Dominick Goods turned to his Imhotep football family after losing his parents in Northeast Philly plane crash

Senior night was a moment for all of Imhotep Charter’s football players and their families to be honored. For Dominick Goods, that family included the entire Imhotep Charter community.

In January 2025, a small medical plane crashed onto Roosevelt Boulevard and Cottman Avenue. Eight people died, including both of Goods’ parents, Dominique Goods Burke, 34, and Steven Dreuitt Jr., 37, and severely injured his younger half brother Ramesses Dreuitt Vazquez, who suffered burns across 90% of his body. The school granted permission for the entire team to miss school to attend his parents’ funeral, and the group came in Imhotep football jerseys to support Goods.

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Good’s godmother, Shantell Fletcher, said that if he wanted, Dominick could leave Philadelphia and move in with her in Delaware. He spent a lot of time considering it. As supportive as the community had been, it was smothering to constantly be reminded of his parents’ deaths.

“Him moving forward, being there, sometimes it felt harder to stay there, and it just felt easier to go somewhere else,” Fletcher said.

But ultimately, Goods stayed, and grew into one of the stalwarts on Imhotep’s offensive line and a team captain for who he described as a “family.” Having that football family to rally around him and provide support and a space for self-expression was critical to keep Goods from “retreating” into his trauma, Fletcher said.

Goods started playing football in middle school, after watching his godbrother start to play. He’s always been big for his age — Fletcher calls him her “big teddy bear” — so he took to it immediately, and soon grew into a key player on Imhotep’s football team.

His leadership abilities were apparent from the beginning of his football career, head coach Devon Johnson said. Goods always remained calm under pressure, and even just among freshmen, he was always the person players went to to help resolve conflicts or when they needed a level head. Now, as a senior, the coaches often turn to him on the sidelines when they get too heated. His offensive line coach described him as a “big brother,” to his teammates and the coaches’ young sons and families.

“Sometimes me as a coach, I lose my cool, and Dom will be the one, ‘Coach Troy, we got it, we hear you,’ and I calm down,” said assistant coach Troy Gore. “As much as he says we’ve got his back, he’s got our back.”

Those abilities extend past the football team, Johnson said. People “gravitate toward him” in the classroom, where Goods also excels. He is a part of the school’s exclusive STEM program, working on hydrotech farming projects and sports analytics. Goods was in Ghana at the time of the plane crash, on an Imhotep community service trip he still takes annually as part of the school’s STEM program, serving communities with water scarcity and donating basic necessities like over-the-counter medicines and feminine products.

Fletcher said that since Goods was young, he’s always pitched in around the house and tried to take on as much as possible to help his family. Since his parents died, Goods has tried to do even more, to be the person his parents raised him to be.

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“It was like he wanted to now show, like, OK, despite the fact of not having them, he wanted everybody to see the type of person that they raised,” Fletcher said. “He was always talking about making sure that he’s making his mom and dad proud.”

He channeled his family’s tragedy into his relentless work ethic, calm demeanor, and positivity. For other members of the Imhotep football team, seeing Goods’ resilience helps put everything in perspective when things get tough on the field.

“Sometimes you wouldn’t know he was going through such a tough time, because that’s just Dom’s spirit,” Johnson said. “It’s something that would have broken a lot of young people’s spirit, but it didn’t do that to Dom.”

Fletcher was in charge of organizing everything for her godson’s senior night at Imhotep. She brought together her side of the family, Goods’ dad’s side of the family, and made a banner for him, covered in photos and his number 65. She had an inkling that something more might be going on, because the team’s parent liaison had asked her for photos of Goods’ parents. But it was still a massive, welcome surprise to see so many students, teachers, and administrators out on the field to honor him ahead of senior night against George Washington High School on Oct 3.

“We all cried,” Fletcher said. “Our family is not big criers, but my mom was in tears, his grandfather, his mother’s father, he was in tears, it was beautiful. I always tell him I’m glad to see how much they love him, and he’s so easy to love, but for them to go out of their way to do that for him, it was so overwhelmingly beautiful.”

A group of teachers and administrators came to the football staff to pitch a special tribute for Goods, all walking him in and presenting him with a poster honoring his parents. It was important for the program to do something special for him, since he could have easily walked away. He instead chose to pour even more of himself into the team, so they designed and paid for a large poster, and wrote a poem to accompany it.

“They almost made me cry,” Goods said. “I ain’t going to lie. It was a great experience, and I still have yet to read the poem that they got me. I appreciate it so much. I’m just scared to read it. I don’t know why.”

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Goods hopes to win his second PIAA Class 5A state championship with Imhotep, who is 9-1 and faces Frankford High on Saturday. The Panthers earned their 14th consecutive Public League championship after defeating Lincoln on Oct. 21. His coaches hope to have him committed to play college football by February’s National Signing Day.

“We want to check all those boxes off for Dom because he deserves it,” Johnson said. “He worked hard for it, and nobody is more deserving in the world of all the great things that’s going to come to him than Dom.

“His future is super bright, and he’s going to go as far as he wants to. He used this tragic time to really fuel him, where it could have broken a lot of people. I know it’s all uphill from here, because he’s been through the toughest of times, and now he just deserves all the great things that’s going to come his way.”