TREDYFFRIN — Of all the recruiting pitches he’d presented to football players in his long career, Billy Crocker knew this one would have to be different.
Nowhere else had the coach’s promises to recruits been so heavy on the future – if only because there was no past or present to rely on. It was a question of faith Crocker was posing to football players.
Come to Eastern, he told high school seniors in 2022 and 2023, and build a football program from the ground up.
“I want something that we build that’s going to last and not just be a quick fix,” Crocker said. “I sold that to the kids that came in that first year, and really the second year was, we’re going to build this with you and you’re going to be the guys. If we take our lumps, we take our lumps, but you’re going to be the ones doing it. But four years from now, you’re going to be the ones celebrating when we win.”
In those unique circumstances, the Eagles are off to a successful start. Three games into its varsity era, Eastern has a win to its name, a 30-23 decision over Alvernia. It has a multimillion dollar stadium complex with a 2,000-seat capacity going up in partnership with Valley Forge Military College. And the Radnor Township-based university has integrated football into campus life in a way that has heartened its coach.
The early returns have reinforced Crocker’s own belief in the building project he agreed to head. He was chosen from more than 150 applicants for the position in 2021, when Eastern culminated a decade-long planning process by announcing a Division III football formation. The plan was for a JV season in 2022 before jumping headlong into the Middle Atlantic Conference the next fall.
Crocker was vetting the school as much as it was for him. He’d spent 15 years at Villanova, as a special teams and defensive coordinator for Andy Talley, part of the Wildcats’ FCS national title in 2009. His resume includes two seasons as the defensive coordinator at UConn and three at Elon.
Philadelphia is home for the Connecticut native, his wife Kristina hailing from Conshohocken and their three sons born in the area. Returning to the Main Line was part of the appeal, and the on-field opportunity outweighed the daunting off-field challenges.
“It was the chance to build something from the ground up and try to put your mark on it and do it the way you want to do it,” he said. “That was the No. 1 intriguing thing, to build something. Not too many people can say coaching-wise that they got to start something from scratch.”
Crocker cast a wide net to build the program’s base, bringing in 95 players from the high school class of 2022. About 45 remain, many lost to the non-football attrition of academics and finances common to college, even more so in the Division III environment Crocker is rapidly acclimating to. Another 85 freshmen arrived this fall. Only one player – junior Gashawn Moody, a transfer from Defiance College – isn’t a freshman or sophomore.
“I’ve seen it as a great opportunity for us to set the foundation for where we want to see this program go, and also give each and every one of us (a chance) to grow,” said linebacker Kamare Watson. “All the freshmen, we’re competing with each other and making each other better. It’s not like we’re coming in with seniors and fifth-year seniors; we’re all coming in and competing and making each other better.”
Of the 116 players on the roster, 72 hail from Pennsylvania and 98 are from the tri-state area. Eight states and the District of Columbia are represented; 17 players went to Delaware County high schools.
The challenge of being undersized and young on the field fits what players signed up for in this project.
“We know we’re not an already set team, and we’ve still got young guys because everyone on the team are freshmen,” said wide receiver and Chichester grad Eddie Swinton. “But we’re just trusting the process, trusting the coaching, playing as a team and not crying about winning or losing.”
Eastern has been competitive each time out. In the opener against The College of New Jersey, Swinton’s 67-yard touchdown pass from Sabor Stevens in the third quarter got the Eagles within 27-21, though what Crocker deems “freshman moments” led to a 41-21 loss. Two field goals by Sun Valley grad John Nolek were all they had to show against MAC power Del Val, but they trailed 19-6 in the latter stages of the third, falling 29-6.
In between was the program’s first win, sealed with 14 fourth-quarter points and savvy that might have seemed beyond Eastern’s years. Down a score with seven minutes left, Justin Nikolopoulos tied the game on a 60-yard pass from Stevens, then Arise Ceide’s four-yard run with 2:17 remaining made the difference.
That game was at Franklin Field, site of Eastern’s four 2023 home games. The school had anticipated the Valley Forge venue to be done for the inaugural season, but when construction was delayed, the school struck a deal with Penn to use the historic stadium.
For Crocker, that decision fit the promises made on the recruiting trail.
“I sold something to the first class of kids, and we were not going to go play at a high school. That’s not what I sold them,” he said. “… We’ve got a good number of Philadelphia kids, we thought it might be pretty cool to go down there and get a chance to play in a big place and a historic venue, and play in the city where a lot of our kids are from.”
Crocker has seen the campus embrace the program. A player at the Coast Guard Academy who spent so much time at a Catholic School, he sees Eastern’s Baptist education providing helpful structure. It probably didn’t hurt in his faith-heavy recruiting pitch, either. It’s been a shift demographically – per the College Board, only 27 percent of the 4,500 students on campus are Black, but the football team is majority Black – but one that he says has been well received.
“I think they like the football team,” Swinton said. “Because when I walk around campus, everybody knows me and I don’t know them, so it puts a smile on my face.”
The first win brought palpable relief for Crocker. He braced for growing pains and hoped not to endure an unsightly wait for a win, fears dispelled before they could really coalesce.
Despite the headwinds they face, Crocker’s standard is still winning. He’s done that everywhere he’s been. And while he might not have many players old enough to legally buy a drink, that doesn’t mean he’ll accept – or allows his players to accept – less than a desire to win.
“I’m going to run things how I know how to run them, regardless of level,” he said. “That’s just the way I was brought up and the way I know, and I know it’s been successful.”
“We don’t ever want to lower the standard for nobody,” Watson said. “We know who we are, what we can be and who we’re going to be in the future. It’s really reassuring that Coach Crocker doesn’t lower the standard for us. He keeps it high and keeps us up here with it so we can achieve the goals that we want to achieve.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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