Pahokee High officially hires Emmanuel Hendrix as new football coach

For Emmanuel Hendrix, this moment has been years in the making.

Hendrix grew up in Pahokee, played football at Pahokee High, had two separate stints as an assistant coach for the Blue Devils and served as interim coach this spring. Now, the former defensive coordinator is officially the new Pahokee head football coach. 

After two rounds of interviews, Hendrix was offered the job Saturday morning and accepted, Pahokee assistant principal Brian Lawson said. It’s Hendrix’s first head coaching job.

"The thing with it is I never wanted to be a head coach anywhere but in the Glades," said Hendrix, who beat out 12 other candidates. "If I was going to be a head coach, I wanted to be the headman at Pahokee. That's the only high school head coaching job I ever would have felt that I got to take it, especially as I got older. There's something you can't turn down."

Spring game:Three things we learned from Pahokee's win over St. John Paul II

Last month:Pahokee High School football head coaching position remains open

Elsewhere:New coaches bring their own vision to Somerset, Olympic Heights

When DJ Boldin stepped down in February, Hendrix was named the interim head coach. In April, Hendrix was incorrectly presented as the new Blue Devils head coach in a radio interview, and around that same time, The Palm Beach Post ran a story that incorrectly announced the hire.

“I'm just happy that everything is finalized,” Hendrix said. “You don't have the job until you really have the job.”

He takes over a team that went 2-4 last year but has state title aspirations.

“I expect us to be really good,” Hendrix said. “I expect us to win state. That's the standard.”

He added: “We're the biggest-kept secret in Palm Beach County.”

With his top three quarterbacks unavailable for the May 27 spring game due to injuries or transfer issues, Hendrix guided the Blue Devils to a 20-14 win over St. John Paul II, a Class 3A regional quarterfinalist this past season.

“There's no one, I believe, that doubts his ability to do X's and O's,” Lawson said. “Because of his familiarity, he was our defensive coordinator last year, he had a chance to coach during the spring, and I was very pleased with what I saw during the spring game and the direction the program was heading.”

Hendrix played for Pahokee in the 90s alongside Anquan Boldin, DJ’s older brother who was a star receiver at Florida State, as well as in the NFL, and had the Blue Devils' stadium named in his honor. 

“The one advantage that coach Hendrix has is he's a native of Pahokee,” Lawson said. “He knows the community. He knows the pressure that comes along with being a head coach of Pahokee High School.”

Hendrix played college football at Bowling Green before returning to Pahokee as an assistant coach in 2004 and was part of multiple state championship teams before leaving in 2008. 

Hendrix didn’t return to Pahokee until 2019, spending the intervening years as an assistant coach at the Fort Lauderdale-NSU University School under head coach Roger Harriott, now at St. Thomas Aquinas. Other stops included the University of Pikesville (Ky.), Glades Central for two seasons and then a return to NSU University. 

“It's been a long time coming, it's been a very long time,” Hendrix said. “There was a time where I didn't know if this was going to happen.”

Hendrix applied for the Pahokee head coaching job following the 2018 season, when the school parted ways with Orson Walkes. While Hendrix got an interview, Boldin ultimately got the job. But Boldin hired Hendrix as the Blue Devils’ defensive coordinator.

Before Hendrix started as an assistant coach for Pahokee, Boldin and the NSU University coaching staff negotiated an agreement that allowed Hendrix to coach for University School in the 2019 regular-season opener against Pahokee. University won 44-7. The next day, Hendrix was working for Pahokee. 

Despite no offseason to get acclimated to the players, Hendrix led a defense that propelled the Blue Devils to the 2019 Class 1A state semifinals, holding opponents to less than 20 points per game in the last half of the season. 

After graduating several Division I players, including Best of Preps Male Athlete of the Year Frankie Burgess, Pahokee didn’t have a chance to participate in the state series because the Palm Beach County School District opted out due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Blue Devils did go 2-2 in the regular season, qualifying for the Class 1A-6A tri-county gold bracket before falling in the first round and finishing with a 2-4 record.

“COVID didn't do us any justice,” Hendrix said. “We had so many young guys that had to play last year that they weren't ready to play football. No team was ready to play football, but when you have a bunch of kids that played jayvee the prior year and you didn’t have a spring, it’s hard. But what it did, all those kids got better. All those babies, they aren’t babies anymore. They played some big boys.”

Off the field, Hendrix’s goal is for the Blue Devils to maintain the high grade-point average they had under Boldin. On the field, he wants to win games. 

“I'm Pahokee-bred,” Hendrix said. “I'm just happy to be home officially. I'm happy to lead this team to the future. I consider it an opportunity of a lifetime.”

Pahokee also hires basketball coach

Along with Hendrix's hiring, Pahokee High hired a new boys basketball coach, Hygens Succes, who played football at Glades Central and later walked on at the University of Florida.

Succes also played basketball and baseball at Glades Central. He's a math teacher and assistant athletic director at Pahokee High and an NFL Players Association Certified Agent.