Keith Simons completed his 15th season as the head coach of the Santa Rosa Junior College football team. That makes him the second longest tenured coach the SRJC has had for its football program, second only to Marvin Mays who coached for 22 years. In Simons’ 15 years as head coach, he has compiled a win/loss record of 103-56 (.647) and three championships.

Simons attended Federal Way High School in the suburb of Seattle where he excelled in three sports: baseball, basketball and football. In his three years of high school athletics he and his teammates went on to win an astonishing amount of championships.

“I played three sports a year.” Simons said. “That’s nine seasons. And in nine seasons of high school our team won eight championships. The only championship we didn’t win was when I was a sophomore playing varsity baseball.”

As a senior in high school Simons was selected the Washington State Player of the Year. He accepted a scholarship to play football at Oregon State University. After a year at Oregon State, Simons decided to transfer. “It just wasn’t a good fit,” Simons said.

Simons went on to play two years of football at Spokane Falls Community College. After two years at the junior college level Simons signed with Idaho State University.

A big part of Simons’ success at the quarterback position was due to his quarterbacks coach Mike Shepherd. “I learned a ton from him. We won the national championship when I was a senior at Idaho State. I just learned a lot of football,” Simons said.

Simons keeps in touch with all his former college teammates: “We have a reunion every 10 years for the Idaho State national championship team. Those relationships in sports, those relationships and friendships you build based on your college experience, those are lifelong friends.”

After Simons’ playing days were over he planned to return to his high school and get a full time job there, and also become the head football coach. After four years of being the offensive coordinator and assistant coach at Federal Way High School he figured out he made the wrong move.

Simons said, “After four years of high school coaching I went back to the college level at Humboldt State and was a graduate assistant.”

Simons coached the receivers as a graduate assistant for two years at Humboldt State. His big break came when Wayne State College in Nebraska offered him a full time position as offensive coordinator. Simons was there for seven years.

“Everybody in Nebraska flies a Cornhusker flag on Saturdays. We would have sell outs at our stadium and half of the people watching our games had the radio up to their ear listening to the Cornhusker game. That was kind of tough but we were really good and we drew a lot of people,” Simons said. In 1993, Wayne State set a Division II record when they had a 3,000-yard passer, two 1,000-yard receivers and a 1,000-yard running back.

Simons flew out to California a lot to recruit athletes from Northern and Southern California junior colleges. It was then when several coaches told Simons that the best coaching jobs are at the junior college level. “It took me a couple of years to find out that was correct. I knew which programs in California were the good JC programs,” Simons said.

Dave Baldwin, the former head football coach at the SRJC, told Simons everything about the school and the football team. He applied and got the job to become the head coach of the SRJC football team.

Simons runs a spread offense that has the quarterback in the shotgun position, four wide receivers and a running back that also plays a receiver. “Spread. No huddle. Throw the ball. We are going to throw it first and run it second. We want to stress the defense out with our formations and the speed at which we run the no huddle.” Simons said. It’s an offense that draws heavily from the BYU system. He took BYU’s system and put some of his own wrinkles in it and developed the philosophy with the no huddle.

Simons has had the same playbook for the last 22 years and says that this offense is great for his players: Our quarterbacks are very well schooled and it’s no surprise that most of quarterbacks scholarship out of here to programs that run the no huddle and spread offense.”

In his 15 years as the coach Simons has led the Bear Cubs to three championships in 1997, 2001 and 2006. “Since 2004 we have played in the toughest conference in the country. So when you win a championship in the NorCal, which we were fortunate enough to do in 2006, that’s a great accomplishment because that is big time football,” Simons said.

“We are on a down cycle in Sonoma County. The last four or five years they haven’t been pumping out as many players as we got before that. So we have to go out of the state and out of the area to bring some guys in and that’s very difficult too because of the apartment cost and all that. This is a high place to live. It’s a challenge,” Simons said.

But that has not stopped universities from offering players scholarships. Simons listed three reasons why many of his players get scholarships: “Number one, our guys go to class. This is a great academic junior college. Number two, are guys get coached. When they get recruited and looked at by the four year guys on film those guys are seeing guys that know what they are doing physically and mentally. Number three is the level of competition we play. It increases marketability because we are going against Division I guys.” Simons said that the team averages 20 players who receive scholarships.