9.8
Customer Rating
Head Office in New-York
775 New York Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11203
Toll Free
1-800-987-6543
Working Hours
We are happy to meet you during our working hours. Please make an appointment.
Head Office in New-York
775 New York Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11203
Toll Free
1-800-987-6543
Working Hours
We are happy to meet you during our working hours. Please make an appointment.
ABOUT COACH THOMAS
The Man, The Legacy, The Mission
Eugene Thomas | Owner, Founder & CEO
Eugene Thomas has devoted most of his adult life to helping people achieve their dreams.
Over the past 30 years, Thomas has done most of his mentoring through his Michigan-based track and field club, People’s Choice. In fact, the sports pioneer continues to advise many of those he coached and mentored years ago, as they continue to pursue other endeavors.
“I still get calls from people I coached a decade or so ago, who might just want some advice,” said Thomas. “It might be about their job, what college their kids should attend, anything,” “Some just want to talk about life or something they’re going through.”
Born in Akron, Ohio, Thomas began his community outreach work after his world record-breaking collegiate track and field career at Eastern Michigan University. While attending the college, located in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Thomas broke the world track record for the 300-meter dash in 1971, which earned him induction into Eastern Michigan’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1997. The Akron native was also inducted into the Ohio Summit County Sports Hall of Fame, in 2014.
More affectionately known as simply “Coach,” Thomas began mentoring youth as a teacher and assistant football coach at Willow Run High School. He went on to work for a Michigan non-profit called, People’s Choice, which is where his track club, which bears the same name as the non-profit group, was birthed.
Over the 43-year span of the People’s Choice Track Club, Coach Thomas has helped to cultivate several young athletes into standout collegiate sports stars in track and field, football, and basketball. One of Thomas’ former high school athletes was a 2019 NCAA runner-up in the 400 meters while attending college, and now runs professionally. Coach Thomas’ team also helped to launch her national singing career – and have been working with several other athletes looking to segue into the world of entertainment.
Tiffany Simon, whom Thomas coached and mentored in high school, credits the sports pioneer and the trusting relationship she has had with him over the years, with a lot of the success she’s had in life. “Eugene is, he’s more than a coach,” said Simon. “He…has given me an opportunity that I otherwise…would have struggled to have.”
Thomas now coaches Simon’s daughter in track and field, as she prepares to start college. “I know that he has the best interest of my daughter…because he loves me.”
Thomas attributes a lot of the great work he has done over the years, coaching and mentoring youth, to his late wife, Marcia, whom he met while attending Eastern Michigan University.
“Marcia has been the biggest inspiration everything I’ve done as a mentor and a coach. She was as much a part of the lives of those, whom I’ve mentored over the years, as I was,” said Thomas, speaking of his wife, who passed in 2019. “They saw her as much as they did me. She was a ‘mom’ to many of them.”
Coach Thomas now seeks to build on his longstanding passion and dedication to coaching and mentoring, with MTE Enterprises, his new sports and entertainment management and marketing company.
MTE Enterprises – which is based in Michigan, with affiliates around the globe – is focused on helping kids, young adults and others interested in further pursuing even bigger dreams in sports, entertainment, and other endeavors they might want to pursue.
The company’s key focus areas are career development, artist management and marketing and branding.
“We want to provide people with the guidance they need to be the best at whatever they want to do,” said Thomas. “It could be in music, the TV and film world, or sports. Whatever their goals are, we will help them get there and stay right by their side, to give them the support they need.”