ravis Kelce’s high school offensive coordinator, Kahari Hicks, has nothing but positive things to say about the Kansas City Chiefs star, who was a highly skilled quarterback as a teenager and—in Hicks’ words—a vocal, funny and charismatic player.
That said, Hicks has a message for Kelce—a message he said he once tweeted at his former player: He’s sorry.
“If you put anything in there, you can put in there: ‘Travis, I wish I could have [given] you more,'” Hicks told Newsweek on Thursday. “‘I hope you accept my apology.'”
Hicks, who remains the offensive coordinator at Ohio’s Cleveland Heights High School, started coaching Kelce nearly 20 years ago, when Hicks was 30. In retrospect, Hicks believes he simply wasn’t ready to highlight all of the things a player of Kelce’s caliber could do. That, he said, is “one of my biggest regrets as a coach.”
“When people ask me, they say, ‘What was it like coaching Travis?’ I say, ‘I didn’t do anything to enhance him as a player.’ Not very much,” Hicks said.
“I felt like I gave him opportunities, but it’s something anybody else would have done—give him the ball and let him do his thing,” he continued. “But I just didn’t know as much then as I know now, and it’s something that still bothers me to this day. Every time the Super Bowl comes around, it’s just a reminder of why, as a coach, I have to continue to upgrade my toolbox.”
Kelce’s quarterback coach at the time, Damion Creel, emphasized that he and Hicks—who are “really good friends”—were young.
“Boy, oh boy, we were young,” Creel, who is now the head coach at nearby Euclid High School, told Newsweek. “If we knew today what we know now, oh my goodness. We talk about that all the time.”
He went on: “We were exactly where we were at, and we did the best we could with where we were at. I don’t see a problem with it, but I understand what [Hicks] is saying: If we could go back now and coach Travis and [Travis’ older brother] Jason where we are with our knowledge of football and our experience, boy oh boy, it would be totally different.”
How different?
“We had a kid who had 47 touchdowns last year,” Hicks said. “He was Division I Offensive Player of the Year, and he was a quarterback. But he was not better than Travis. If he had 47 touchdowns, Travis could probably have had 66.”
Of course, Kelce, a four-time All-Pro selection and two-time Super Bowl champion with a chance to add a third ring to his collection on Sunday, has done just fine for himself, despite any perceived failures by his high school coaches. A two-star athlete coming out of Cleveland Heights, Kelce received a scholarship offer from Cincinnati shortly before his senior year. He collected a couple more offers over the course of the season, but Jason’s presence on the Cincinnati team made the decision a “no-brainer,” according to Kelce’s former head coach, Mike Jones.
Jones said Kelce handled the relative lack of offers very well for a teenager. His coaches made sure that recruiters saw his success not only on the football field but also on the basketball court.
“He was such a lighthearted young individual at that point, that he said, ‘Hey, it’s going to happen,'” Jones told Newsweek. “He just worked hard at camps, worked hard at AAU and everything just kind of worked out.”
At Cincinnati, Kelce excelled at tight end and turned himself into a third-round pick for the Chiefs in 2013.
“A good coach knows what’s going to be best for the player and best for the team,” Hicks said. “Putting him at tight end was a segue to him being the best tight end to ever play the game, and a pathway to a lot, a lot of money.”
Very little of Kelce’s success surprises Creel, although he said you can’t always predict that a player is headed to the NFL at the high school level.
Still, even in high school Kelce showed the kind of tenacity and creativity that would eventually lead him to lateral to Kadarius Toney in a dramatic moment against the Bills earlier this year.
“That was Travis all day,” Creel said.
Creel also isn’t surprised watching Kelce power through opposing players. Both he and Hicks recalled a memorable game at the beginning of Kelce’s junior year against Warrensville Heights High School, in which Kelce led Cleveland Heights on a game-winning drive. According to Hicks, Kelce gained every yard on the drive to claim a 24-22 victory.
“You’ve got a 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4 quarterback running isos like he’s a fullback, and he’s just pummeling kids,” Hicks said. “And every first down, you can see him getting more and more intense. The best way I can describe it is like an avalanche coming downhill picking up steam.”
“They couldn’t stop him,” Creel said. “The plays he kept making over and over and over again, it signified who he is.”
Creel isn’t even surprised that Kelce is dating Taylor Swift.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” Creel said. “He was a ladies’ man in high school. They loved him. So none of that stuff surprises me.”
For all of Hicks’ self-awareness, Jones—who brought on both Creel and Hicks as young coaches and challenged them to learn every position—credited the duo for helping Kelce learn the game.
“I’ll tell you, he had a great offensive coordinator, as well as a quarterback coach,” Jones said, adding that a young Kelce was “a student of the game.”
“He could throw the ball, he could run the ball, he could catch the ball, he made good decisions,” Jones said. “That’s why you see right now, he knows how to read the defense. That’s how he knows how to sit down, he knows how to get in the gaps, he knows what Mahomes is thinking already before it happens.”
Kelce’s relationship with his high school and hometown remains strong. He contributed money to the football program and frequently shouts out Cleveland Heights on his podcast, New Heights (another reference to the area).
His relationship with his coaches remains strong as well. Driving through Cleveland in 2022 during the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, Creel spotted a souped-up Bronco with its window down. Kelce was in the front seat, and Creel quickly rolled down his window and shouted, “Trav!”
Kelce spotted Creel and yelled back, “Creel!”
“He stopped his car in the middle of traffic,” Creel said. “I got out, he got out, we hugged, we talked for maybe 30 seconds, and he got in his car and pulled off. And that’s the type of guy he was, and that’s the kind of relationship we had.”
For his high school coaches, Kelce was a once-in-a-lifetime player, and not just because he was a star.
“It’s just cool how he makes you feel,” Creel said. “He makes you feel like you impacted his life. And you never know with kids and stuff like that, but it was a humbling experience, man, that I’ll never forget.”
Hicks said he sees too many coaches take undue credit for the development of talented young players.
“I just can’t function like that,” he said. “It was really fun coaching him. He worked really hard, he understood things, and he wanted you to load him up with as much as you could. You don’t see kids like that very often.”
