MAN IN MOTION : Versatile Kennedy Senior Keith West Bubbles With Energy as He Distinguishes Himself Through His Nonstop Approach to Football

Marathoners have it made. At strategic places along their race route, they canreach out and grab a cup of water from a smiling volunteer and never even have to break stride.

A similar system is in place on Kennedy High’s football team to accommodate Keith West, a marathon man in his own right.

“Keith has his own special water girl,” Kennedy assistant Craig Raub said. “There’s only one rule: Any time he comes near the sideline, she has to find him and get water to him.”

West, a senior, does not stand still for long, and sometimes he does not even slow down. As the Golden Cougars’ lone two-way starter--he also is their kicker and punter--he only occasionally drops by the sideline to collect a few syllables of coaching wisdom before he returns to the field to play defensive back and receiver.

A substitute? That’s some four-eyed nerd who fills in when the science teacher is sick.

“He’s only off the field for kick and punt returns,” Raub said. “And I’ll tell you what, with his hands, we’re real tempted to leave him out there for that too.”

Kennedy (3-0) will showcase West tonight when the Golden Cougars play host to rival Granada Hills (2-1) in a Northwest Valley Conference opener at 8 p.m.

Kennedy Coach Bob Francola routinely raves about West’s superior “eye-hand coordination” as a receiver. But that’s only half the story, or more accurately, three-quarters. West’s best weapon might be his right foot.

In his first season as kicker, West already has nailed a 50-yard field goal, easily besting the school record of 43 yards. Last season, as the punter, West averaged 38.9 yards and banged out a 79-yard bomb, believed to be another school mark. He is averaging 45.0 yards a punt this season.

Testament to the faith that Francola has in West: Earlier this season, he allowed the 6-foot, 175-pound standout to attempt a 60-yard field goal.

“He didn’t get all of it,” Francola said, “And it still didn’t miss by much.”

West, who Francola says has drawn the attention of Pacific 10 Conference recruiters as a kicker, said he knew he was inheriting the kicking job and took his preparation seriously. West spent hours at the Kennedy field this summer, hammering away.

Apparently, it was clear that he possessed all the tools. Except one.

“I didn’t have a tee,” West said. “So I just kicked them off the ground. I had one day where I made four out of eight from 60 yards. They didn’t clear (the crossbar) by much, but they went through.

“I think that someday, in a game, I can make one from 60 because my adrenaline really gets going.”

If anybody should be used to whistling balls off a grass surface, West is the guy.

Not surprisingly, West credited soccer for his success as a kicker. If you can connect with a moving target, booting a stationary football is easy, he says.

“It helps with the coordination of my feet,” he said. “Plus, it helps because soccer is a lot of quick get-offs. You have to get started fast.”

Last soccer season, he scored a team-high 15 goals. The Golden Cougars advanced to the City Section final, in which they lost to Bell, 1-0. West, a midfielder who was selected to the All-City team, had his fingerprints on the outcome.

“They called a hand ball on me that game that was not a hand ball,” West said.

Take note, because this is perhaps the only time West has admitted that he did not get his hands on the ball. Last season, West finished third among area City players with 29 receptions for 314 yards and four touchdowns. He led all returning area City players in receptions and has hauled in 14 passes for 198 yards in three games this season.

Yet as integral as West is to Kennedy’s passing game, he first made his mark as a defensive back in the team’s 1988 opener against Hamilton. As a sophomore, West became a starter at free safety, although his initial insertion into the lineup was something of a fluke.

“I wasn’t expecting to play much, but Alfred Owens lost an ear pad about two minutes before halftime,” West said of his former teammate, a senior. “The next thing I know, Raub is yelling my name, so I popped out on the field. I ended up recovering a fumble and he said, ‘You’re starting the second half.’ ”

West, a three-year starter and a team captain, has played a prominent role in Kennedy’s surprising defensive turnaround. After three games in 1989, the Golden Cougars were 1-2 and had been outscored, 106-60.

Talk about role reversals. Kennedy has outscored its opponents, 106-2, and is off to its best start under Francola, who took over as coach in 1986.

“We saw early that Keith was nearly as good as the veterans we had,” said Francola, recalling West’s sophomore season. “When happenstance put him on the field, he never came off. He had great instincts, even as a pup.”

This year, there has been plenty to woof about. The 1990 Golden Cougars have drawn comparisons to Francola’s first team in which six defensive players landed Division I scholarships. In a season in which Kennedy twice lost to powerful Banning--then ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today--the Golden Cougars nonetheless allowed just 89 points and an average of 80.8 yards a game.

In victories over Narbonne, Franklin and Crenshaw, Kennedy has allowed a total of 111 yards.

“I’m not surprised,” West said. “I knew we were going to be tough because we had eight returners on defense.”

Francola freely admits that the team’s weak nonleague schedule has played a part in its overwhelming success--the two points Kennedy has allowed came when a Golden Cougar defender returned an interception the wrong way for a safety--but West confidently predicts more of the same.

“I think we’re going to take ‘em bad this year,” West said in reference to archrival Granada Hills, whose lone loss has been to defending City 4-A champion Dorsey. “I think we’ll blow them out in the third and fourth quarters.

“They have all those two-way players.”

He should know. But at least playing both ways affords him the chance to back up his words. Should something happen to West, however, finding a backup will not be easy.

“In terms of what he’s able to do, he’d be real hard to replace,” Francola said. “If Keith got hurt, we’d have to replace him with the kind of kid that everybody else has.”

If not four kids.

“We’d have a 30-yard punter, a 25-yard field-goal kicker and somebody who could probably catch the ball and fall down,” Francola said. “We’d feel the crunch.”

Of course, sometimes West feels like falling over too.

“Last week against Crenshaw the water girl was too good,” West said, laughing. “I drank too much water and started cramping up, and I had to take myself out.

“The next play after I leave, Billy Sanders intercepted a ball playing my spot.”

So far, it is the only blemish on a watershed season.