Seahawks Hopeful Kitna Enjoying His European Vacation

Sometimes the travel arrangements aren’t exactly first cabin. Sometimes the hotel rooms have no heat and the food is beyond recognition.

Sometimes you play against teams with so many advertisements and decals on their uniforms the players look like little human stock cars.

It’s World League football.

And Jon Kitna is loving it.

Of course, Barcelona, Spain, doesn’t have that certain atmosphere Kitna came to appreciate in college at Ellensburg whenever the breezes were fresh in from the feed lots; and, of course, it could never match the appeal of his native Tacoma.

But the Barcelona Dragons are giving Kitna a stage - a global one, at that - upon which to display his quarterbacking skills.

And the former Lincoln High School star is making the most of it.

His faith, he explained, leads him to try to “attack every situation with joy and happiness.”

He is clearly doing so, although it appears that he’s also attacking this situation with unbridled athletic verve.

Twice in the first five weeks, Kitna, who is on loan from the Seattle Seahawks, was named the World League’s player of the week.

He leads the league in every passing category and is even third in the league in rushing. And he’s on pace to become the league’s all-time total offense record-holder.

“For me, personally, this experience is invaluable,” Kitna said from the team’s hotel in a small suburban resort town on the Mediterranean Sea. “For a guy like me, coming out of a small school (Central Washington), this is a real opportunity. When I came out, nobody knew anything about me. Even the Seahawks really don’t know what I can do.

“This gives them the chance to see what I can do in a game situation - even if it’s not the NFL.”

It’s not the NFL, but it’s still a good springboard for a player who competed in the NAIA.

Detroit’s multimillion-dollar quarterback, Scott Mitchell, is a World League vet, as are Seahawks Stan Gelbaugh and Michael Sinclair.

Sinclair also came from a small school (Eastern New Mexico) and stopped in on the World League before becoming one of the Seahawks’ most valuable defenders.

“Mike Sinclair told me I’d be able to appreciate the World League, being from a small school,” Kitna said. “In college, we used to have 14-hour bus rides to games. Here, you fly everywhere, but you have to go through customs every time and there’s some long trips. It’s all a lot different from traveling with the Seahawks last year, but I was kind of used to some of this from playing at Central.”

Halfway through the season, he’s already traveled to London, Scotland and Germany. “It’s been a real blessing for me because this is part of the world I would have never seen, certainly not for free,” he said.

The fans who follow football are fervent, he said. It’s just that not that many have yet acquired a taste for the game.

“Soccer, obviously, is huge here,” he said. “On Saturday night, they had a soccer game against their rival, Madrid, and there were 130,000 at the stadium. We played the next night and we had about 14,000. But the people who come have been great and very supportive.”

Even those who don’t fully understand the game can see that Kitna - who was an undrafted free agent and spent last year on the Seahawks’ practice squad - is the star of the team. His passing yardage is double that of every quarterback in the league except one, and he’s already rushed for 245 yards in 35 carries.

“That’s always something I’ve done,” Kitna said of the scrambling that has comprised most of his rushing yardage. “A coach I had at Central used to tell me to just go out and make plays, to do things to help the team. Sometimes, by running, it keeps you out of situations where you might have tried to force the ball in there (passing).”

Separation from his wife, Jennifer, was a concern that Kitna had before heading to Europe. But Jennifer, a teacher at Wilson High in Tacoma, took a leave of absence and has been with him most of the season.

And, obviously, from a football perspective, this brief exile has been beneficial.

“(Seahawks quarterback coach Rich) Olson called me about a week and a half ago,” Kitna said. “He just wanted to make sure I was all right and having a good time.

“Hopefully,” Kitna said, “this all lets the Seahawks know I can play and will build their confidence in me and let them know they did the right thing when they signed me a year ago.”