New Tuskegee soccer packages present alternative for athletes to compete whereas fulfilling HBCU desires
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As crimson smoke crammed the air after the inaugural match for Tuskegee University‘s new men’s soccer roster, head play-caller Matthew Tarpley and his gamers signed photographs, crimson-and-gold T-shirts and the matchup ball.
Though it was solely an August scrimmage, for the roster and the followers in attendance on the college’s Abbott Memorial Alumni Stadium, the historic second — the launch of Tuskegee’s new soccer packages — warranted celebration.
For the primary time in Tuskegee’s 145-year historical past, the college is fielding males’s and ladies’s soccer groups. There at the moment are greater than 30 traditionally Black faculties and universities (HBCUs) with girls’s soccer packages and practically 20 with males’s soccer packages.
For the following two seasons, Tuskegee’s groups will compete independently within the NCAA’s Division II, regardless of the HBCU being a member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) for different sports activities. The Southwestern Athletic Conference and the HBCU Athletic Conference, previously often known as the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference, are at the moment the one two HBCU athletic conferences that provide girls’s soccer.
SIAC commissioner Anthony Holloman mentioned the aim is for the convention so as to add soccer as a crown sport by 2028.
“Tuskegee has always been a leader,” Holloman instructed Andscape. “They will be an example of how you do it right, and I expect them to come out of the gate being competitive. We’re looking forward to supporting them.”
For the following two seasons, the Tuskegee males’s and ladies’s soccer groups will compete independently within the NCAA’s Division II.Brian Egeston
During the summer season of 2025, Tuskegee president Mark A. Brown introduced the concept of including males’s and ladies’s soccer to athletic director Reginald Ruffin and the board of trustees. In February, Tuskegee introduced it had employed head coaches for each packages, and by the tip of May, the coaches had finalized rosters and schedules.
“The World Cup this year really took this game to a whole new level, and I say the sky’s the limit,” Ruffin mentioned. “You’ve bought to recruit nice college students, retain nice college students, and then you definately’ve bought to repeat the cycle as a result of — don’t get it twisted — that is about enrollment.
“This is about giving students a chance to be part of a team, be part of a university, and to get an education.”
Just greater than a month into their inaugural seasons, the lads’s roster has a report of 3-1-1, and the ladies’s roster has a report of 2-3-1.
For the previous few years, Tuskegee has had a membership soccer roster, which isn’t NCAA-affiliated. Sophomore Parrin Robinson is certainly one of three gamers from the membership roster who made the roster for the brand new males’s program.
In December 2025, Robinson and his membership teammates heard rumblings in regards to the faculty’s plans so as to add soccer as a brand new varsity sport. After the college introduced Tarpley’s hiring, Robinson emailed the brand new play-caller, in search of extra particulars in regards to the males’s program.
“I didn’t think I was going to play soccer after high school,” Robinson mentioned. “I really thought I was done.”
Tarpley held open tryouts in April, and Robinson realized he had made the roster in May.
“I was jumping up and down, excited as ever,” Robinson mentioned.
Helping begin an athletic program was a brand new expertise for Tarpley, who had beforehand coached highschool soccer and labored as recruiting coordinator for Faulkner University’s soccer packages. However, for head girls’s soccer play-caller Emanuel Stephens, that is acquainted territory: Stephens helped set up Talladega College’s girls’s soccer roster in 2013.
“Starting a program is always a fun adventure,” Stephens mentioned. “You’ll know that everything that you do this year will be ‘the first.’”
Before taking the job at Tuskegee, Stephens was the pinnacle play-caller on the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB) and Alabama A&M University (AAMU), Division I packages within the SWAC.
While Stephens was at UAPB, he recruited incoming freshman Brya Hudson to the Golden Lions’ girls’s soccer program. Now, Hudson is taking part in for Tuskegee.
“One minute, we’re telling them how we’re going to build Pine Bluff and how things could be done there and be great, and then next thing I’m telling them, ‘Hey, listen, there’s this other school that is really good as well, and now we’re looking to build,’” Stephens mentioned.
Hudson acquired affords from a number of colleges throughout the nation throughout her recruiting course of. However, she wished to sequence for an HBCU.
“I lived in predominantly white spaces most of my life, and playing soccer, there weren’t many Black people on the team,” Hudson mentioned. “I simply wished to really feel much more related with individuals, and I felt like doing that [at an] HBCU could be the very best wager.
“Honestly, I know we’re new, but I have the feeling that we have the potential to be something really great.”
While most members of the ladies’s roster are new to varsity soccer, defender Morgan Dunham joined the Golden Tigers after taking part in her first two seasons at Alabama State.
The Alabama native entered the switch portal in May, however by then many colleges had already set their rosters, limiting her choices. Then Stephens, whom Dunham had skilled with throughout highschool, introduced the chance to sequence for him.
“A lot of times growing up, I felt like the odd one out — my hair is different, my skin color is different, my attitude is different — and I didn’t want to feel like that again,” Dunham mentioned. “And so, I really was looking for a similar environment as far as an HBCU.”
With solely a 3rd of all HBCUs providing soccer packages, Atlanta filmwright Brian Egeston wished to seize that distinctive expertise. He is the driving pressure behind Unveiling History, a docuseries following the inaugural campaign of Tuskegee’s soccer packages.
“I want to show the world what would be a mashup of the World Cup and an HBCU homecoming,” Egeston mentioned with a chuckle. “I just want people to see those two worlds collide.”
His son Zachary performs for the lads’s roster. When Egeston and his son went to Tuskegee through the spring on a recruiting go to, it sparked the concept for the docuseries, he mentioned.
“We were just casually talking, and [Tarpley] said, ‘You know, this is going to be monumental. Somebody needs to document this,’” Egeston mentioned. “At that point, I should have walked away. I should have just closed my mouth and went home, but I said, ‘Hey, Coach, I think what you really need is a Hard Knocks version of Tuskegee soccer.’ He said, ‘That’s exactly what I need.’”
Egeston, a Tennessee State alum whose work has been featured on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, is engaged on the docuseries with government producer Ryon Horne and his family-owned The Horne Brothers manufacturing firm. They are filming every thing from matches and practices to exercises, roster conferences and lessons.
“Hopefully with this docuseries, we show what Tuskegee did with soccer, how many eyes were on the program, how successful they were, how amazing these kids were and learn who they are on and off the pitch,” Egeston mentioned. “At an HBCU, you have limited resources, but you have to have maximum results.”
For Zachary Egeston, persevering with his soccer profession at Tuskegee held an surprising bonus: the possibility to sequence alongside childhood buddy Andrew Lewis.
“He’s in my baby book,” the youthful Egeston mentioned. “It’s wild, like, the chances of that happening is actually crazy, about slim to none.”
Childhood pals Zachary Egeston (left) and Andrew Lewis (proper) at the moment are each members of Tuskegee’s new males’s soccer roster.BL Harewood
They didn’t know they have been each headed to the identical college till Brian Egeston stumbled throughout Lewis’ dedication graphic on Facebook.
“I have a picture of me sitting with Andrew on one knee and Zach on the other knee when they were babies,” Brian Egeston mentioned. “There’s no way that these two kids, who met 18 years ago, are reunited through a sport they love.”
Lewis initially deliberate to affix Tuskegee’s membership soccer roster or take part in intramural sports activities earlier than studying the varsity would add males’s and ladies’s soccer packages.
“I wanted to be a part of the Tuskegee Airmen legacy, so I was already committed to Tuskegee for aviation,” Lewis mentioned. “Seeing that they had a soccer program just really reinforced my decision.”
The previous pals’ story is likely one of the many threads the docuseries will comply with. Every student-athlete will seem on digital camera a minimum of as soon as, and player-generated content material can be posted on the Unveiling History Instagram account all through the campaign. The launch date for the docuseries has not but been finalized.
“I’m excited to enlighten people about what it’s like being on an HBCU campus, that community, that support behind you, as well as the hiccups, the ups and downs we’re going to go through as a team and how we’re going to get past them,” Lewis mentioned.
Both Tarpley and Stephens have been tasked with fastidiously crafting their respective roster’s schedules, which embody a mixture of Division II, Division III, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and junior faculty opponents.
Before Albany State discontinued its girls’s soccer program in June, Tuskegee initially was scheduled to sequence the Golden Rams twice this campaign. Ultimately, each Tarpley and Stephens need to affect others to convey the game to extra HBCUs.
“You take the SIAC — we just lost Albany State, which hurts, so that’s another HBCU program that’s not there,” Stephens mentioned. “We’re trying to continue to give players of color an opportunity to play college soccer in environments where they can be themselves.”
Bradmond-Lee Harewood is a junior journalism main at Hampton University with aspirations of changing into an editor and documentarian. At his “Home by the Sea,” he at the moment serves as sports activities editor of The Hampton Script newspaper, line producer of WHOV-TV, and a pupil carry for the Pirates Athletics inventive content material roster. A proud Mississippian, Bradmond-Lee has a ardour for the humanities together with music and theatre.
