Hero Central: DeMatha Football Coach Bill McGregor

HYATTSVILLE, Md. (WUSA) -- Bill McGregor is a high school hero. He is the head coach for the DeMatha varsity football team. In 2005, the NFL named him the high school football coach of the year for starting a program right here in the Washington area to teach high schoolers how to play the game but also how to live life after football.

It is three days before the third game of the season for the DeMatha varsity football team. They're 2-0 and ranked number one in the Washington area. Yet, this team doesn't even have its own football field. The team practices at a public park.

Coach McGregor said, "This is really all we know." But that hasn't stopped him from building the best high school football program in the Washington area. "I love the game of football," McGregor said, "and the game of football, I think, teaches a young man so much about life, you know, hard work, dedication, loyalty, self sacrifice."

In his 28 years as head coach, he's lead the Stags to seventeen championships. Over 300 of his players have scored football scholarships to college.

"We have seven DeMatha alumni who made the opening rosters of NFL football teams," McGregor boasts. "That is the most in the entire country."

One of them is Redskins' rookie Edwin Williams. "For me, personally, Coach McGregor has just been the kind of person that i want in my right hand corner," Williams said. "When I get married, I want him to be at the ceremony. I consider him a part of my family, just like everybody else that i played with."

Coach McGregor hasn't just helped the young men at DeMatha. Ten years ago, he started the high school player development program for the Greater Washington area.

"What really makes it special, besides just doing football, there's a number of other values involved with it in terms of life skills," McGregor explained, "such as personal responsibility, sportsmanship."

It also brings out the college recruiters. That's how senior running back Marcus Coker says he scored his football scholarship to Iowa. He said, "I don't think that if i didn't do that, that i wouldn't be where I am."

"To have an opportunity to work with so many young men and see them grow, see them develop, and see where they end up down the road after high school, after college, is so rewarding," said McGregor. "I can't say how blessed and how thankful I've been to be a part of this and be a part of their lives and be able, maybe, to make a little bit of a difference in their lives hopefully."

Coach McGregor started the program at just one school. It has since expanded to sixteen sites. Up to 500 students attend each of those sessions and it's all free.