I realized I had one year left, and it was all or nothing. I did not want to be in that situation."

A year later, the script was flipped. Montana dispatched Furman 13-6 in the 2001 title game to win the program's second national championship. Szalay stormed the field at Finley Stadium with his teammates, fists in the air with the celebratory scowl of a Grizzly on his face, caught for a moment in a now iconic photograph.

He would go on to become an All-American pick and the only UM offensive lineman to be named first-team All-Big Sky three consecutive years, known for his physical and mental toughness. His domination.

After college he plied his trade in the NFL for six seasons where he relied on a blue-collar work ethic learned growing up in Montana and that same dominant attitude he learned in the trenches at Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

After his time in the league he returned home to Montana where he turned his attention to passing that work ethic on to the next generation as a teacher in Florence.

And on Sept. 9, the life and career of a Montana legend will be forever enshrined at the Grizzly Sports Hall of Fame induction banquet.

###

Before Whitefish was an international destination for the well-heeled, it was a working town. A timber town with vast natural resources, connected to the outside world via the Great Northern Railway. Stumptown, they called it, and sometimes still do, but in a much different parlance.

When Szalay was growing up on the outskirts of town in the 80's and 90s, it wasn't much of a resort town. Sure, there was a ski area and a national park, but those seemed like secret playgrounds for locals. Places to enjoy mother nature's spender as a weekend warrior instead of a second home haven.

Szalay was a product of that environment. His dad, David, was a logger. So, from as far back as he can remember, he was a logger too.

"He would skid logs in, and I'd take the machete and start hacking the limbs off. After a year or two of using the machete, he put me on to a chainsaw, and every year I just kind of got a bigger chainsaw. Pretty soon I was the guy out there falling the trees, and I worked for him pretty much all the way through high school," he said.

The countless hours hoisting tree trunks shaped him, both mentally and physically.

"You had to put in a full day's work, and there's only one way to do it. That's just to get down to it. All those days of rolling logs, running the saw all day, setting chokers, pulling winch lines, getting bit by horseflies, and breathing in dust established my work ethic. Without a doubt."

When he started playing football at Whitefish High School, he approached it the only way he knew how. Roll up the sleeves, grab the lunch pail, and go to work. But the game was more passion than prospect.

It wasn't until his senior year he realized that getting a scholarship to play football was even a possibility. And when Montana coaches like Mick Dennehy and Billy Cockhill came knocking, all it took was one trip to Missoula to decide he was going to become a Grizzly.

Even with a lifetime of logging under his belt, he arrived on campus in the fall of '97 weighing in at a skinny 225 pounds. Hardly the size necessary to become one of the great Grizzly O-linemen. But what he had was something few others possess: the mental fortitude to do whatever it took to prove himself on the field and in the weight room. What followed was a quintessential Montana football success story.

"There's no way around hard work. I just kept working hard on lifting weights, eating the right food, gaining weight, and hitting hard at practice. Then after my redshirt year I got on the field on special teams and started making a name for myself on the kickoff return running the wedge. Then my sophomore year I started dominating.

"I could see that I was undersized as far as weight, so that was my top priority. A lot of guys come to Missoula and want to experience college life and do all the partying. Not that I didn't have a good time, but I wasn't part of that. My priority was football and kicking butt."

The work began to pay off. Szalay was the co-recipient of the Golden Helmet award as the team's hardest hitter after his sophomore year in '99, and later won UM's Paul Weskamp Award for outstanding O-lineman.

He was a key cog in an offensive line that opened gaps for fellow Hall of Famer Yohance Humphrey, who still holds the Montana record for career rush yards at 4,070.

That earned him consensus All-America honors his senior season as a team captain, and he dominated in the classroom as well as a two-time academic all-conference pick.

From there, he took his talents to the league, signing as an undrafted free agent with the Cincinnati Bengals following the 2002 NFL Draft.

Undrafted free agents have a lot to prove at training camp in order to earn a place on a 53-man roster. They're usually not five-star recruits. They often don't come from "big" programs or big cities. Szalay had none of those things.

Ask most NFL coaches what they're looking for in a free agent – grit, tenacity, toughness, and a strong work ethic – he had that in spades, and it all came from his upbringing. It's what allowed him to make that 53-man roster in Cincinnati and stay in the league with stops in Baltimore and Seattle until 2006.

But the NFL is a dog-eat-dog business, and eventually, there comes a time to hang 'em up.

"The hardest part for me was the league is all about the dollar, and college is all about family. In college, you could be a walk-on non-scholarship kid, but if you prove yourself, you can beat down guys on scholarship," he said.

"O-line coaches in the league would tell me I was their guy, but upstairs they might look at other guys because of their big signing bonus or something. It wasn't necessarily about ability."

###

Life is pretty sweet for Szalay these days.

After his time in the NFL, he returned to Montana, earned a master's degree, and set out to dominate the working world.

This fall will be his 16th as a teacher just down the Bitterroot Valley in Florence, with the first twelve spent as a middle school math teacher and the last three as a high school PE and weights teacher. Something of an area of expertise to be sure.

He harbors no ill will from his time in the NFL and appreciates the perspective it gave him, and the place it eventually led him to.

"All three teams I was with, all of those offensive line coaches told me, 'You're my guy. If it was up to me, you would be the guy.' That helped me make the decision to head back, spend more time with my wife, start a family, and get on with it. Having those guys look me in the eye and telling me that meant a lot."

Starting a family is another of life's great challenges that Szalay seems to be excelling at. His son is entering eighth grade and is getting set to play his second year of tackle football. It's looking like he got his dad's passion for the game as well as he "learns to be the hammer and not the nail." He's also being helped along physically on some weekend firewood cutting excursions with the family.

It all adds up to a hall of fame-worthy life. One the crowd lucky enough to be inside the Adams Center on Sept. 9 will get to celebrate. It's an honor that means a lot to Szalay, a true Montanan that has lived a life of true Montana toughness.

"If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't change a darn thing. Football gave me a lot. It taught me how to work with people, how to be tough, and deal with adversity. I built a lot of bonds. I wouldn't be where I'm at right now if it wasn't for football at the University of Montana and the opportunities it gave me. I'll be forever grateful."

University of Montana Athletics

Related News

Related Videos