From Scratch: Tuskegee Is Building Two Soccer Programs at Once

Emanuel Stephens has a way of describing what he's doing at Tuskegee this summer that has nothing to do with formations or fitness tests. He's in the kitchen, he says, going through the fridge, trying to figure out what he actually has to work with before he can decide what to cook.

Down the hall, Matthew Tarpley reaches for a different picture. He says it feels like the Maze Runner, his daughters' favorite movie, except the walls keep moving and the rules keep changing while he's still trying to find the way out.

Two coaches, two metaphors, one shared problem. Tuskegee University is fielding men's and women's soccer for the first time in its history this fall, and both programs are being built the same way: from absolute zero, with no roster, no history, and no website that a recruit could pull up to see if any of it was real.

"There was nothing there,” Stephens said of the early recruiting calls. "So it was like, well, are you being truthful?"

The Pitch

The idea had been floating around Tuskegee for a while before either coach got the call. Stephens, a Georgia Southwestern product who had worked his way through AIA, NCCAA and NAIA levels, first heard about it from a friend on staff, the school's track coach.

"It's intriguing, right, the historic nature of Tuskegee," Stephens said. "Hearing about it, knowing people went there, and then just seeing how well she's been doing there."

Tarpley's path in was different but the conclusion was the same. He had spent the previous decade building programs from nothing before, first at Park Crossing High School in Montgomery when it opened, then at Tallassee High School in Alabama, where he inherited a team that had gone one win and ten losses and had it in the state semifinals three years later. When he heard Tuskegee was starting a program, he said, it wasn't a hard decision.

"Tuskegee is such a special university, right, the university is, it's a brand name," Tarpley said. "The history and the tradition of the university going all the way back to Booker T. Washington. Soccer is long overdue here."

Both coaches credit athletic director Reginald Ruffin with selling them on it, and both describe him the same way: a man who knows almost nothing about soccer and doesn't pretend otherwise, but who wants to win and has made it clear the coaches are the ones who know the game.

"He'll tell you he doesn't know anything about the game," Stephens said. "He's not one to try to get hands on unless you don’t do your job, and then there's consequences. So there's expectations that come with that."

Recruiting Without Proof

Selling a program that doesn't exist yet is its own kind of job. For Stephens, that meant convincing families that a school known for academic rigor and no soccer tradition was actually about to have both.

"It's strong to say ‘challenge’," Stephens said. "It's been exciting. But there's times where you question, did you make the right decision? Because when you're trying to tell somebody that when they go online, they couldn't find a website, they didn't see anything. There was nothing there.”

Tarpley found the opposite problem: too many emails to answer. Once the hire was announced, his inbox filled every morning with messages from players across the country who wanted to be part of a first-year HBCU program. He's already built a recruiting list of more than one hundred names for the 2027 class.

"I would wake up and my inbox would be just slammed full of kids from all over the country," Tarpley said. "So many young athletes and students that want to come and play here and be a part of what we're building."

Neither coach was recruiting purely on ability. Both said the first-year build required a different kind of player, one willing to walk into a program with no track record and no returning teammates to lean on.

"The whole recruiting process for me, the expectation has to come in and compete," Stephens said. "I want a player who is willing to do the work, who's going to work hard."

Tarpley put it in terms of leadership. "I need students first, athlete second," he said. "I was looking at the students' extracurriculars, their clubs, what they're involved in outside of the classroom, outside of soccer. I couldn't just bring in thirty-two freshmen and cross my fingers."

Building From the Southeast Out

Both rosters lean heavily on Georgia and the Southeast, a reflection of how much the sport has grown across the region over the last decade. Stephens' incoming women's class comes from eleven states, with Georgia supplying the largest share, including players from Johns Creek High School and Cobb County programs at Osborne and Campbell. Alabama sends just one, Morgan Dunham from Madison, as a transfer from Alabama State.

"Atlanta has the biggest population of players right now," Stephens said. "I think as we move on, we'll bring players in at those levels as well."

Tarpley's roster of 32 for the fall includes just five internationals, a deliberate choice for a coach who spent years recruiting heavily from overseas as an assistant at Faulkner University in Montgomery, where 27 of 32 players on last year's roster were international. This time, he's betting on the domestic pipeline: ECNL and MLS Next players from California, Arizona, the Bethesda, Maryland area, and across Georgia and Alabama.

"Ten years ago, I do not think that anyone could really say that a high level ECNL player is on par with a second or third division kid coming from overseas," Tarpley said. "Today, in 2026, I believe that a high level ECNL player, a high level MLS Next player, is right there with that kid coming out of Germany or Italy. I'm going to go with the domestic kid. It may work, it may not. It's certainly a gamble."

The handful of internationals coming in will still need support adjusting, something Tarpley has already started addressing directly with families. One of his incoming players, defender Dahman Zucchini, is arriving from Milan, Italy.

"Milan is the fashion capital of the world," Tarpley said. "And then you're coming to Tuskegee, Alabama. Culture shock is an understatement, I imagine. I think the heat and the humidity are going to be the biggest shock to their system."

Twenty Days

Both programs report players today, giving each coach a little more than two weeks to turn strangers into a team before the season opens.

Tarpley's timeline is the tighter of the two. Tuskegee's men open at home against Enterprise State on August 17, a Monday night, before traveling to face Auburn University at Montgomery, a team expected to be ranked in the top 25 nationally in the preseason polls, on August 22.

"It's literally taking thirty-two guys, putting them together, and crossing your fingers that you've got it worked out," Tarpley said. "We've got about twenty days to assess where we're at, come up with a formation and a system, and create some chemistry and cohesion. It's a big ask to come up with that in a twenty-day period, but we're up for the challenge."

Stephens' women open with an exhibition against West Alabama on August 21 before their first official match at home against Edward Waters, another HBCU, on August 29.

"I try not to put too much burden on any one," Stephens said. "We already spoke about the AD's expectations for us to go out and win games. But the biggest part is when you leave the game, you know that you've competed. If we can bring that together with the classroom and the community, then I think we'll be able to build a quality program for years to come."

Part of Something Larger

Both coaches see their programs as part of a broader shift inside HBCU athletics, one that includes South Carolina State and Albany State building soccer programs of their own in recent years. Stephens spent years in the SWAC before Tuskegee and has watched that conference's soccer programs push into stronger nonconference schedules against Power Conference opponents, a trend he expects to reach the SIAC as Tuskegee grows.

"I like where it's going," Stephens said. "There's still a long way to go, but having Tuskegee come into that is going to be a big thing. Now they have more opportunities to play college soccer."

The men kick off first, at home under the lights against Enterprise State on August 17. Twelve days later, Edward Waters comes to Tuskegee for the women's opener. Two programs, one campus, both starting from nothing at exactly the same time.