It's not often that a head coach can step into their first gig and find success right away. For this week's Eagles Coach of the Week, Damon Brockington, he had no trouble stringing together victories for Frankford High School.

Brockington, who graduated from Frankford in 2006, returned as a teacher and is also the dean of 11th grade at the school along with the football team's head coach.

He has coached the Pioneers for four years and in his first season as head coach, he led the team to an undefeated record and a division title, earning the Northeast Times 2021-22 Football Coach of the Year Award.

"When you love something, it becomes a lifestyle," Brockington said. "I love the game of football. I have respect for the game, and I feel as though when you respect the game, good things come back to the people respecting the game. I respected the game and positive things just started to come around from me respecting it for so long.

"Winning and losing is showing kids that I'm still going to be here grinding it out deep down with them through wins and losses and taking those as lessons."

Although there's been success on the field, Brockington has had to navigate his team through an array of difficult times. He took over as head coach as the COVID-19 pandemic was still going on, and the school has had environmental issues that still to this day has kept part of the building shut down.

As things started to pick back up, Brockington helped make sure his team was still focusing on football and staying involved. He even has found ways to incorporate the youth with his high schoolers, as he also helps coach little league football.

"This family is everything, so me being a homegrown Frankford guy, I was just trying to keep getting involved deep inside the neighborhood," Brockington said.

Brockington does a lot of work mixing the youth football players with his high school team as he wants to keep them around the game and show them where they could end up playing football one day. He has let them run out of the tunnel with the high school team and has his own players help hold the chains at the little league games.

"My model is that I always like to say I was born a leader. I like to show them that there's different ways that they can be role models and that other people look up to them. I try to bring a big brother situation to my little league team and tell them the kids at the high school level are going through the same stuff they're going through sometimes," Brockington said. "The more football the kids see, the better they'll be and the more people they see having fun around the game, the more they'll see their future progress as their career goes on."

All of this goes back to Brockington's message – respect the game and good things will happen to those who respect it.

As a former player and now as a coach, Brockington has been around football almost all of his life. He has been around people from Frankford who have made the most of their opportunities and figured out how to make it to the ultimate goal of the NFL.

He was a linebacker coach at the school when former Denver Bronco Zaire Anderson (Frankford Class of 2010) played for them.

"He was a phenomenal kid who understood the game and he was a homegrown kid who understood the method of what it took to get to the next level," Brockington said.

Brockington was also a part of the staff when former Eagles' 2019 fourth-round draft pick Shareef Miller played for the school.

Brockington hopes that formers players like Anderson and Miller can be an example for the students of Frankford and their football program.

"Frankford is a diamond in the rough type of group. There's a lot of good talent in the area and sometimes these kids need the right role model to push them in that path and you have to look for the right sources. Zaire and Shareef found the right sources during their time," Brockington said.

As the 2024 season rolls on for Frankford, who is coming off of a 28-8 win over Ben Franklin to move to 4-1 on the year, Brockington wants to carry on the success of the school's football program for as long as he is the head coach.

"Frankford is a homegrown name. It's been around, always going to be around. I'm just trying to keep the legacy alive and continue to keep the legacy alive. Everybody already knows that once a Pioneer, always a Pioneer."

As the coach and his team prepare for their matchup against Academy at Palumbo on Friday, he reflected on what it meant to be named the Eagles Coach of the Week.

"I'm grateful to be nominated as Coach of the Week for the Eagles," Brockington said. "That's just something I'm speechless for, but I definitely appreciate the opportunity."

– Written by Liam Wichser