Chatting With Albright Head Coach Eric Martin

Collegiate Flag Football recently sat down with Eric Martin, the head coach of the Albright women's flag football team. Albright announced the addition of flag football earlier in 2025, with Martin named the head coach in September. While Albright won't take the field until the 2026-27 academic year, the foundation is already being set during the current academic year. In this interview, a wide range of topics were discussed, including the program's progress to Coach Martin's journey to becoming a head coach, to some tips for recruits.

Thank you to head coach Eric Martin for taking the time to sit down with Collegiate Flag Football to interview him to learn more about his background and the Albright flag football program!

How did you become head coach at Albright?

EM: "I think this position started with me in high school. I was a graduate of Seminole High School in Sanford, Florida, where I was born and raised. In my senior year, I was actually committed to going to another school rather than the one I did attend, but that school brought in a junior college transfer at the last minute, right before I was supposed to sign.

I was really big on the right fit, not just going to a school. One school always stood out to me, and that was the University of West Florida (UWF). I was a part of that inaugural signing class [in 2016]. Starting a program at the collegiate level as a coach definitely started with me learning the skills, the right habits, and the right way to go about bringing in the right people.

That led me to a path where, after college, I knew that I still wanted to be around sports, but I never really considered coaching until it fell into my lap. It started as middle school track & field coaching, and that opportunity led to high school track & field coaching. The head track coach at that time at Booker T. Washington High School in Pensacola was also the defensive coordinator for the football team. Just talking about my experience at West Florida and talking ball led to him offering me the defensive line position there, which started my coaching career football-wise.

As a football coach, I was asked by some young ladies who I had known their brothers mostly from either football or from mentoring through my fraternity within the Pensacola area. They really wanted to have their senior year playing flag football at Booker T. I was kind of hesitant at first, but they told me, “If you don’t coach us, no one will, and we won’t have a season.”

I talked to the athletic director and told them I’d do it. I started getting together how I was going to do this and run the program. From somebody who didn’t want to coach at all, now I’m a head coach of a blossoming and budding sport. I have to manage scheduling games, scheduling buses, getting young ladies in the program, keeping them eligible, and making sure they have their physicals in. I was like, “Wow, life turned around fast for real fast.”

But I loved it in the sense that the program had been winless for three years, and then one year we went 6-6 and had a second round playoff run. I don’t like taking credit for anything; I believe everything is by design, by god’s will. Just to know that motion started there was great because who knows if I wouldn’t have taken it, and no one else had taken it, if they would even have a program today.

I moved back to Sanford and took an opportunity to coach the boys' football team on the defensive line at Seminole High School, my alma mater. Flag football has been the talk of the town in Seminole County for a long time, and eventually, they brought it in my second year in the 2023-24 school year. The athletic director remembered my resume and me talking about it. She said, “I think you are the best guy for the job. You know the sport; you coached it before. You can help me learn it as the athletic director and know how we navigate through this.”

That allowed me to be in a blessed position to start a program from scratch at my alma mater, which I love dearly. That really propelled me here [to Albright]. Now I know I love this, I love coach, I love leading, I love instilling hope. In two years, back-to-back over .500 seasons, back-to-back district quarterfinals, and runner-ups. In our second year of existence, seven young ladies signed to play collegiate flag football at the next level. There have been over 100 offers total in the program between our sophomores through our graduating seniors.

I see that this is definitely something that I would like to do, and I've always had that itch since I started to coach collegiately. This is an opportunity for the young ladies, as the sport is still growing, to teach them the beautiful game of football, to teach them not just football, but life lessons through the game of football.  The same opportunities that boys have had for years on end, now, over 100 years, that our young ladies are now able to get.

I felt that was my calling, my blessing. There was some heartbreak there, a lot of interviews, getting the final rounds for some pretty notable programs, and some programs I could have shook some things up there. It just didn’t work out.

I applied for this job at Albright back in May or June, just looking and applying. In July, I get a call from our Athletics Director, Mr. Rick Ferry. "Hey, I'm Rick Ferry, the athletic director here at Albright College. I looked over your résumé, and I'm definitely impressed. You have all the experience all around, especially with recruitment." All of my previous experience culminated into what he saw as the perfect candidate, the perfect fit for his job.

Quickly after, I flew up to Reading, Pennsylvania, where I fell in love with the school as soon as I stepped on campus. For us being a [NCAA] Division 3 school, if I didn’t tell you that, you wouldn’t have known. Beautiful facilities, people are genuinely taking care of the campus, not too big and not too small. It’s the perfect fit; it was exactly what I was looking for. Even better was that I get to start this thing my way from scratch and bring in young ladies that mesh with the type of program and culture I’m looking to build. Overall, I felt that it was God's perfect opportunity."