Tom Kitchens, Millennium Hall of Fame

Richard Dunn

What is pure football, and is there such a term?

If you talk to former Newport Harbor High two-way lineman Tom

Kitchens, he’ll give you an answer, and it might go something like this:

“In high school, we had this great pro coach (Mike Giddings) and he

ran things like a professional system. He was the conductor and he ran a

tight ship, but there weren’t all these athletes getting big salaries. It

was purely about the game, purely about the experience and socialization,

which I think is a tremendous part of team sports, especially at that

age.

“None of this other stuff matters. You won’t find that in a college or

pro football program today.”

For Kitchens, high school football was more than earning All-CIF

Southern Section Central Conference as an offensive tackle for the

Sailors in the fall of 1984.

“I don’t think I’d be where I am today if it wasn’t for high school

football and getting involved with that,” said Kitchens, an imposing

6-foot-6, 237-pounder who stacked up against some of the best linemen in

the business, and is now a C-141 pilot and captain in the U.S. Air Force,

stationed at McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Wash.

“(Giddings) kind of took up the job (as head Newport coach in 1982) as

a hobby, to tell you the truth,” Kitchens added. “I had not had a better

coach at any level. (Giddings) was a pro football coach who was doing

this for the love of the game, because he thought it would benefit us,

and, of course, it did.

“But it was the socialization thing ... I thought that was an

important thing about football. You get together a bunch of guys, and, in

a way, it’s a little like a military indoctrination with the two-a-days

in football ... You learn to do things with other folks, you have that

team ethic drilled into you.”

Kitchens was one of Newport Harbor’s outstanding linemen, along with

Mike Beech and Jason Nedelman, in the Shane Foley-Fritz Howser era as the

Sailors shared the Sea View League championship with Saddleback in ’84

and finished 9-1-2 overall after an upset loss to Sunny Hills in the CIF

Central Conference quarterfinals.

A two-year starter, Kitchens was one of five finalists for the ’84

John Gust Athletic Scholarship, an annual Newport Harbor award selected

by the coaches and based on players’ desire, dedication, enthusiasm,

self-sacrifice, improvement, responsibility and excellence.

A first-team All-Sea View League defensive lineman by the Daily Pilot,

Kitchens was a first-team all-league choice by the circuit’s coaches on

the other side of the ball on a Giddings squad that also featured wide

receiver Ho Truong and defensive back Tom Spangler.

As a junior, Kitchens played tight end -- “although they never threw

the ball to me,” he quipped -- and defensive tackle as Newport Harbor

produced a Sea View League title and 8-3-1 record, also reaching the CIF

Central Conference quarterfinals.

“I’d say Mike Giddings the coach was one of the more important things

about my experience,” Kitchens said. “He was so great for younger guys,

those of us developing and getting into our adult years.”

Kitchens went on to play junior varsity football and rugby at the Air

Force Academy, then continued his athletic career as a self-described

“scrummy,” a rugby term for “one of the bigger guys who interlock and

compete over the ball ... the backs are the faster guys and they tend to

do a lot of opening field running, like in football. I was a total

scrummy in both football and rugby.”

His experience in football’s two-a-day summer practices helped groom

Kitchens for an 11-month pilot training program after graduating from the

Air Force Academy.

“You eat, breath and sleep nothing but flying,” said Kitchens, who

took up his wings in 1990.

Kitchens became disgruntled with a desk job for a few years, before

going back up in the sky in 1995.

Kitchens, the latest member of the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame to

be honored, is engaged to be married and lives in downtown Seattle.