Assistants travel different paths to return to West Virginia
West Virginia football’s two new assistant coaching hires have history with the Mountaineers, but their paths back to Morgantown have been very different.
For Blaine Stewart, WVU’s newly appointed tight end coach, his ties to West Virginia and the football program itself date way back to his childhood and are about as strong as they come.
Stewart grew up in a football heavy household, as his father Bill Stewart was part of the program for 11 years and served as head coach from 2008-2010.
He graduated from Morgantown High School before taking his football career to the collegiate level at James Madison University. He would finish his playing career at the University of Charleston. Soon after, his coaching career began.
Stewart got started at the professional level, spending two years as a coaching assistant on Mike Tomlin’s staff of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He would spend two more seasons with the Steelers as an assistant wide receiver coach where he developed his coaching knowledge and abilities.
“Alfredo Roberts (the tight end coach for the Steelers) is like a mentor to me. I told him my goal in football was to get in the tight end room because I needed to expand my knowledge,” said Blaine Stewart. “So I had been meeting with him for two years on tight end play getting ready for hopefully an opportunity like this. This was just the perfect fit.”
Stewart is of course referring to his new position as tight end coach for the Mountaineers, the job bringing him back to his Morgantown roots.
“I’ve really taken some time to take it all in and really appreciate being back. I always appreciate coming in these doors,” said Stewart.
The other new coaching hire, wide receiver coach Bilal Marshall, has already enjoyed working with the Morgantown native.
“He’s been a great resource here just being that he is blue and gold, he is WVU,” said Marshall. “Working with Blaine is awesome, we work together really well.”
Unlike Stewart, Marshall’s path to coaching took some time to come to fruition after his playing career at Purdue came to a close.
“I was done in 2017, I went to Canada for a little bit, and then I came home. I had to figure out what life was, I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” said Marshall.
Initially, he began working in sales, selling flooring all across southern Florida where he quickly rose to the position of sales manager. However, a weekend trip with former teammates propelled him back towards football.
“In 2018 me and the other three seniors that graduated with me just had a boys weekend and we hung out. And he (Duke’s former Wide receiver coach Gerad Parker) said, ‘I want you to work with one of my players,” said Marshall. “We just had fun with his guys and had a good time. It was in the summer, and I just, I started itching, something was off. So I gave him a call and said, ‘Hey Coach I want to coach,’ and he said, ‘It's about damn time’.
From there, Marshall found coaching success early, winning a state title coaching a high school team in 2019. His introduction to West Virginia football came soon thereafter, where he worked as a graduate assistant under Neal Brown.
And after spending two years in that role he left to take his first full-time job at VMI. Now, Marshall rejoins the Mountaineers as head wide receiver coach.
“It’s been awesome. Quite honestly it’s like I never left.”
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