Bill Pospisil and Guy Thurston each had a short tenures guiding the Wheat Ridge football program.
Now it’s Reid Kahl’s turn at the wheel. The Fort Morgan High School product spent the past two years at Coronado High School in Colorado Springs before accepting the challenge of becoming the fourth head coach for the Farmers in the past seven seasons.
“Wheat Ridge is a community-based school even though it’s near Denver,” Kahl said. “That’s where I came from. The rich tradition intrigued me from the getgo.”
Kahl described his situation at Coronado as “terrible” and said it would take a “special job” to get him back to coaching at the high school level. He took the position when the Wheat Ridge administration offered him the job in February.
“I want to get it back to the same old-school, hard-nosed football like Wheat Ridge is used to,” Kahl said.
Kahl said he had an opportunity to take a scouting job with the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League, but decided to stick with the high school level.
While the robust running attack might not be the exact plan, Kahl’s offense won’t be throwing the ball around in the shot-gun spread offense like the Farmers have done the past three seasons that didn’t yield a playoff berth.
“I think the main reason they brought me in was because they felt that I have the ability to win now,” Kahl said.
The dismissal of Thurston after a 4-4 conference record in the Class 4A Mountain Plains League and three straight losses to end the season showed that the administration at Wheat Ridge wanted to go in a different direction.
“We were all surprised,” Wheat Ridge senior quarterback Dylan Orms said. “But, we were all open to a change. We weren’t going to give the new coach a hard time.”