Roller resigns as Strasburg head football coach after 16 seasons
- By Tommy Keeler Jr. The Northern Virginia Daily
- Feb 12, 2024
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Strasburg head coach Mark Roller watches his offensive unit run through drills during one of the first days of practice this past season. Roller resigned last week as head football coach.
- Rich Cooley/Daily file
Strasburg head coach Mark Roller looks on from the sidelines during a game in the 2022 season. Roller has resigned after 16 seasons.
- Rich Cooley/Daily file
STRASBURG — The timing was just right.
Mark Roller thought long and hard this offseason but decided it was time to step down, and last Wednesday he resigned as Strasburg’s head football coach.
“I’m getting close to retirement,” Roller said. “My philosophy has always been coming into a program is not to leave the cupboard bare. And I feel like we have a pretty good team coming back. To leave now was a good time for me to do that. I wasn’t forced out. I think that’s one of the big things in a job like this is you can say that you’re not forced out. You can leave on your own terms. I think I’m leaving the program in a really good spot.”
Roller’s resignation was officially approved by the Shenandoah County School Board at Thursday’s meeting. Roller has been Strasburg’s head football coach for 16 years and has coached overall for 30 years.
“I know the first couple years we’re really trying, but after that we’ve been really successful,” Roller said. “I know sometimes people measure things in wins and losses but to do things with some of the teams that we’ve had and take them where we’ve taken them to I think that’s a pretty good accomplishment. I feel good about whoever comes in and takes over the program. Hopefully, they can continue to progress in what we’ve been doing. Whatever they can do to make it a little bit better that’s great. I’m not worried about that. I think all in all, I’m happy with my decision.”
Roller is a 1989 Strasburg graduate. He was a three-sport athlete at Strasburg and led the Rams to back-to-back state finals in 1988 and 1989 in football.
He coached football as an assistant coach at Sherando under head coach and now Warren County Athletic Director Bill Hall, a 1991 Strasburg graduate, for four years. He replaced legendary coach Glenn Proctor as Strasburg’s head football coach in 2008.
“It’s great to have somebody like Mark come back when coach Proctor got out,” Strasburg Athletic Director Matt Hiserman said. “And he was able to continue what coach Proctor had built in his years. And so having him there for the last 16 years has been great. He started with a team that didn’t have as much when he first came back and built back into what we’ve been the last six, seven, eight years and having chances to get to the state semifinals and with some teams that had opportunities to go that far and hopefully get that far.”
Roller said one of his favorite memories was coaching the 2021 fall team. The season before, in the COVID-19 shortened spring season, Strasburg advanced to the regional final, but by the fall the Rams had lost a lot of players to graduation. However, Strasburg still went 9-3.
“The team in the fall, we had very few guys coming back,” Roller said. “And we ended up going into the second round of the playoffs that year. We only lost three games. To take that team and to get what we got out of those kids I think that was probably the most achieving accomplishment of coaching. Not all of that always works in that way. And it’s just nice to see the kids that you have maybe freshman year up until the time they graduate — the progression that they make. There’s been a lot of those kids that have gotten better and that makes a little sense of accomplishment, pride. Not so much as an athlete but as a person. I’ve had a couple kids come back to me and say ‘coach thank you for what you taught me about life.’”
Roller said he learned a lot from his coaches in high school Proctor (football), Millson French (boys basketball) and Jeff Smoot (baseball) as well as learning from Hall during his time at Sherando.
“I’ve had some good mentors throughout my career,” Roller said. “And that kind of makes me happy being able to learn from those guys and being able to make it my own within my coaching career.”
Roller said he will miss the relationships that he’s built with kids over the years as well as coaching on Friday nights.
“I think obviously you’ll miss the relationships with kids because I think even in school you have relationships with them,” Roller said. “And I think I’ll still be able to have a relationship with some of those kids that know me. But as those guys start to move on and the new ones come in I might not have that as much. But obviously Friday nights are going to be the big one (that I’ll miss). Everybody wants to be at their game night and that will be difficult. …That first Friday night rolls around and you’ll probably get some nerves. But I’ve talked to some peers who coached and retired or resigned, just kind of gave it up, and they said give it a couple games and then everything will be all right.”
Hiserman said he is hoping to hire a new football coach and a new volleyball coach, since Suzanne Mathias-Carter recently resigned as well, by the end of March.
Roller said he told the team last Thursday and they took it well. He said he will still be around, so he won’t be completely separated from the program.
Roller led Strasburg to 12 playoff appearances in 16 seasons, including 10 in a row. The Rams advanced to regional championship game in the spring of 2021 and the fall of 2022. Strasburg won the Bull Run District outright title in 2022, going undefeated in the regular season and had an 11-1 record. This past season the Rams finished 8-3, falling to Central in the regional semifinals.
Roller has a career record of 102-73, including 74-37 over the last 10 years. Roller said it’s been great being able to come back and coach at his alma mater.
“It’s pretty special,” Roller said. “… It was really great for me to be able to come back here. And I think the support from the community was really good, especially when you take over for a guy like coach Proctor. And they say ‘oh you got big shoes to fill.’ Well, you can’t fill those shoes. You’ve got to step out of those shoes and do what you can do on your own. And even he told me that. I think the big thing in coaching is you surround yourself with good people and if you can do that, winning and success takes care of itself. And I think over the years I’ve been able to get a staff that were good people and did a great job helping us get to where we are.”
