For Eastern’s new head head coach, the game has been a part of his life since early on, when he played pickup games with neighborhood friends in New Jersey until eighth grade when his father finally allowed him to play, typically as a safety.

He went on to play at Holy Cross High School in Delran, where he graduated in 1990. He then moved on to Milford Academy Prep School, and then to Kean College in Union, New Jersey.

He actually got involved in coaching right after graduating from Kean, when one of his coaches from Holy Cross reached out to him and asked him to help out. “I wound up getting hooked,” he said. “I started out just coaching freshmen, but I moved on to coaching linebackers on varsity.”

Revisiting Holy Cross in his early years of coaching was perfect for Coach Doherty; I always had a great relationship with my coaches,” he said. “They’d push us. It wasn’t just about football. They’d push us to be good people.”

. After around six years at Holy Cross, Coach Doherty was hired in a head coaching position at Paul VI High School in Haddon Township. A struggling program when he took it over in 2003, Paul VI went 0-10 with Doherty in their first season, but managed a 7-3 record by 2005. By his twelfth seasons, Doherty managed a record 75-46, with countless division titles.

When he departed from Paul VI in 2015, he said that he needed a break from coaching, largely to spend more time with his wife and two daughters. He returned to coaching as a defensive coach for Eastern in the 2016 season. When Eastern chose to hire a new head coach for the 2017 season, Doherty managed to beat out around dozens of other applicants for the head coaching job.

This year, Coach Doherty brought Eastern to a record of 5-5 with a playoff appearance, an improvement over the past three years since Coach Dan Spittal’s departure before the 2014 season. And while he has been bringing the team in a winning direction, Doherty said, “The X’s and O’s are important… but you need to figure out how to motivate each kid individually to get them to work together as a team.”

The most important thing, Doherty said, is working on improving the character of his players. That is the ultimate purpose of scholastic sports after all. “The goal is to become a winner,” but he said “the best thing is when students come back” years later with fond memories, and a lasting impact from their time on the team.

With this in mind, Coach Doherty makes sure not to be too easy on the players. “I want to be fair but tough,” he said. “We want them to know that they are coming to work,” and although playing is fun, it is still a grind. It is situations like this that Doherty feels prepares his players for the future.

“We hope to build for the future,” Doherty said. “I know it sounds pretty cliché, but we want to shoot for the playoffs every year.” He sets this bar for the team because, “If we get there, who knows what can happen.”

One of his goals for future seasons is to also increase involvement in the program. “Our numbers in football are down, but I know we have a lot of great athletes in the building,” he said, but more than anything, he wants “good kids, tough kids.” When people talk about Eastern Football, Coach Doherty’s intention is for the image of a tough and competitive team to immediately come to mind, as well as a team that shows character both on and off the field.

One area that Doherty wants to see improvement in is focus. “Being at the top,” as Eastern was early this season, “you start to get a little bit of press and you can start to lose focus. Not that our kids were cocky, but you sometimes lose something.”

When he is not coaching, Doherty is a middle school guidance counselor in Pennsauken. He is also a Voorhees resident, with two young daughters who are cheerleaders for the Voorhees Vikings. “They love football, believe it or not,” Doherty said. He discusses the games with his wife and daughters, who sometimes even watch film with him.

Moving forward, Coach Doherty does not only want to be a coach that brings Eastern on-field success. He wants to shape the football program to be something unique, where players are able to build character. As they lose a number of key players this year, they also have to learn to adjust and step up where they need to. “We always want to take things one game at a time.”