Coach Cockrell is a graduate of Broad Run High School in Ashburn, Virginia (1985), and was a four year letterman in football and track and field. He was awarded a football scholarship to Virginia Tech where he was also a four-year letterman, playing linebacker and graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1990. He is recently retired after 30 years as a Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. 2022-2023 is his first year as a Community Coach at Allatoona. Coach Cockrell is married to a wonderful wife, Noelle, and they have three children, Turner, Parker and Katheryn.

For inspiration, Coach Cockrell turns to President Teddy Roosevelt’s speech at the Sorbonne on April 23, 1910, where he said: “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”