FAIRMONT — An era of Fairmont High School athletics spanning back over four decades is coming to an end.

Michael Baker has announced his retirement, completing a 43-year career as a teacher, coach and administrator at his alma mater. He was currently serving as athletic director and head volleyball coach.

Marcus Thompson, who has served the last five years as girls basketball and cross country coach, will become the new athletic director.

“An old teacher once, a long time ago, said you’ll know when you’re through, when it’s time to go,” Baker said. “And I just felt like it was time — what they said was true. You did something that you loved doing for so many years, but all good things come to an end. I enjoyed it; when I got to 30 years, I just didn’t feel like retiring, I felt like I had more to give, more to offer. But it’s time for me to ride into the sunset.”

“His impact has just been legendary,” Fairmont Principal Anthony Barton said. “Coach Baker doesn’t say a lot, but the few words he does say, you take notice and listen. I’m going to miss, not just his expertise, but he knows the history of Fairmont better than anybody in this building. … He’s a walking tank of knowledge. He’s so respected and revered, not just by students and the coaching staff, but the community.”

With the exception of the four years he spent attending college, the 65-year-old Baker has been on the Fairmont High School campus in some capacity since 1973. He graduated in 1977, and after a Hall of Fame career playing basketball at Roanoke College returned to Fairmont as a both a science teacher and a coach in 1981. He began by coaching JV boys basketball, and was the varsity head coach two years later, a role he held from 1983-2004 and again from 2009-14. The Golden Tornadoes boys basketball team won a state championship under Baker in 1994.

He has also served as the athletic director for the last 31 years, and has been the head volleyball coach across multiple stints dating from 1986 to the present.

“I’ve coached it all,” Baker said. “Tennis, volleyball, track and field. I’ve enjoyed it. Where I work at, it was a lot of family. I coached my younger brother in basketball. I coached a lot of nephews and nieces and first cousins, then it got down to where I started coaching classmates’ kids. I looked across the desk and the faces don’t change, I say ‘your parent is such-and-such.’”

Fairmont’s gymnasium was named in Baker’s honor in 2022, with a dedication ceremony attended by hundreds of former players, friends, family and community members.

“I think by me being from Fairmont, I understood what the kids and parents were going through,” Baker said. “A lot of times, you can see in their faces, in the parents’ faces, when they were going through some hard times, and as a teacher, a coach and friend, you try to help them the best you can, and I always tried to be fair. … Everybody says ‘well you gave all this (to the community)’ — no, it was a two-way street. I gave, and they gave back to me.”

The number of students coached or taught by Baker is likely in the thousands, and the number of coaches to work alongside him or be supervised by him as athletic director is likely several dozen.

“Coach Bake has created a legacy here at Fairmont High School, and he’s done a great job being able to coach and run a great athletic program,” said Thompson, who played for Baker and has coached at Fairmont for the last 10 years. “It’s interesting taking over after someone’s held that title for so long, and Coach Bake has definitely made his mark, as a coach and an AD at Fairmont High School, and a player as well.”

His impact extends beyond Fairmont, though, to the rest of Robeson County and beyond.

“He’s truly going to be missed,” said Glenn Patterson Sr., the Public Schools of Robeson County athletic director who coached against Baker for decades while at Red Springs, and considers him a mentor. “He’s always been competitive; I heard about him when I was younger, about the Baker boys in Fairmont and all the great athletes. … He’s going to be truly missed, not only in Fairmont but throughout the county and the state of North Carolina. I think he made a name for himself in the coaching field during his tenure.”

After working tirelessly over the more than four decades he’s spent in education, Baker says he’s ready for a more relaxed lifestyle in retirement.

“I’m 65, my wife has put up with all that for so many years, me being gone late through the night and eating supper late at night. I’m going to take some time to eat at the right time, when regular people eat, I’m going to see what that feels like,” Baker joked. “It’s time to enjoy a little bit of something else, just do something different.”

And as he leaves, Baker is comfortable with his former player Thompson following in his footsteps.

“I think he’ll do a good job,” Baker said. “He’s got ideas how he wants to go. Marcus is a Fairmont guy; I coached Marcus, I had him as a student and I worked with his parents and all that. I think we’ve got a pretty good guy, a person that’s really going to care for the community.”

Thompson, who graduated from Fairmont in 2003, acknowledges he has big shoes to fill as he becomes the school’s first new athletic director in over three decades.

“I think Coach Bake has done a great job at trying to make sure that the tradition stays the same, that Fairmont has had some type of tradition, from every kid knowing the school song to trying to make sure he holds spots for coaches who graduated from here,” Thompson said. “I think he’s done a great job at that, and just passing along tradition. I think my job is to come in and build on some of the things he’s already put in place.”

Thompson, 39, has been Fairmont’s girls basketball head coach for the last five seasons, turning a program that had been winless the year before he took over into a Southeastern Athletic Conference champion in each of the last two seasons and winning the 2023 Robeson County Shootout and the 2024 Southeastern tournament championship. He also coaches girls cross country.

“I was looking for someone I felt like could take our program to the next level — just to see what he’s done with women’s basketball here at Fairmont,” Barton said. “Marcus does things with class, he does things the right way. That’s not just on the court, that’s in practice, that’s in how he does his job every day. … The biggest thing that sold me was his vision, his connection with the community, and I think Marcus is here to stay, and that’s what we need.”

He previously coached the Golden Tornadoes’ JV boys basketball program from 2014-19. Before entering education, Thompson worked as the senior sports director for all the YMCA locations in Durham. He is a graduate of North Carolina Central University.

“There are some things that will be easy and some things that will be challenging,” Thompson said. “As far as being able to run a big program, I’ve had some experience in that, but there’s also some things that’s going to be challenging, as it concerns compliance and just making sure everything is in line with the North Carolina High School Athletic Association. I’m definitely up for the task, but I think one of the things I had to think of before I threw my name in the pot was can you do it and coach. After I found out I can do it and coach, I was all in.”