It was March of 1996.
Jon Kitna was graduating from college and leaving his football days
behind. He had won an NAIA championship
as the quarterback for Central Washington, but guys like that just don’t have a
professional career ahead of them – so Kitna did what he always knew he’d do:
he applied for a job at his old high school.
Lincoln High in Tacoma had just lost their longtime
coach. The man who had mentored Kitna
through high school was retiring and Jon could think of nothing better than to
work hard to fill those shoes in a place he loved. But then a funny thing happened… the Seattle
Seahawks asked Kitna to come to training camp.
It was probably just a stop gap.
The Seahawks most likely just needed an extra guy to run some opposition
plays and figured a hometown kid would do nicely. The thing is, though, this kid was pretty
good. Seattle gave Kitna a spot on the
scout team for the 1996 season. Lincoln
High would have to wait a year.
Kitna then got signed to play in Europe where he became
World Bowl MVP. Then it was back to the
NFL as a backup, then as a starter… and 16 years later Jon had started 124
games, thrown for nearly 30,000 yards and made more than $30 million in the
sport’s premiere league. The wild ride
came to an end as a backup in Dallas last year when a back injury forced Kitna
to call it quits.
Jon will turn 40 later this year and he lived the dream:
a solid NFL career and able to retire young as a multi-millionaire. But here’s the thing – he still hasn’t lived
THE dream. Kitna has been quoted as
saying “the NFL wasn’t supposed to happen.”
So Jon is going back to the beginning.
Just days after his official retirement Kitna applied at Lincoln high
school for a second time. This time he
took the job.
Jon Kitna is now a football coach and math teacher back
where it all started. He shows up at 7am
every morning, leaving his playbooks behind for lesson plans. Sure, some of the circumstances have
changed. He always brings breakfast for his
students and when he saw that the weight room for the football team hadn’t been
updated since he was on the team, Jon paid $50,000 out of his own pocket to buy
new equipment. But in the ways that
matter most, Jon Kitna hasn’t changed a bit.
"We don't believe that we've been given all we've been given to
just enjoy a comfortable life," he says.
You could say that Jon got lucky 16 years ago, but right now it’s hard
to imagine anyone luckier than the kids in Mr. Kitna’s first period algebra
class.
