Mr Kennedy’s early years were bleak, he said, but he recovered in the Marines, serving for two decades. Returning home in 2006, he went to work at the shipyard. He was soon offered a job as an assistant coach, a big commitment that came with a modest stipend of about $ 4,500 for the season.
While weighing the proposal, he came across a football movie on TV “Facing the Giants”.
“God came down and just punched me and answered the question of whether I should be a coach,” said Kennedy. The answer: “Absolutely.”
The idea to thank God after the games came from the movie, he said, “I kind of plagiarized it.”
Mr Kennedy said he had prayed after matches for years without controversy. If his parents asked him what he was doing, he said “just thank God.” If they said they didn’t want their children to participate, he told them it was fine.
He also led students to prayer in the locker room, a practice neither he nor his lawyers now advocate.
The only question in the case, said Hiram Sasser, a lawyer with the First Liberty Institute who represents Mr Kennedy, is whether he can offer quiet, solitary prayer on the pitch after the match.
“If someone comes near you,” Mr Sasser added, “you don’t have to run.”
The school district objected that the context mattered, noting that a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the Ninth District in San Francisco had criticized what he called a “fraud story” created by Mr. Kennedy’s lawyers.
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