SALEM — Ethan Mapstone was having dinner with his girlfriend when his cell phone lit up.
The caller was a guy he did not know, but his former football coaches at Ocean Lakes High School in Virginia Beach sure did.
It was Bryan Stinespring, who quickly pitched Mapstone to consider taking on a unique adventure in a few months. How would he feel about being part of a new college football team? The question was directed to Mapstone when due to some injuries and other circumstances, he was nearly ready to permanently shut the door on his gridiron days.
Stinespring changed his mind.
“It was a very random event,” Mapstone said. “Coach Stinespring called me (during dinner) and three days later I was here on a visit. I knew instantly when I got here, I knew this was the place I needed to be.”
On Sunday, Mapstone and 61 others who had similar conversations with Stinespring in recent months will be on the sidelines at Salem Stadium to play the Maroons’ first organized college football game in more than 80 years when Roanoke hosts Hampden-Sydney’s junior varsity.
All this comes just 15 months after Roanoke College announced that the school had reached its goal of raising the $1.2 million necessary to re-establish the football program, as well as a cheerleader team and marching band. They will be in action as well on Sunday.
If this sounds like a quick turnaround, in comparison to other football startups in this century, it is. When Old Dominion announced in June 2005 that it was reviving its football program that was discontinued in 1940, the Monarchs did not hire coach Bobby Wilder until February 2007, and the first game was not played until fall of 2009, although the program’s first class of recruits were signed, and redshirted in 2008.
The time span was not as long at Christopher Newport, which announced it was starting its football program in December 1999. Still, the Captains did not take the field until the start of the 2001 season.
Stinespring, who was introduced as the Maroons’ first head coach on Nov. 20, 2023, said he talked to people who were involved with the establishment of both teams, but he and his superiors decided Season 1 needed to provide the rosters of players who have taken this leap of faith to at least get a limited season of experience.
Stinespring’s ties to Virginia, especially the southwestern part of the state, made him one of few people who could probably get things together in such a tight window of time. In addition to the 26 seasons, he served as an assistant coach under Frank Beamer at Virginia Tech, Stinespring is a native of Clifton Forge in Alleghany County and followed his time in Blacksburg with coaching stints at Delaware, ODU and Maryland. He was serving as the associate head coach at VMI when he accepted the Roanoke College job.
While Stinespring was taking care of building his staff and roster, the college was taking care of the external operation. A new locker room and weight-training facility was built inside the school’s Bast Center. And dates for home games were set aside at Salem Stadium.
“Coach Stinespring could be coaching anywhere with the background he has,” said Roanoke athletic director Curtis Campbell, who began his job a month after the football program was announced and made the decision to hire Stinespring. “The fact he chose to be the head coach when that position was offered means a lot.
“Where we are currently, the number of students we’ve got and the support we have for the program is due to Coach Stinespring, his work ethic and the staff he put together.”
Last Sunday, the Maroons took their first team photo. That was followed by one last intrasquad scrimmage before the first game week commenced. The person in charge of the operation could not have been happier and already considers his time at Roanoke as the highlight of a coaching career that has spanned more than three decades.
“This is exactly what we wanted, and this is exactly what we believed in from the moment this was announced,” Stinespring said. “The Roanoke Valley has been fantastic to us and the players have really bought into what we’re doing. That’s why they’re here.
“It wasn’t because there was a tradition or that there was an existing locker room. It was because they believed in what could take place here.”
Stinespring said while he built his first roster, he focused on finding players and coaches that would establish the kind of culture he envisioned.
“Now we want to make this (program) our own,” he said. “All of us have been in different places, and some things worked here, and other things worked there, but how do we want to do it at Roanoke College? We started with a blank slate and built it all from scratch.”
𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞. 🏠📍
𝐖𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐧’𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞—𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐊 𝐘𝐎𝐔! #WinTheOUTS | #2024FirstUp | #AllAboard25 pic.twitter.com/jw05nNOh0E
— Roanoke College Football (@RoanokeFB) August 31, 2024
Officially, the 2024 Maroons are a club team and will only be facing three JV opponents (future ODAC rivals Hampden-Sydney, Shenandoah and Bridgewater), the Fork Union Military Academy post-graduate team and the club football team at George Mason.
Two of those games will be played on the road. Stinespring said he wanted to take the show on the road so the players, coaches and support personnel will understand the different experiences a team has when it gets on a bus and plays in another stadium.
His inaugural coaching staff includes a group of assistants with a distinct Virginia flavor. Associate head coach and defensive coordinator Mike Giancola grew up in Northern Virginia and had been at ODAC power Bridgewater for the last seven seasons. Recruiting coordinator and offensive assistant Tony Spradlin grew up in Salem and played football for the hometown Spartans. Defensive line assistant Ben Boyd is a longtime high school coach in the Roanoke Valley. Safeties coach Darren Venable is a Ferrum College graduate and offensive coordinator who played in the ODAC’s lone non-Virginia member school — Guilford.
Finally, there’s special teams coach Gerard Johnson, who grew up in the Richmond area and will be a lead recruiter in that part of the state. However, he spent his college years playing at both Norfolk State and Old Dominion, where he was a teammate of legendary quarterback Taylor Heinicke.
“A lot of the draw here will have to do with Coach Stinespring, the staff he’s put together and the way he’s running things here,” said Johnson, who left his head coaching position at Caroline High School to join the Maroons’ staff. “That’s going to separate us from a lot of the other schools in our conference. … Coach Stinespring is setting a standard for how we’re going to do things here, and that’s going to draw a lot of interest.”
The majority of the first Maroons’ squad are freshmen, a few sophomores, who are from the central and southwest parts of the state. But Johnson is confident there will be plenty of players in the years to come sporting a 757 area code on their cellphones.
Mapstone is the lone Hampton Roads resident on the 2024 roster. Stinespring said the first time he made a recruiting trip to the Tidewater area was in 1994. And whether he was at Virginia Tech, JMU or any of his other jobs, the trips to that part of the state remained constant.
“Obviously that’s probably the furthest point that we will go to recruit,” Stinespring said. “But the quality of coaching and student-athletes there is terrific, and we have to find a way to make Roanoke College an option for them.
So how will Roanoke fare on Sunday? Stinespring said that’s the least of his concern. Instead, he feels like what has happened in the past 15 months has already made the 2024 campaign a success.
“We just need to improve each week,” Stinespring said. “There’s three things that are going to be a concern. How strong are we going to be as a bunch of 18-year-olds, how conditioned we are and how experienced we get.
“… Anything else above that is just icing on the cake.”
Mapstone won’t argue this point with his coach. Despite knowing his new teammates for less than two months, the bonds are already there, he said.
“I think we’ll be a surprise,” Mapstone said. “It’s hard to start from nothing. But with coaching staff we have, and the support from the city, the school — everybody — has been encouraging. We’re going to do great things. I’m certain about it.”
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