High school football coach Joe Kennedy, who lost his job in 2015 for openly praying on the field, returns to the sidelines at Bremerton High School in Washington state Friday night — and he says he expects to pause at the 50-yard line after the game to “take a knee.”
The coach returned after the Supreme Court ruled last year that the former Marine was unfairly fired for exercising his right to freedom of religion with his postgame, midfield prayer.
As many as 10,000 spectators, 20 times the 500 who usually attend BHS games, are projected to be in the stands to support Mr. Kennedy’s return — or to protest.
Mr. Kennedy worked for eight years as an assistant coach at the public high school outside Seattle before he was fired. Players often joined him in prayer after games.
After an opposing coach commented on the prayers, wary Bremerton officials said the practice had to stop.
The coach refused to stop praying after games, and the school district chose not to renew his contract for 2016.
In the years afterward, Mr. Kennedy’s legal fight to regain his job and retain his right to pray made him a symbol of hope and tenacity for evangelicals and conservatives who consider bans on religion from the public square as overzealous.
Mr. Kennedy, who served 20 years in the Marine Corps, understands why his case has resonated with so many people, but he said descriptions of him as “the praying coach” made him feel “almost like a fraud.”
“I’m probably one of the worst Christians out there,” he told The Washington Times. “My whole philosophy is trying to love God and others, and I feel that every day. I spend half my day thanking God and then in the evening asking him for forgiveness for screwing it up.”
By his telling, “screwing it up” was common in his early years.
“I was the kid you never wanted to be around,” Mr. Kennedy said of his high school years. “I lied, I cheated, I was very violent. I ‘acted out’ and got kicked out of every school in Kitsap County.”
He joined the Marines after an undistinguished high school career “because I knew I needed something. And the Marine Corps saved me, and I knew I needed that discipline.”
Mr. Kennedy still had some rough edges. “I’ve got eight plates and sixteen screws holding my jaw together. All my joints are just gone.” He also has “a big plastic piece” in his nose that is “all bent up,” he said.
“I’ve been a fighter my whole entire life, and obviously I’m not a great one because of all the damage I’ve sustained,” Mr. Kennedy said. “But I never give up that fighting spirit, and that’s the way I believe all Americans should be and that’s the kind of Christian I am.”
He said, “I’m not that loving, squeezy Christian guy. I’m the guy who will punch you in the face and then pray for you.”
What angered him in 2015 was the pressure to end or at least move his prayers off the field to a more isolated spot.
“I wasn’t going to leave my guys just because somebody thought that prayer shouldn’t be in school,” he said. “Well, that’s too bad for them. They’re just going to have to suck that up. I mean, the First Amendment seems very clear in my book. It seems so simple.”
It was in the Marines where he learned the discipline he promised to bring to the young men on Bremerton High’s team when he interviewed for the job. He told the school that he didn’t know “the X’s and O’s” of the game — “O” standing for offense and “X” for defense in football play diagrams — but he knew how to build character.
He said Bremerton is “a blue-collar town, and these people are doing the best that they can, but there’s not a lot of father figures” in some of the homes.
The football program, he said, “is the place where they can actually just let go of all the worries and just work on their own personal development.”
That doesn’t mean Mr. Kennedy is a pushover. When a parent told him their child talked back that morning or cursed at them, he would stop the practice and tell his player to do pushups or jumping jacks while saying, “I love you, Mom,” in front of the stands.
He also taught the teenage boys on his team how to be respectful of women by watching their language and helping the cheerleaders load and unload their gear on the team bus.
Evolving from a troubled childhood to someone whose joy is helping young men succeed in athletics and life is the stuff of books and motion pictures.
Coincidentally, “Average Joe: The Coach Joe Kennedy Story” releases on Oct. 24 from Salem Books. The story tells how the 20-year Marine Corps veteran went from being an atheist who lived a rough-and-tumble life to a religious liberty hero.
A film, also titled “Average Joe,” is in production, his publicists said.
For now, Mr. Kennedy and his supporters are happy to celebrate his legal win and his return to coaching and helping young men.
“I’m glad that Americans have more religious freedom now, and it will become part of the culture the way our country was originally designed, where people could feel free to express their religious beliefs and not have to worry about hiding those things,” he said.
Mr. Kennedy said his family is proud of his accomplishment, although he said his children were more impressed when his name was trending on Facebook and Twitter, the social media platform now known as X, or when ESPN interviewed him and Sports Illustrated put his image on the cover.
“They don’t care about the Supreme Court,” he said. “That’s so far removed.”
The legal victory at the high court brought Mr. Kennedy back to Bremerton, a port city of 44,122 people across the Puget Sound from Seattle. The coach and his wife had been caring for her father in Florida.
He said he was glad to return to coaching, and he noted that his athletes this year “were in grade school when all this started.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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