Apple Valley's Kyle Godfrey voted SBLive's California Football Coach of the Week by fans (11/16/2023)
When Kyle Godfrey took over as Apple Valley's head coach, it wasn't exactly an easy time to dive into a situation in which the implicit pressure was quite high.
Despite the fact that it was in the middle of a pandemic, expectations – or at least, hopes – were at an all-time high for Apple Valley football. Following five years of rapid growth, the Sun Devils were arguably more talented ever, and preparing to officially step out from behind the High Desert curtain.
When highly-regarded head coach Matt Rohrbaugh, an architect of Apple Valley's rise from 2015 through 2019, stepped away for personal reasons late in 2020, Godfrey was named the successor a good few months before the season. But like most other new head coaches at that time, Godfrey wasn't able to practice or even just meet with his team in person until just weeks before their first game because of the shutdown.
At that time, Godfrey had been with Apple Valley for 12 years and coaching defensive backs and receivers on varsity for multiple years, so it wasn't like he was in a brand new situation. But it was a brutally challenging time to be a first-time varsity head coach nonetheless.
However, the Sun Devils picked up under Godfrey where they'd left off with flying colors. That spring season was the first of three in a row in which Apple Valley had arguably its strongest team ever. They outscored their four Mojave River League opponents by a combined score of 179-21, and then traveled to Culver City – which was in the midst of its own golden era – to beat the highly-touted Centaurs 49-42. Apple Valley followed up the 5-0 campaign with an improbable CIFSS Division 3 finals run that fall, and despite graduating perhaps its biggest-name senior class yet, it then earned a Division 2 birth in 2022.
After Godfrey's first season at the helm, offensive coordinator/associate head coach Robert Meras said, "It was the smoothest transition I've ever been a part of in any kind of organization... A lot of the same rules and traditions that were implemented under Coach Pulice and Coach Rohrbaugh still pertain now. We're not babying players, we're coaching them hard, aggressively, and if you don't like it you can go somewhere else. That's the motto we kind of live by. So the transition has been amazing."
Photo by Lance Smith
All in all, Godfrey has been a hand-in-glove fit for an accomplished Apple Valley coaching staff that blends intensity and ambition with approachability and cordiality.
In 2023, the Sun Devils had less experience and fewer big-name recruits among their upperclassmen than in some previous seasons, but still remained competitive among the Inland Empire's top ranks. That included coming up just short of beating Division 2 playoff picks Upland and Chaparral, and once again finishing with a winning record both overall and in Mojave River League play.
However, Apple Valley did take one upset loss, coming by one point in MRL play against talented, senior-heavy Hesperia.
To open the CIFSS D5 playoffs, Apple Valley had to return to Scorpion Stadium, where they were held to 14 points in their prior trip. The Sun Devils turned the tables on the team that had temporarily knocked them outside the MRL's top two, and dominated the second and third quarters to win a 35-32 instant classic led by senior running backs Xavier Salazar and ZyRon Belcher.
For Apple Valley's pivotal victory over Hesperia, Godfrey is SBLive's California Football Coach of the Week for Week 11. To win our final Coach of the Week award of the year, Godfrey received a whopping 23,825 votes – the most of any coach in 2023.
Godfrey had stiff competition from Inderkum's Reggie Harris, who was the runner-up with 19,716 votes – which also cleared the season's previous top mark, set by Cardinal Newman's Richard Sanchez.
In Week 11, Inderkum opened the Sac-Joaquin Section Division 1 playoffs with a statement, blowing out Pleasant Grove 62-17 to win its tenth consecutive game. Ricky Cole completed 12 of 16 passes for 220 yards and five touchdowns, and ran for a touchdown as well. In Week 12, the Tigers followed it up with another lopsided win, 50-21 over Monterey Trail, and now look to upset Folsom in the semifinals.
MORE: ALL 14 SOUTHERN SECTION PLAYOFF BRACKETS
– Lance Smith | lance@scorebooklive.com | @sbliveca
