MUSKEGON – Mario Flores is feeling a lot better these days, with an lot more energy, and he’s determined to create a great future for his West Michigan Ironmen football team.

That doesn’t mean he plans to own and operate the team forever. At 55, he’s thinking about starting to slow down after a long career as a restaurant owner and operator, successful mortgage company manager, high school football coach, and football franchise owner.

But he loves the Ironmen, and wants to make sure he leaves the organization in good shape and good hands going forward.

The Ironmen will begin their 10th season on Friday night when they host the Coralville Chaos at Muskegon’s Trinity Health Arena.

For Flores, it will mark the beginning of his eighth season as the primary owner of the franchise, which has continued to thrive in the tumultuous world of professional arena football, where teams and leagues start up and fold at a dizzying rate.

The fact that the team is still around to celebrate its 10th season opener is a huge credit to Flores.

But he says he has not been able to give the team the attention it deserves over the past few years, due to a difficult family situation.

His mother, Maria Mayo, endured an 18-month battle with cancer, and as her oldest child, he spent a lot of time helping her deal with her illness.

She finally passed away on Sept. 24 of last year, and Flores saw her through to the end. In the meantime, a lot of other things in his busy life were put on the backburner.

“I thought I knew what mentally tough was, but not even close,” Flores said about the challenge of helping his mother through her end-of-life struggle. “My sister and uncle and niece all pitched in to help, but I was the oldest, and it took a toll on me. It put me in a dark spot. I was not focused.

“I have not been a very good husband, father, co-worker or owner. I was there, but not really there. It was hard.

“Me and my mom had many talks. She felt bad. She always said ‘Don’t worry about me.’  When she finally passed, I did feel some sort of relief. I feel a certain peace, like she’s with me every day. Every time I feel like missing her, she lets me know it’s okay.”

Flores has been catching up on a lot of important things since he lost his mom, and the Ironmen have been high on his list.

He recently announced that the team was rejoining American Indoor Football, it’s original league from its first season back in 2016.

Flores has also turned his eye toward the future of the franchise. He’s recently been talking to local realtor Eddie Alexander about possibly taking some ownership interest in the future, and says Alexander will play a role with the organization this season.

He said he promised his wife that he will start slowing down soon, but he needs to know the Ironmen franchise is on solid footing before he takes a step back.

“I can’t sell the Ironmen if it’s not in a good spot,” Flores said. “I can’t sell it just to sell it, to someone who does not share my vision. I have had some offers to move the team to Lansing or Grand Rapids, but I don’t want that. Eddie wants to help and take a close look at it. One of my sons has approached me, asking me to teach him the ropes so he could take it over, and that might be a direction, too.

“I just have to make sure it’s in good hands.”

From migrant fields to a career in mortgages

Flores has a fascinating background that even some people who know him may not be aware of.

His parents were Mexican migrant workers, and until the age of five, he lived in Hart with a family that worked the fields of Oceana County farms.

“We were all migrant workers,” Flores said. “My grandma had 13 grandkids, who were all in the fields. My grandpa brought all the migrants here for farmers in Hart and Shelby.

“My dad could not read or write, but he still did things the right way. He ended up buying a house and became a U.S. citizen.”

Flores’ parents were divorced when he was very young, and his mother remarried and moved the family to Norton Shores, and he ended up graduating from Mona Shores High School in 1988.

Flores was a natural athlete who played high school football, baseball and basketball. He ended up enrolling and playing football at Grand Rapids Community College,  but an injury put an end to his playing career.

He turned away from college and took a job at a pizza restaurant in Grand Rapids, and ended up purchasing part of the business at the tender age of 19.

He sold his interest after a few years, and moved back to Muskegon, where he took a job at Garnos Pizza, then opened his own branch of that restaurant in Grand Haven.

Flores eventually sold Garnos, worked in construction for a time, then established Antonio’s Pizza in Fruitport Township with two business partners.

He was going through a divorce around that time, and had custody of three sons, but found out he didn’t qualify for a mortgage when he tried to buy a house, due to his personal debt and a low credit score.

“I went to a bank branch to get a house loan and they laughed at me,” he said.

Ironically, a year or two later, someone told Flores that he had a good personality for sales, and suggested he go into the mortgage business. He started working for a company associated with VanDyk Mortgage in 2003, then became branch manager of VanDyk’s Muskegon office in 2006.

Under his leadership the Muskegon office has become one of the most successful in the nationwide VanDyk chain.

Flores’ success is obvious when people visit downtown Muskegon and notice the name of the VanDyk Mortgage Convention Center, a city-owned facility connected to Trinity Health Arena, and a centerpiece of the downtown renaissance. Flores said he was approached about becoming the naming rights sponsor of the convention center during the construction phase, and convinced VanDyk’s corporate leaders to take the plunge.

The really impressive part is that Flores’ branch of VanDyke Mortgage covers the very significant monthly sponsorship fee out of its own revenue.

“All of the branches have their own individual budgets, and we pay for it out of my branch,” he said. “My branch has been one of the top three in the company, nationwide, for the last five years. Little old Muskegon, Michigan, going up against Tampa and Atlanta and a lot of the big cities, and we are always ranked in the top five. We work very hard to maintain that status. We take a lot of pride to be the best we can be. I have great talent around me that helps us to reach that status every year.”

Flores said that for him, the mortgage business is about more than making money. As someone who once had big financial trouble and could not buy a house, he said he understands people in similar circumstances and enjoys working with them.

“We get to help people,” he said. “Single dads or moms, who don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to getting a mortgage. I have been bankrupt before, divorced with no money. I have been in their shoes.”

Coaching football at Fruitport

Flores never lost his passion for football, and found himself coaching the sport after opening Antonio’s Pizza and moving to the Fruitport area.

One of his former Mona Shores coaches, the late Larry Rueger, was an assistant coach at Fruitport under former head coach Steve Wilson. Rueger heard that Flores had moved to town and recruited him to join the high school staff as a low-level assistant.

“Coach Rueger played a huge role in my life,” Flores said. “I was always a rebel as a kid, always causing trouble, and he kept an eye out for me.

“He caught wind that I was moving to Fruitport and he convinced me to come to the school as an unpaid assistant. I was an assistant to an assistant on the freshman staff, the lowest you could go. My job was to stand on the press box roof and watch the tight ends and defensive ends. I also made all the concession stand popcorn for the JV and freshmen games.”

Flores moved up through up the Fruitport coaching ranks over the years, working at different times with the freshmen, junior varsity and varsity squads under Coach Wilson, as well as his successors Greg Vargas and current head coach Nate Smith.

Along the way he coached all five of his sons — Mario II, Amilio, Antonio, Ethan and Payton – through youth leagues and their Fruitport varsity football careers.

“It was pretty special,” Flores said. “I was probably harder on my sons that any other kids in the program. When I look back now, not a lot of people have coached five sons in a program. I was very lucky, very blessed to be able to do that.”

Flores thought he might have to get out of coaching when his mother became ill, because he didn’t feel he had enough time to devote to his duties.

But he said Coach Smith,  a close friend who has also served as head coach and general manager of the Ironmen, gave him the space to help his mom while still remaining connected to Fruitport football.

“Nate Smith has treated me so good,” Flores said. “I wanted to be done because I couldn’t give it the time, but he said, bullshit, take the time that you need. He allowed me to take care of my mom for 18 months while still doing what I could for the football program. He allowed me to stay in the game that I love.”

Flores’ youngest son, Payton, graduated a few years ago, and some might have expected him to get out of coaching then, but he’s still at the practices and on the sidelines and loving every minute of it.

He said part of the joy is giving back to the community while doing something he loves. He also loves working with kids and helping them learn the most important lessons that football has to offer.

“I like teaching kids that it’s okay if you fall,” he said. “I ended up falling a lot of times in my life. The important part is getting back up.”

Flores said his many years of living in the Fruitport area, operating a business there and coaching at the high school, has given him a deep appreciation of the community. That’s one reason why he’s been the top local sponsor of MuskegonSports.com’s intensive coverage of Fruitport High School sports for the past three years.

“Fruitport has always been very good to me,” he said. “The people there were very supportive of our pizza place, and when I got into the mortgage business, I was able to help a lot of families in Fruitport. It’s a small community, very tight knit, like another family. At the end of the day, Fruitport people are very loyal, and that means a lot to me.”

Saving the Ironmen in the early days

Flores says he’s working on a plan to finally slow down in the near future, for a very good reason.

“I’ve got to give my wife Stacey a lot of credit,” he said. “When we were married I already had three boys, she took on the mom role, then we had two kids of our own. I have not put her first a lot of the time, and I regret that. She has tolerated a lot. I give her a ton of credit for hanging in there with me. She was there when there was no money, the lights and the gas were shut off, and she stood by my side.

“That’s why I’m going to be taking a step back. I have to switch my focus to her a lot more.”

Before he slows down, however, he needs to know that the future is bright for the Ironmen.

Flores first encountered fast-paced arena football years ago when an old friend, the late Don Pringle, owned and operated the old Muskegon Thunder. He was a sponsor for that team, and quickly fell in love with the sport.

“I thought it was frickin awesome!” he said.

Flores was also a corporate sponsor when the Ironmen were established in 2016, then became the owner in 2018.

The original owner, Muskegon native and Los Angeles-based attorney TJ Williams, had the team competing in a nationwide league, then tried to move it to another.

The first league sued and gained a court injunction to prevent the Ironmen from switching leagues under Williams’ ownership. The team could not afford the travel costs of remaining in that league, so Williams was faced with a choice – sell it or shut it down, according to Flores.

He turned to Flores, who purchased the team along with friend and former Muskegon Lumberjacks president Tim Taylor. Together they worked to pay off the team’s outstanding debts, build a great sponsorship base and put the Ironmen on a steady course for the future.

The team has been a consistent winner and two-time league champion under Flores’ leadership, and a popular draw at the box office. There have been challenges along the way, like finding a stable league that provides quality opponents without requiring the team to travel all over the nation.

Flores hopes the latest attempt to do that, by rejoining the AIF, will pay off. The league will operate with only three teams this year – the Ironmen and two in Iowa – but there is hope of getting a handful of other cities in the Great Lakes region to join in coming years. There is current talk of Kalamazoo and Port Huron forming teams and coming on board, according to Flores.

“If we can do that, it will be a pretty good league,” he said.

Flores says he’s proud that the team has survived while so many other franchises have failed. He also says he loves the fans, and thinks the Ironmen give the people of Muskegon from all walks of life a unique opportunity to get together – with very inexpensive ticket prices – and support a common cause.

“I strongly believe that the West Michigan Ironmen have been part of the renaissance of downtown Muskegon, and right now we’re the only arena football team in Michigan,” Flores said. “We’re very proud that we’ve been around for 10 years. The crowds we bring in are so diverse, which makes me feel really happy. Our ticket prices are very reasonable, so it doesn’t matter where you come from – you can afford to bring your family to the game and have a good time.

“We’re all in one place together, cheering for the same team. That means a lot to me.”