EVERETT -- Although he tries to not think about it, Greg Kittrell knows that this Saturday could mark his final time as a head football coach.
Kittrell will guide the East team in the annual East-West All-Star Football Game. After 25 years as a coach and teacher in the Moses Lake School District, Kittrell recently decided to resign as Moses Lake High School's head football coach and accept an offer to be a vice principal at the school.
During two separate stints (1982-1990 and 1996-2008), Kittrell led the Moses Lake football program. He enjoyed every minute with the Chiefs.
"That's a great honor to have been the head coach at a great school like Moses Lake for that long," said Kittrell.
His heart is in football and always will be, he said, but now he will support Moses Lake's team from a different perspective.
And Kittrell is being careful to not completely shut the door on a possible return to coaching. He knows how difficult it is to stay away.
"Coaching is an interesting -- for a lack of a better word -- mistress. You get hooked on it and it's such an upper that it's just hard (to stop)," he said. "Most coaches who have coached for awhile know how hard it is to walk away."
Knowing that the Moses Lake program is in good hands makes it easier to move on, Kittrell said: "I'm real confident that this assistants group will step right in. It's time for them to step up."
Moses Lake assistant coach Todd Griffith, who has been coaching the East team defense all week, is a strong candidate for the Chiefs head coach post, said Kittrell.
It's been a hectic but rewarding week for Kittrell. He drove from Everett to Moses Lake to interview for the vice principal position Tuesday morning. The trek was obviously worthwhile because he got the job.
While Kittrell was gone Tuesday, his East team assistants (Griffith and Mike Hymes of Moses Lake, Ferris' Jim Sharkey, and Wenatchee's Scott Devereaux) stepped up.
Said Kittrell, "These guys, the great assistant coaches I have here, they picked up (the slack)."
Back in town
When Kittrell was an East-West Game assistant coach in the 1980s, the event was also in Everett. He was happy to return in 2009, he said. "Everett is a great host city. It's just a wonderful sports-supporting town, so it's a lot of fun to come back," Kittrell said. "The guys that run this thing really make it pleasurable for the guys that get to coach in it."
Sticker traders
In addition to trading stories, East-West All-Stars trade stickers. Players wear their respective high school helmets, but they trade extra decals with each other and place them all over the helmets. The result is a cool hodgepodge of logos that symbolizes the relationships players develop during the week. By Thursday, West team member Taylor Cox, an Eastern Washington University recruit from Jackson High, had stickers from Everett, Lake Stevens, Marysville-Pilchuck, Lindbergh, Issaquah, Nathan Hale and Auburn on his black Jackson helmet.
"It's just a symbol of us representing all of the schools," Cox said, "just coming together and coming out one last time to play a high school game -- just having fun with it. Everyone's bonding."
Feather power
Was that a bird feather attached to the back of Jerod Baker's helmet on Thursday morning? Yep. Baker, from Arlington High, found a seagull feather at Everett Memorial Stadium and wore it during the West team's practice. Maybe it was a tribute to West teammates Jake Frauenholtz and David Andre, who played for the Everett Seagulls and whose home field was Everett Memorial.
