By Adam Chasen:
HYATTSVILLE, MD - As rumored throughout the last 24 hours, DeMatha has announced Elijah Brooks will be the team's next head football coach. Brooks, an assistant under former Coach Bill McGregor, will take over the program immediately.

A former DeMatha football and basketball player, Brooks graduated from the school in 2002, before moving on to William & Mary, where he played running back. Only 27 years of age, Brooks will be one of the youngest head coaches of any program in the area next season, but he should be able to rely on a veteran staff to help him.

McGregor spent 29 years as the DeMatha football coach before stepping down just over a month ago. Brooks will have a tough task to continue the success of a program that has built a national reputation, not only for winning on the high school level, but also sending record numbers of players to both the collegiate and professional levels.

By replacing McGregor with an in-house candidate that already has a strong bond with many of the current players, transfers and other program changes should be kept to a minimum.

Brooks will be tasked with not only continuing the programs dominance, but also finding a way to take back the WCAC title, which has belonged to Good Counsel each of the past two seasons. Besides the loss of Coach McGregor, DeMatha will be dealing with replacing Cyrus Kouandjio, the nation's top offensive lineman, replacing the starting quarterback Nikolay Uherek, and many of his skill position players to graduation.

Besides the graduating players, linebacker E.J. Levenberry, ranked as the top linebacker in the country for the class of 2013, decided to transfer back to his home Virginia public school after the first semester of this school year.

Brooks may have a lot to deal with in his first season, but plenty of talent remains in the program. Much like the situation when legendary basketball Coach Morgan Wootten retired ten years ago, a young assistant and former player, Mike Jones, took over the program and struggled at first before quickly bringing back winning ways.

The announcement was made official by DeMatha Basketball Coach Mike Jones on his twitter account, @DeMathaHoops around 2pm today after rumors of Brooks being the new head man swirled in the area and on twitter the last couple of days.