1nutlftBrotherhood. Family. Love.
Those are a few words that Brophy College Prep head football coach Jon Kitna uses when talking to the Broncos post-game. A few qualities of Bronco football, Kitna said, that make his team dangerous.
Brophy’s post-game gatherings on the field aren’t like most you may see across high school football.
It’s not just Coach Kitna telling his guys what he liked most, what could’ve been better, then giving a couple announcements and sending the players to the locker room.
What it is, is a team lifting each other up, no matter win or lose, to highlight the positives from what went down on the gridiron minutes before.
Full Bronco post-game meeting, Sept. 14, 2018. Brophy defeated Mesa Mountain View, 24-7 to improve to 4-1 on the season.
Kitna believes that being able to show love to your teammates is what makes “good teams great and great teams elite,” he said.
“(It’s) understanding the true meaning of love, which is: What will I give up for the betterment of somebody else?” Kitna said. “Football is the ultimate game of that. It’s all about sacrifice across the board. The deeper that we have a love for each other, what we have is a chance to maximize our potential.”
The former NFL quarterback got the idea for the post-game meetings while he was playing college football at Central Washington University. CWU played Pacific Lutheran University, which is where Kitna first saw the tradition.
When Kitna got more connected to his faith, he understood the importance of affirmation and the spoken word and decided to adopt the ritual as a coach himself, he said.
“I remember the first game I broke it out,” Kitna said. “I thought the kids would think it’s corny, (but) they just loved it. They loved it at the first school I was at that was in the dead heart of the inner-city, and they loved it at the second school I was at that was out in the country and they love it here at Brophy, right in the heart of Phoenix.”
The Broncos have seen how loving each other and coming together as one can benefit their performance on the field this season.
“When a team comes together, it doesn’t matter how good or bad you are,” senior nose guard EJ Hamilton said. “Once you get that team bond going, nothing can stop you.”
