KHS Football’s new coach has his eye on the ball

The pandemic made things difficult for all school sports, but it devastated high school football. From team practices to the Friday night lights, the sport was turned on its head by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the new head football coach for KHS has his eyes on the ball, and is looking forward to getting the program rolling into this upcoming season.

Taylor Masterson has been involved in football for near his entire adult life. He played and coached at Division Two college football schools, and after getting his master’s degree he returned to Alaska to teach- he is also the new PE and health teacher at the school.

This upcoming week, Monday and Tuesday between 4-7 pm, the team will be picking up their gear for the season, such as helmets and shoulder pads. Then Wednesday, the team will hold its first practice. The times for that aren’t ironed out yet, but Masterson expects it to be finalized soon.

While Masterson is excited to get started, he acknowledges that a post-COVID future is anything but certain.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of things that we still have to kind of sift through. I saw that the school board had a meeting last night and something that they mentioned is “who knows what every day is going to bring, tomorrow might bring something very different. So again, probably based off of what we saw last year, things are going to be hit and miss, things are going to change on the daily,” Masterson said.

But with that said, he’s still optimistic.

“I’m really excited to get started with the season. I know that there was a lot of seniors last year who graduated- 23- and really tough for those guys, they really missed out on their senior season. So we feel for them. So, we got a young group of guys, freshmen, sophomores, a couple of juniors. So really looking for those guys to kind of step up fill in and let those guys know that they’re, they’re playing for them,” Masterson said.

For game and practice times, students, parents, and fans can check the Kodiak Bears High School Football Facebook page.