Former Woodland head football coach Kevin Smith didn’t take long to find his next coaching job, and it’s in a familiar place.
Smith will return to Handley as a football assistant on coach Chris White’s staff. Smith spent 17 years from 2003-2020 at Handley in multiple roles, including as a head baseball and girls basketball coach and as an assistant to Mike Battles and Larry Strain on the football team.
Both of his sons Connor and Logan graduated from Handley while he was there, and he was on staff when the Tigers won football state championships in 2011 and 2016.
He left after the 2019-2020 school year to take a position at Benjamin Russell High School, where he coached baseball and football.
He took the Woodland head football coach position prior to the 2024 season, the first head football coaching job of his career. He went 6-15 in two seasons with his alma mater and took the Bobcats to the playoffs last season for the first time since 2021.
Smith has coached for 30 years and put in his retirement papers with the state, so his work at Handley will be on a contract basis. That contract was approved by a vote of the Roanoke City School Board at Tuesday’s meeting.
Smith said Wednesday that White had not yet specified what Smith’s role with the team will be. He and White worked together as assistants for one season under Strain in 2019.
