A new hope for King’s football
Kofa hires new head football coach
Kofa King's football has hit hard times.
The Crimson and White haven't won a game since 2017, with increased loss of interest in the program, and numerous player transfers to other programs.
Notable examples of this were the likes of Jamar McFarlane and Jonah Leon to Yuma Catholic.
After David Diehl resigned as head coach over the offseason, King's athletics sought their next coaching candidate from outside it's ranks.
Earlier this week, the Yuma Union High School District approved Kofa's hire of Dave Bartlett.
The San Diego native comes to the kingdom with a lot of football credentials, as he grew up playing the game and then transitioned into coaching that would span more than 2 decades.
In that span of time, Bartlett garnered a lot of experience in the assistant and head coaching roles for the majority of the time in Southern and Northern California.
He also tackled coaching roles at the collegiate level.
Likely a huge reason the Kings made this hire, is his track record of taking losing programs and transforming them into elite ones.
He garnered much success as a CIF head football coach, with coaching stints at San Diego High School and Mar Vista.
Under Bartlett's direction, San Diego High School's program made a dramatic turnaround in his 1st 2 seasons; leading the Cavers to an 14-5-2 record and a CIF-SD Division 1 playoff appearance between 2000 and 2001.
He even cultivated 2 student athletes that would go on to become NCAA Division 1 football players in what was the PAC-10 Conference at the time.
Back in the late 1990's, Bartlett also turned a bad Hiram Johnson program in Northern California into a 3-time section winner.
Now, Bartlett has his sights on making Kofa an area power, and potentially a state power.
"I've been waiting for the right timing when that day would come that Kofa job opened, where I can take it and this was the day, because I'm convinced that Kofa can be a powerhouse."
News 11 Sports got the chance to speak with Bartlett, who laid out his approach to rebuild Kofa's program.
1st, Bartlett has already amassed a large collective of assistant coaches together that he believes might be one of the best groups that he has ever had; to develop the current underclassmen student athletes.
2nd, the veteran coach is seeking after a specific character in a student athlete that would fit into his program:
"We want task-oriented individuals that are going to learn how to be task-oriented and give up that individual self concept. And, when you can do that and you're building character like that and you're thinking about your teammates and you love your teammates and you respect your teammates and you do that with your coaches and your coaches model that with you too, that's where it starts. That's the roots. That's the foundation of creating task-oriented people. And it grows from there. If you can't do that, you are not going to win. But, if you do that and you can build that and get out of that 'me-concept' and (be) task-oriented, then you're going to win."
