Dream Big

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Jon Kitna passed for nearly 30,000 yards in the NFL — but that’s nothing compared to what he’s trying to accomplish at Tacoma’s Lincoln High School.

This article originally appeared in the June 2014 edition of Cascade Golfer. To get Cascade Golfer mailed to your home, click here.

By Brian Beaky

In 1995, fresh off of winning an NAIA National Championship at Central Washington University, Jon Kitna applied for the job of math teacher and head football coach at his alma mater, Lincoln High School.

Lincoln administrators said thanks, but no thanks.

It’s a response Kitna has heard all his life. And one he’s never been willing to accept.


Hey man, how’s it going?” Kitna says as he strides towards the clubhouse at The Home Course in DuPont, one of the Tacoma native’s favorite venues (along with Chambers Bay) and our hosts on this drizzly March morning. He looks no worse the wear for his 16 years in professional football, including one in the World League, four with the Seahawks, five with Cincinnati, and three each with Detroit and Dallas — no obvious aches or pains, no physical limitations.

Indeed, just over two decades after embarking on one of the most unlikely careers in football history, which started out in a trailer home, passed through an NAIA college that didn’t particularly want him and had never sent a player to the NFL, and ended 16 years later with 29,745 career passing yards — 39th in NFL history at the time of his retirement in 2013 (well, almost retirement … we’ll get to that), ahead of legends like Terry Bradshaw, Ron Jaworksi, Ken Stabler and Joe Namath — Kitna seems from all outward appearance to be completely unchanged by the experience.

But appearances can be deceiving.

To understand how Kitna has remained so humble, and why in 2012 — just months after concluding his last NFL season — he chose to become the most recognizable high school math teacher in America, you have to understand where he’s come from, what he’s seen, what he’s done — and the profound changes he’s had to make in his life to persevere.

Kitna was born in Tacoma in 1972, to 18-year-old parents who stifled any outward dreams they might have had to raise a son, while simultaneously teaching their boy to dream as big as his heart would allow. Throughout his teenage years, Kitna was admittedly a troublemaker — drinking, partying, stealing. In a story published by Yahoo Sports in 2012, Kitna’s former college teammate and a current assistant coach at Lincoln High School, Eric Boles, said to an assembled group of 7-Eleven executives, “You guys can invoice Jon Kitna because he stole so much from you.”

It took years for Kitna to become Lincoln’s starting quarterback, and when his high school career ended, nobody came calling. Don James wanted Puyallup’s Damon Huard, not Kitna. Washington State had Drew Bledsoe. Not even any of the small colleges offered Kitna a scholarship. Finally, Central Washington agreed to let Kitna walk-on, but he’d have to pay his own way, and compete with the 11 other quarterbacks on the Wildcats’ roster.

Less than a month later, he was the team’s starting quarterback — and living the lifestyle that came with it. One night, his girlfriend — now his wife, Jennifer — caught him in bed with another woman. Kitna had everything — the starting job on a college team, the big-time lifestyle, the admiration accorded to the most famous man in a small town. And yet he had never felt lower in his life.

“That was the last straw for me,” Kitna says of that night, and the ensuing argument. “I wanted to change and become a better man.”

Kitna had seen his friend and teammate, Boles, undergo a similar transformation in recent years, and called him to learn his secret. Boles’ message was simple: “’The Gospel of Christ,’ he said. So, from that point forward, I turned my life over to Him,” Kitna says.

And just like that, Kitna’s faith was rewarded. The quarterback who now wore clothes adorned with crosses and spoke to anyone who would listen about the power of Christ led the Wildcats to an NAIA National Championship in 1995. Of course, despite the championship, despite the numerous collegiate passing records, scouts said it was just Central — hardly a level of play that translates to the NFL. Come draft day, Kitna’s phone never rang.

It was then that Kitna, math degree in hand, first applied for the Lincoln High School teaching job, turning his focus towards the kids like himself — kids from a poor, inner-city neighborhood, with mostly absent fathers, who desperately needed a positive role model to steer their lives in the right direction.

“I thought it was over. And I was fine with it,” he says. “I was going to go back to Lincoln and become a teacher, with my wife. Sure, we wanted to go to the NFL, but that was always our biggest dream, to teach in the same high school. Then Dennis Erickson called.”

Erickson, the Seahawks coach, was doing a favor for his nephew, Jamie Christian, one of Kitna’s receivers at Central. Kitna says scouts from multiple teams had been invited, but when no one showed up, Erickson worked out the assembled players himself. Christian had been the draw, but Kitna was the star.

Erickson invited Kitna to training camp in 1996 and sent him to the World League to give him some professional seasoning. Just as he had done at every level of play previously, Kitna exceeded all expectations, leading the Barcelona Dragons to the World League title and earning championship game MVP honors and the nickname “The Magic Dragon.” The following year, Kitna made the Seahawks roster out of camp, and for the next 16 years, held down one of the most glamorous jobs in the world — NFL quarterback.

Each stop holds a special memory — Seattle for the chance to play in front of friends and family, and step on the field for the first time as an NFL quarterback (“It was amazing,” he says.); Cincinnati for the bond he forged with a young Carson Palmer, still one of his closest friends (“I love that guy like a brother,” Kitna says.); Detroit for the back-to-back seasons in which he started every game and threw for over 8,000 yards, despite being sacked a total of 114 times, nearly four times per game; and Dallas for their devoted fans, loyal owner, and a 2010 season in which he came in for an injured Tony Romo and racked up nearly 2,400 yards and 16 TDs in just half a season, at age 38.

Finally, in 2012, Kitna pulled off the pads for what he assumed would be the final time. He picked up the phone, and called Lincoln co-principal Pat Erwin. It was time to get to work.

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