Waterford native Billy Crocker and his family are back in the area this week. They enjoyed a boat ride on the Niantic River on Thursday.

Life is pretty darn terrific for Crocker.

He’s spending quality time with family, including parents, Bill and Beth, who live in Niantic. He’s excited about his first head coaching job, taking on the challenge of building a football program from scratch at Eastern University, a Division III school in St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

And his new football home is in familiar territory. Villanova was previously a stop in his coaching journey and his wife, Kristi, is from Conshohocken. Crocker recently completed the move from North Carolina, where he was the defensive coordinator at Elon University for three seasons, to the Philadelphia area.

Everything has fallen into place nicely for the 1997 Waterford High School graduate and member of the school’s Sports Hall of Fame.

“A lot of things in my life just lined up personally and professionally, family-wise,” Crocker said Thursday.

The opportunity comes at a great time for Crocker, who was happy coaching at Elon but ready for a new adventure and a chance to be a head coach. And it’s a good move for his family, including three children.

Crocker, 42, talked about the things that attracted him to the Eastern job.

“We wanted to get back up north a little bit,” Crocker said. “Obviously, I spent a lot of time in the Philadelphia area being at Villanova for so long. My wife is from there as well, so we’re back near her family, which is huge.

“So, the location was big. But it also had to be the right job and right opportunity. Not just a chance to be a head coach, but build something from the ground up, which is pretty unique and something that not too many people can say they’ve done, which drew me to it.

“Then the support and backing that the university and administration are putting behind this thing and have put behind it. They’re fully committed to it. They committed to me and I committed to them.

“And a little bit of a lifestyle change. I’ve been coaching Division I for 20 years now and my kids are getting to the age where they’re involved in a lot of different things and I found myself missing it and I want to be a part of it. … That was a big part of it as well.”

It’s been crazy busy for Crocker since being hired in December. It seems like whenever he crosses something off his massively long to-do list, he adds two more things to it.

Crocker admits it’s been overwhelming at times but is taking a day-at-a-time approach. He’s learned to delegate some duties.

“When you’re building something brand new, something is always popping up,” Crocker said. “Literally, there was nothing there from a football standpoint. I had to order everything under the sun. I had to design uniforms and design helmets. Everything.”

Recruiting was his focus during the first five months. Crocker, along with three full-time coaches that he hired, hit the road. About 90 players, almost all freshmen, will be coming to campus this fall.

Eastern will play a limited schedule at first, facing junior varsity programs this fall, before joining the Middle Atlantic Conference in 2023. Games will be played at nearby Valley Forge Military Academy. Upgrades and additions will be made to that complex.

Player development and program growth will be the priority, as will upholding the core values of the Christian university.

“I don’t care about the wins and the losses right now. I don’t want to throw those guys to the wolves. I want to make sure that we’re going to do this right and do this safely," Crocker said. "That’s been my biggest thing since day one with the administration.”

Crocker can lean on the vast amount of coaching knowledge that he’s collected over the last 20 years. During his 12 years at Villanova, he was part of the 2009 Football Championship Subdivision national championship team as a defensive line coach on Andy Talley’s staff. He was eventually elevated to defensive coordinator for the Wildcats, building the nation’s top FCS defense in 2016.

He learned from his two seasons as defensive coordinator at UConn. His homecoming of sorts turned sour, as he was fired in December, 2018.

“For a long time, I kicked myself about taking that job,” Crocker said. “I never should have left Villanova. From the get-go, you could tell it wasn’t going to be good for anybody. At the same time, I was at one place for a long time and this was a chance to try something new. There are things that I would have done differently there. I do wish some things worked out differently and were approached differently.

“I do think as bad as it was, not just on the field but off the field, it made me a better coach. I really do. It opened my eyes to a lot of different things, good and bad. And the guys I did work with every day there on the defensive staff, I’m still good friends with them to this day.”

Crocker and his family will head back to Pennsylvania on Sunday.

He may visit southeastern Connecticut again in a few weeks before things really get rolling with his Eastern program.

He’s looking forward to putting down some roots there in the Philadelphia area.

“I told my wife if we start winning here and I love it, we could stay for 20 (years) and we’re done. We have a high quality of life, which is important to me.”

g.keefe@theday.com