Piedmont Hills is a winning program.
Under coach Matt Kiesle, who coached the Pirates for 27 years, the San Jose school was consistently in the mix in the Blossom Valley Athletic League. But Kiesle stepped down after the 2024 season, bringing newfound uncertainty to a program built on stability.
On paper, it looks like that stability will now persist. Piedmont HIlls is hiring former Leland coach Kelly King Jr. to replace Kiesle, King Jr. told the Bay Area News Group on Thursday.
King Jr. is another proven winner who led Leland to a Central Coast Section Division V championship in 2024. He resigned from Leland after the fall to pursue a job closer to his young family in Milpitas.
He’s thrilled that Piedmont Hills is his new landing spot.
“I’m looking forward to getting it going,” King Jr. told BANG. “They had a good year last year. They won the (Santa Teresa-Foothill) league and were inches away from going to the title game. So I’m just trying to get in and help them kind of get over the hump a little.”
After topping the higher of the two BVAL B-leagues, Piedmont Hills reached the semifinals of the CCS Division IV playoffs before losing 14-12 to Burlingame after a last-second Hail Mary came up just short.
For King Jr., the Pirates seem to be a perfect fit. Instead of commuting to South San Jose several times a week, he can go right down the road.
“I go to Piedmont, I go down the street and make a right,” King Jr. said. “It’s like seven minutes from my house.”
Piedmont Hills is equidistant from Milpitas, the school where King Jr. made his name as the offensive coordinator under his father, legendary Trojans coach Kelly King Sr.
Now closer to home once again, he’s excited to build upon the foundation of Kiesle’s program while adding his own spin.
“The plan is to retain a couple guys from his staff there that are planning to stay on board,” King Jr. said. “But I’m injecting guys that I’ve coached with, both at Leland and Milpitas. I got a couple guys coming over who haven’t coached in a couple years. Just try to meld it together. Obviously, he did a lot of good stuff. He was there for a long time. But at the same time, try to be true to myself and what I like to do.”
King Jr.’s goal is to get Piedmont Hills its second CCS title in school history. The Pirates won the Division I crown in 2010 and have not been back to a championship game since then, though they got awfully close last year.
The opportunity to blend family and football is one King Jr. is cherishing at his new stop. Coupled with the potential Piedmont Hills possesses, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Pirates succeed right away.
“I wanted to be closer to home,” King Jr. said. “It makes it a lot easier with three young kids. With my oldest daughter being 10, if my wife needs to drop her off, she can just drive down the street, drop her off, and my daughter can be out there at practice with me on the side.
“So it helps that way. It helps when we go to double days. At Leland, I was staying at the school all day when we had our double days in the summer. Now, I have a chance to go home, be with my kids a little bit in between. We talk about work-life balance. It’s the same thing in coaching. It gives me a chance to still be around a little bit, but still be able to put the full time and effort into being a head coach.”