Roanoke College’s head football coach resurrects program after 83-year hiatus.
Written by Christy Rippel / Photo Above: Coach Stinespring on the sideline in front of a packed stadium of spirited Roanoke College fans.
Bryan Stinespring has a reputation as an excellent recruiter, and he needed those skills to convince potential players to commit to Roanoke College’s new football program, which played its first varsity season in more than eight decades last year.
“When I first got hired, it was me and four walls and that was it,” recalled Stinespring. “We had no football players, no uniforms, no equipment. It was starting at ground zero, but I was guided by three letters, WIN…which I put up on the wall of my office. WIN means ‘What’s important now?’”
Stinespring, who spent 26 years at Virginia Tech as an assistant coach under Frank Beamer, asked himself that question every day as he arrived in the early morning hours at the Salem campus. He tackled everything from hiring assistants to finding someone to design uniforms, to establishing a football committee at the college to figure out the path forward. He credits Roanoke College’s leadership and staff for diving into the project with enthusiasm and commitment, allowing them to launch the program on an accelerated timeline.
Less than a year after Stinespring was hired, the team embarked on a four-game JV schedule in the fall of 2024, a year ahead of projections. They anticipated a healthy crowd of roughly 4,000 people for that first game at Salem Stadium, a stone’s throw from campus. Instead, they had 10,000 people show up, surprising both Stinespring and the team.
“I looked up at the crowd and people saw me mouth the word ‘wow’, because I was blown away,” said Stinespring, who grew up 45 minutes away in Clifton Forge and has coached high school and college football throughout the state. Many of the lifelong friends he’s made through the sport came out to support him that day, and he still gets choked up recounting it. “The end of that game [which the team won] was as good a moment as I’ve ever had,” he said.
As a trusted Beamer collaborator of more than two decades, Stinespring had a lot of great gridiron moments during the Hokies’ most successful years, and believes those moments are made possible by showing up every day as the best version of himself, and demanding the same of his players, a key Beamer lesson.
“How you do anything is how you do everything,” he said. “I learned from Coach Beamer that if you surround yourself with the right people, and you treat people well, and then you prepare to outwork and outlast your opponent, you will be successful on Saturdays and in life.”
In 2025, the team played a nine-game schedule and ended with a winning record at 5-4. They have a 10-game schedule on tap in 2026, with five games slated at home, where the Maroons rank fifth in the nation in division three football attendance. This helps Stinespring with recruiting players who are awed by the school spirit of the crowds at home games.
“Recruiting has gone well, and with this class we’ll be at full capacity at 100 players,” Stinespring said. “We’re building something here, and for all the places I’ve been blessed to be, when I’m driving down I-81 one day showing my grandkid all the places I’ve coached, we’ll be getting off the interstate here in Salem, and I’ll say ‘I want you to see what we did here.’”
For football tickets and information, go to roanokemaroons.com
The story above first appeared in our July/August 2026 issue.
