Kingsway welcomes new football coach

The new Kingsway High School football coach was energetic and enthusiastic and adamant about a few things: His team would be physically tough, mentally tough and fundamentally sound.

Oh, and the Dragons would run the football.

This was 1979.

This also was 2016.

And if new Kingsway coach Mark Hendricks last weekend sounded a lot like new Kingsway coach Tony Barchuk in August of 1979 - sans the thick Brooklyn accent, of course - it probably was because football is football and coaching is coaching and teenage boys crave discipline and direction as much today as they did 37 years ago.

Or 87 years ago.

Some things don't change.

Some things do.

Hendricks, a former Deptford High School and Rowan University star, looks to be a great choice as just Kingsway's second football coach since Jimmy Carter was president.

Hendricks is a younger guy with who has some valuable experience, and he's an accomplished guy with something still to prove - the right combination of qualities, perhaps, to unlock the full potential of one of South Jersey's most intriguing programs.

Hendricks knows he is replacing a legend. He also knows he is assuming command of a program that has the raw materials - enrollment, demographics, feeder systems, community support - to push to the next level as a perennial large-school powerhouse.

When Barchuk arrived from Westbury, N.Y., in 1979, Kingsway was a Group 1 school surrounded by farm land, and the football team had games with Clayton and Pitman on the schedule.

Hendricks' new team represents a sprawling, suburban school in one of the state's fastest-growing districts. The Dragons are the Group 5 program that will compete in the big-boy West Jersey Football League American Division, with the likes of Cherokee and Washington Township.

Some things do change.

Hendricks has an impressive football background. He was a two-time team captain at Rowan. He was an assistant coach at Rowan. He was an assistant coach at James Madison University, just one step below college football's big time.

Hendricks returned to South Jersey four years ago to become a business teacher and assistant coach at Lenape High School. He has been the Indians' defensive coordinator through the program's breakthrough in the last two seasons, directing a unit that allowed just seven points per game.

Hendricks remembers playing for Deptford against Kingsway in his senior season "like it was yesterday." He fondly recalls playing in a North-South all-star game with Barchuk as one of the team's assistant coaches.

"I have the utmost respect for Coach Barchuk," Hendricks said. "What he's done for the Kingsway school district has been amazing."

The world has changed a bit since 1979. Hendricks is coaching today's teenagers, with today's parents in the picture, in today's real-time, lightning-paced, over-sharing society.

He has to connect with a vibrant youth program. He has to build a staff, establish a weight-room culture and create an identity for Kingsway football that somehow incorporates but also extends the "brand" that was the Dragons' style under the charismatic Barchuk.

"It starts with hard work," Hendricks said. "No substitute for that. We need to be fundamentally sound. We need to do things the right way.

"If you do things the right way, every day, then the wins and losses eventually will take care of themselves."

Hendricks wants a "relentless" defense. He wants a program built on the foundation forged in those offseason workouts in the weight room.

And an era of no-huddle spread offenses and off-seasons dominated by 7-on-7 passing camps and showcases, he wants a team that runs the football.

In the first quarter, and the fourth.

In September, and in December.

"We're going to run the football," Hendricks said. "When push comes to shove, we're going to run the football."

It's 2016.

It's not 1979.

But football is football.

Coaching is coaching.

Some things change.

And some things don't.

panastasia@phillynews.com

@PhilAnastasia

www.philly.com/

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