New challenge awaits as the Penns Grove football coach is approved as West Deptford’s next coach tonight (UPDATED)

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

PENNS GROVE – John Emel has been at Penns Grove for virtually his entire high school coaching career. He likely could have stayed at the Salem County school forever. It would take something extraordinary to lure him away.

Extraordinary has arrived.

Emel was approved Monday night to become the next head football coach at West Deptford High School. He will succeed Jason Morrell, who stepped away from the Eagles’ sidelines after six seasons to move into administration.

“It’s just an opportunity to go to a place that … is a premier job in the state of New Jersey,” Emel said. “They’ve won seven sectional titles in 21 years; we’ve won three here in the last 12; it’s comparable. It’s a Group II school. With a bigger school you get some more assistant coaches, more players, a freshman program … That’s an advantageous situation.”

There were seven initial interviews, cut to four, then two, and Emel rose to the top of the list in every aspect in all three rounds. He was approved with a minimal amount of pushback from the board 6-1 with two abstentions in the roll call vote.

“I’m excited for the challenge,” said Emel, who didn’t attend the two-plus-hour meeting but listened in remotely. “It’s a great community and they’ve got great kids, and I know that from being there before. That’s the two things that I’m sure about so I’m ready to get to work.”

Emel, 39, had an “emotional” conversation with Penns Grove athletics director Anwar Golden earlier in the day. It was that working and personal relationship he has with Golden, a former Salem High teammate, that made his decision so difficult.

He plans to meet with his new team Tuesday and start the conditioning program there over the winter break while continuing to teach at Penns Grove until the end of the school year.

The change does not impact his position as president of the the West Jersey Football League Coaches Association and he will continue as director of the Battle of the Beach football series. Penns Grove and Schalick are both expected to play in that event in 2024.

Emel has been coaching high school football for 20 years, 18 at Penns Grove and the last 10 as the Red Devils’ head coach. He was the second-longest tenured head coach at his current school in Salem County, a distinction that now falls on Pennsville’s Mike Healy.

The move to West Deptford marks a return to the only break in his tenure. He was an Eagles assistant for two years (2012-13) before returning to Penns Grove as head coach in 2014.

“I only left there because of my love for this place,” Emel said. “When I was there as an assistant that was the kind of place I could stay forever … So it’s very similar to this.”

That admiration is the driving force in West Deptford never playing Penns Grove as long as he is the coach there.

“I want them (Penns Grove) to win every game,” he said. “The reason I went to West Deptford (previously) was because I knew we would never play Penns Grove. I’ve had opportunities to go (other nearby programs) and turned them down because I didn’t want to compete against this place.”

With the opening, Penns Grove is expected to post the position to find what Golden called “the best candidate for the school district and for the students to lead the football team on the field and off the field.” It plans to appoint a committee whose members are “engrained and entrenched in Penns Grove High School” to ascertain the best fit. There is no timetable.

The successful candidate will be taking over what Emel called “a big job” in a community “that demands a ton of attention and work into the program” but with an administration that is “super supportive of football.”

He set the standard. His Red Devils teams were 70-41, made the South Jersey Group I playoffs every year and won at least one playoff game five of the last six years. They won three division titles and two of the school’s three sectional crowns (2018 and 2019) during a three-year stretch in which they went 35-3 with a 25-game winning streak. He currently has five players in college football at the Division II level or higher.

He tried to be as much a mentor to his players as he was a coach, and many of his former players have messaged best wishes and words of encouragement since the news was released.

“It’s been productive,” Golden said of the Emel Era. “He was ahead of the curve. He was always available communication wise, he did what he needed to do from a coaches perspective, he was a competitor. He advocated extremely well for the team and the district and represented us well as a coach among his peers. He definitely gave us an edge about things.”

This past season the Red Devils went 6-6 with a win over a Group I state finalist after a 1-4 start and trailing 19-0 at halftime of their sixth game. They played for the WJFL Diamond Division title on the last weekend of the regular season and produced two 1,000-yard rushers who are both eligible to return with most of the 32 players he finished last season with. The JV team went undefeated and they have a weight room Emel calls one of the best setups in South Jersey.

“The future is bright here; there’s a lot to look forward to,” he said. “So it’s (the move) not even about next year. It’s just an opportunity long term. I was comfortable staying here and I really like my administration here. It’s nothing to do with all that stuff. … It was time for a new challenge.”