SAN DIEGO HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL : A LOOK AT THE 3-A FINALISTS : Lincoln Kennedy Is Filling Some Big Shoes for Morse

It shouldn’t be difficult to spot Morse High School lineman Lincoln Kennedy when the Tigers meet Point Loma for the San Diego Section 3-A football championship Saturday night in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

As Morse Coach John Shacklett said, “Just look for the big guy.”

Make that the biggest guy.

Kennedy is 6 feet 9 inches and 290 pounds, and it’s pretty easy to pick him out of a crowd.

But biggest doesn’t always mean best, unless you start talking about Kennedy’s play lately. Last Friday night, in Morse’s 12-7 victory over No. 1-seeded Mount Miguel, Kennedy, who plays both offense and defense, had his best game of the season.

“He was all over the place,” Shacklett said. “For a big guy, he was going from sideline to sideline. It seemed like he was in on almost every tackle.”

That’s the way Kennedy likes it. He’s the type who likes to be in on everything.

“He’s not the kind of kid who just concentrates on football,” Shacklett said. “He’s involved in a lot of other things and he’s interested in all of them.”

When Kennedy first arrived at Morse as a freshman four years ago, football was one of the few things that he was not interested in. The closest he came to a game was when he played the trumpet during halftime as a member of the band. He also spent a lot of time with the Morse choir.

“That’s what I really enjoyed at that time,” Kennedy said. “But as I sat in the stands watching football games, I started thinking that I’d like to be out there playing.”

Kennedy went out for the team as a sophomore. He didn’t make varsity, however, and spent the year playing with the junior varsity.

“As crazy as this might sound, I didn’t really notice him that year,” Shacklett said. “We already had a lot of big guys. His junior year, he came in and we knew that we could use him.”

But there was a problem. Kennedy’s feet were too big.

“We couldn’t find any shoes for him,” Shacklett said. “He had a size 17 and we finally had to go through the Chargers, and they found a guy who could make shoes for him. He missed the first five games.”

This season, Kennedy hasn’t missed a game, although it seems he has missed a few plays.

“I look back on the season, and I’m upset that sometimes I didn’t go all out all the time,” he said. “I was kind of saving myself for the bigger games at the end of the season. The thing I didn’t realize was that scouts are out there every game watching every play.”

Still, Kennedy is being heavily recruited to play college ball. He said that someday he’d like to play professionally, but if he doesn’t make it, he has other interests.

He’s enrolled in a student court class at Morse in which the students stage mock trials. Kennedy said he enjoys acting like a lawyer and arguing cases.

And being as big as he is doesn’t only help him on the football field.

“Once in a while, I’ll be having trouble arguing my case in class,” he said. “But with my size, it’s a little easier to intimidate the jury.”