Anyone who pegged Jalen Kitna as a natural-born quarterback because his father played 15 seasons in the NFL didn’t witness the lanky kid struggling to heave a football in seventh grade.

“Honestly, he was awful,” recalls his dad Jon, who was the head coach at Waxahachie (Texas) High at the time. “He’s trying to throw flat routes, and it’s coming out end over end. He can’t throw a freaking fade. I mean, he was terrible.”

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Jon cautioned middle school coaches that Jalen didn’t possess much arm talent and they shouldn’t feel pressured to play him. Some days Jon suggested a shift to receiver. Other times he nudged the kid toward tennis, swimming, golf or even X-game events considering how Jalen was a whiz at snowboarding and nailing halfpipes at the skate park.

Still, the 12-year-old Kitna was undeterred. Having watched the tail end of dad’s NFL career with the Cowboys and having seen older brother Jordan become an invited walk-on at TCU under their father’s tutelage, it was quarterback or bust.

Even if he couldn’t throw a lick.

“Playing quarterback — that’s all Jalen wanted to do — and I didn’t know if I had the energy to train him,” Jon said. “It’s my son, so I don’t wanna kill him, you know? I was thinking I might have to stop coaching. Let somebody else break his heart.”

Five years later, the young Kitna is a three-star 2021 recruit committed to Florida, a transformation that proves how hard it is to break a heart that’s so resolute.

By the time Jon left Waxahachie in 2018 to become coach at Brophy College Prep in Phoenix, Jalen was entering his sophomore season. He still didn’t look like a D-I quarterback.

“We get out to Arizona, and Jalen’s good enough to play, but it’s still a struggle,” Jon says. “Like throwing the ball 35 yards is hard because he’s 145 pounds at the time.”

That’s when Kitna suddenly showed rapid progress from working with family friend Travis Brown, a former Northern Arizona quarterback who spent six seasons as an NFL backup. Those sessions brought out a relentless side of Kitna, with the boy arriving for 6 a.m. workouts at 5:15.

“Jalen was out there all by himself, just working on throwing,” Jon said. “I mean, he was grinding. By the end of the year, he was throwing balls 50-55 yards in stride.”

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Then came a return to Texas in the spring of 2019, with Jon hired by Jason Garrett to become quarterbacks coach for the Dallas Cowboys. Preparing for his junior season at another new school, this time Frisco Reedy High, Kitna showed zip on his passes and meat on his bones — the result of forcing himself to eat 7,000 calories a day. He routinely packed eight double-peanut butter sandwiches for school and his 6-foot-4 frame was filling out when he committed to Boston College in July 2019.

Kitna’s junior numbers weren’t glitzy: a 51 percent completion rate with seven touchdowns and seven interceptions. At least Frisco Reedy made the 5A playoffs, but that ended abruptly with Kitna being sacked six times in a first-round shutout. Two weeks later, the situation changed at Boston College when Steve Addazio and his staff were fired.

Kitna was nervous about the prospect of decommitting — “He’s super loyal and he doesn’t wanna be that guy,” his dad said — but the regime change at Boston College sealed the decision.

Within a week, Florida’s interest ramped up, and soon came a surprising call in which Dan Mullen and quarterbacks coach Brian Johnson extended an offer. The Gators already had a Class of 2021 four-star quarterback committed, Carlos Del Rio-Wilson, but wanted to make space for Kitna.

With only three scholarship quarterbacks on the roster and Kyle Trask entering his senior season, Florida is rebuilding its quarterback room by doubling up in the upcoming class. Kitna doesn’t mind being cast as an accessory to a top-150 player such as Del Rio-Wilson. After all, Trask was viewed similarly in the 2016 class that included four-star Feleipe Franks.

“I’ve never been afraid to compete. I think that makes things more fun,” Kitna said. “If I want to go to the NFL, first I’ve got to win the spot at my school.

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“Coach Mullen is going to develop everybody the same. No matter where I am on the depth chart, I know I’m gonna get everything from him. He’s gonna give you 100 percent whether you’re the backup or the star player who’s about to go in the draft.”

After a summer’s worth of speed and strength training, Kitna weighs 200 pounds. Last week’s preseason combine at his high school showed the results: 13 reps at 185 on the bench press, a 10-foot-2 broad jump (that was three inches off his personal best) and a 4.69 time in the 40.

“My sophomore year I was running a 5.2, just wasn’t super-quick,” Kitna said. “But now it’s been such a blessing to see the new me come out. I’m gonna be able to make more plays with my feet, run around and add that aspect to my game.”

When Kitna committed to the Gators on May 26, his tweet quoted Galatians 1:10:

For do I now persuade men, or God? … For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

#ChompDown21 🐊

— Jalen Kitna (@KitnaJalen) May 26, 2020

“It’s my verse,” says Kitna, a message latched on to during a period of self-realization in middle school.

“I was so worried about what other people thought of me, but I realized I’m never going to please everybody. If I’m just looking for the approval of the crowd, the scoreboard and everybody in the stands, then I’m never gonna be happy,” he said.

“When I put my faith and trust in the Lord, that’s so much more powerful to me. What the Lord wants out of me is just me giving everything I have all the time. Do everything in word or deed to the glory of the Lord. That’s what I make my mission to do.”

Though football is the family’s vocation, faith is its bedrock. Whereas Kitna says he typically has been “a good kid” who achieved in school and behaved, last fall brought some trials. “I was going places where I shouldn’t be and I was not living according to the Word,” he said. “It was actually New Year’s Day that the Lord allowed me to fall back in His hands. That’s something I’m super thankful for.”

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Discussing his son’s faith walk, Jon cites Revelations 3:20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.

“I think God had been knocking on Jalen’s heart, and I think Jalen had a faith on some level,” Jon said. “But he was right on the cusp of making some decisions that would be very detrimental, and God didn’t let that happen. He gripped his heart and from that point forward Jalen’s been all-in.”

Jon embraces his role as the spiritual leader of the family, sharing his own struggles about a pivotal incident at Central Washington University in 1993 when his girlfriend caught him cheating. Recalling that “something’s gotta change in my life,” Jon sought out a friend who delivered answers from the Bible.

“I had no idea about Jesus until he shared the gospel with me for the first time when I was 21-years-old,” Jon said. “My life radically changed from there.”

And what of Jeni, the college girlfriend Jon cheated on? She also became a Christian in the aftermath of that episode and is now his wife of 26 years.

Says Jon: “The Bible says ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has planned for those that love him.’ It’s mind-blowing the impact he has had on our lives. It’s been an amazing journey.”

Kitna is the third of four children in a tight-knit family. The oldest, Jordan, transferred from TCU and landed in the Division II ranks, helping quarterback Colorado State-Pueblo to last season’s national playoffs.

“I was listening to my dad coach Jordan before I ever played football, so I’ve been hearing it for years now,” Kitna said. “Jordan is very alpha male and very extroverted, much louder than me. Him and my dad are kinda similar like that, which caused some heads to butt along the way.

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“But what I learned from him is that my dad is always gonna be right. And if he’s not right at first, he’s eventually going to be right, so you should just listen to him and trust everything he says.”

Next in line is sister Jada, a senior at Arizona State where she’s an equipment manager for the Sun Devils. She cared so little about football growing up that when her dad played for the Detroit Lions from 2006-08, she’d spend Sundays in the back of the family’s suite at Ford Field entertaining Jalen with plastic animals and board games.

Jada finally was drawn into football when her dad transitioned to coaching at Lincoln High, his alma mater in Tacoma, Wash. Soon he had her at practice, spotting the ball on the hash between plays, reading the play script and even trying her hand at shotgun snaps in passing drills.

“Your whole family’s helping out with the football team, so you’ve gotta get in where you fit in,” she said.

She recently interned with the Broncos and upon earning her degree from ASU next spring, Jada might look to become a grad assistant. Or, she says, “I might try to sneak into Florida with Jalen.”

Her popularity as a budding shoe artist might open some avenues also. Denver Broncos running back Melvin Gordon, who prefers a hard-to-find older model of Adidas cleats that only comes in gold, asked Jada to remake four pairs in Broncos colors. Her creative designs on sneakers span anime, Travis Scott’s “Astroworld” album, various NCAA teams, social justice, and the “Rick and Morty” series on Cartoon Network.

Jalen tells the reasoning behind requesting a NASA-themed pair of Nike Airs:

“When I was little, everyone called me ‘Space Boy’ because I was spaced out in my own thoughts. And now I got ’em because I can jump like I’m in space. My vertical is 35 inches.”

Though Kitna can pull off a 360-dunk and do standing back-flips from his time in gymnastics, he’s envious of little brother Jamison, who’s nicknamed JT.

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“He’s 14 years old, 6-foot and 180. He’s fast and he can already throw the ball 50 yards. I’m definitely jealous. He’s gonna be the best out of all us.”

When Cowboys owner Jerry Jones replaced Garrett with Mike McCarthy in January, Jon wasn’t retained. That move came despite a one-year collaboration in which Dak Prescott nearly broke the franchise single-season passing record with 4,902 yards and set personal marks with 30 touchdowns and 8.2 yards per attempt.

Prescott and Jon have continued informal training workouts this spring, with the current All-Pro gushing about the guidance Mullen provided at Mississippi State.

“Dak said when he showed up on campus he didn’t really know anything about playing quarterback, so he says Coach Mullen taught him everything. And he said Mullen coaches super-hard yet super-fair.”

Now Jon is back in the DFW high school ranks, having landed the head coaching job at 5A Burleson High. One more chance to coach his son at quarterback.

“Jalen’s just reaching the point where he’s about to take off,” dad said. “We’re in practice now and he makes throws every day that wow you.”

Considering Kitna won’t turn 18 years old until March, he might not be done growing. He anticipates celebrating that birthday as an early enrollee at Florida. He recently came home from a practice at Burleson to complete an online English quiz — a summer-school course necessary to stay on track for December graduation.

At his third high school in three years, the self-described introvert is thankful that playing football helps form immediate connections. Now two weeks away from the season opener, Kitna praised his new teammates for their discipline and commitment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m just trying to make this year special,” he said. “I really love my football team and the people we have here. We’ve been through a lot, grinding the past four or five months.”

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The once-scrawny kid who a few years ago couldn’t throw a spiral now takes particular gratification from pleasing his coach.

“Yeah, this year my dad’s definitely had to do a lot less coaching me than he did before,” Kitna joked. “It’s awesome that we’ve got that connection. It’s the highlight of every day, going to practice and getting to be with him.”

(Top photo: Courtesy of the Kitna family)