Westwood's Kyle Ide (center white t-shirt) is all about the big W (AzPreps365 photo).

 

Kyle Ide is rather unique in this day and age of extraordinary movement of coaches and athletes.

Westwood's 12th football coach in its 54th year, Ide is set to make his head coaching debut Friday vs.Skyline. It's sans the interim tag attached the final two games of 2016 when he assumed Jim Ewan's spot. At that time, Ide was not interested in being the head coach moving forward. A position he yearned for once upon a time. But don't let that brief interlude fool you. Devotion got the best of Ide in the end.

Ide is all about Westwood. He is a Westwood grad. He attended feeder schools adjacent to Westwood -- Whitman Elementary and Carson Junior High -- before finishing at Westwood in 1987. All those schools no more than two miles apart.

Nearly everything he's done -- as a student, as football player for Jerry Loper-led Westwood from 1984-86, as freshman football and basketball coach and teacher at Carson, as varsity basketball coach, boys golf coach and teacher at Westwood -- has been out of loyalty to an area of Mesa that's undergone substantial change since he graduated 30 years ago. 

I say "nearly" because as a younger coach Ide -- typical of most young coaches -- was full of ambition and eager to climb the ladder. He wanted to be a head football coach ahead of basketball. Working at the freshman level in both sports at Carson was a takeoff point. 

"I really wanted to be a head football coach back then (late 1990s), but the first path that opened up was basketball," Ide said. "I was following Buddy (longtime coach Buddy Doolen at Westwood). I coached (varsity) basketball for seven years. Had good seasons and bad seasons. By the end of the seventh year I was burned out."

Ide became head hoops coach for the 1998-1999 season, the same year current Westwood principal Shawn Lynch began an eight-year run as Mesa High's boys basketball coach. The two hit it off on and off the court. Often often were in the same Bible study groups. Became good friends.

Lynch's familiarity with Ide certainly didn't hurt his shot at becoming Westwood's next footballl coach last winter. It took some coaxing early on from Lynch and others on the Westwood campus to hook Ide. But Lynch knew and had seen firsthand the last couple years what Ide brought to Westwood and its neighborhood the past 20-plus years as a social studies teacher and coach.

"Kyle and I started coaching the same year and I think I coached a little longer," Lynch said. "I knew then what a good person he was, and know more now of how fine an educator he is. He has an intrinsic purpose in serving our kids and the community. He's a great combination of all the things that made him a perfect candidate for the (football) job."

In retrospect, the burnout Ide experienced in basketball was a step in a process all coaches face. He needed recharging and did that watching his family grow while taking on a less taxing coaching stint in terms of time with the boys golf team. Ide returned to coaching football as an assistant under Ewan and had no plans other than assisting in the near/far term.

"The early years of my coaching career it was all about me," Ide said. "That has changed, especially after my first experience. Like any coach that steps away at the time I did, you find you miss it. I'm recharged. That's not to say I can't get burned out again. I've told them I'm in it for five years. The parents want their kids to work hard and so do I. I want them to have a good experience. This is about helping a community that's been a big part of my life."  

Ide is not seeking to reinvent the wheel in regard to Westwood's football fortunes. Anyone who has even a little experience with the landscape of football programs today across the Valley realizes many face a steep climb to challenge the newest schools, most affluent schools, the destination schools. Ide is up to speed on that reality. But he wants to instill a solid foundation for the program that can be sustained. 

"What I want is for us to have consistency," Ide said. "We're out to win as many games as we can, and do it to the best of our ability."