Former Longwood baseball player Scott Abell ’92 continued his rise up the football coaching ranks when he was named head coach of Division I Davidson College in January.
Scott Abell ’92 was a four-year standout on the Longwood baseball team, but it’s on the gridiron where he has achieved success professionally, most recently with his first Division I head coaching job, at Davidson College in North Carolina. Davidson, a member of the Pioneer League, introduced Abell as its 28th head football coach on Jan. 10.
“I knew I wanted to teach and coach for a living,” Abell said. “To be honest, I knew in middle school that I wanted to do that. I didn’t know what I was going to coach, I just knew I wanted to be around sports my whole life.”
In an industry dominated by former college football players, Abell is an outlier. But he is well within his comfort zone on the gridiron and has eight championship rings—three at Division III Washington & Lee and five at the high-school level—to prove it.
“To be honest, football was always my first love,” said Abell, who was a two-sport star in baseball and football at Western Albemarle High School. He had the opportunity to play both football and baseball in college, but a scholarship offer from Longwood Hall of Fame baseball coach Buddy Bolding enticed him to give up his football dreams and become a full-time baseball player.
Abell went on to anchor Longwood’s battery as the starting catcher for four years, playing a key role on some of Longwood’s best teams of the Division II era. He hit .335 with 31 home runs in his career, helped Longwood to four consecutive winning seasons and played in the 1991 College World Series. Bolding noted in his memoir Top Half that Abell was among the 30 best players he coached in his 35 years at Longwood.
The Kansas City Royals drafted Abell as a senior in 1992, but his minor-league career was short-lived. After one season in A-ball, his playing days came to an end. That’s when he decided to pursue another dream—and he was willing to work his way up.
'I knew I wanted to teach and coach for a living.To be honest, I knew in middle school that I wanted to do that. I didn’t know what I was going to coach, I just knew I wanted to be around sports my whole life.'
SCOTT ABELL ’92
He took a job as a teacher and ninth-grade coach at Albemarle High School, but instead of the baseball diamond he found himself on the sidelines of the school’s football field.
“I immediately reconnected with my love for football,” he said. “In that first year, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in football.”
His success as an assistant coach eventually landed him a job as head football coach at Liberty High School in Bedford. He was only 27 at the time, but he capitalized on that success and became head coach at Amherst High School, where he built that program into a two-time Virginia state champion.
From there, Abell parlayed his second state championship in 2007 into a job as an assistant coach at Washington & Lee, a Division III program and member of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. He worked as the Generals’ offensive coordinator for four seasons until he was promoted to head coach in 2012 and then rattled off three ODAC championships in six years.
Abell said his success is built on a foundation that isn’t unique to football, baseball or even sports in general. “Without question, my time at Longwood, my time with the baseball program, my time with the physical education department, I wouldn’t be where I am without any of it. I look back, and coach Bolding ran a scholarship baseball program by himself. So when you look around and say, I wish we had this and that, or more staff or anything else you feel you’re lacking, you can’t let that stop you. You don’t worry about what you don’t have, you focus on what you do have.”
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