Marietta College Athletics

J. Phillip Roach joined Marietta College in 1970 as the head men’s soccer and men’s basketball coach. A decade later he became the athletic director, a position he held until 1989. Roach led the soccer program for nine seasons and is second on Marietta’s all-time list for victories in that sport. He helmed the basketball program for 19 seasons and finished with a 213-257 record. He is the school’s winningest basketball coach. Roach led the 1974-75 team to the OAC regular season championship and a birth in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. The Pioneers went 19-4 that season and Roach was named the OAC and NCAA District III Coach of the Year. A true “Pioneer” in every sense of the word, Roach was the driving force behind the addition of women’s athletics in the OAC. On campus, he developed the M-Team (now known as the Pioneer Club), the Athletic Hall of Fame and the Betty Cleland Award. After a brief stint as athletic director at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., Roach became the athletic director at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. He retired from Rollins in 2005. Roach is a member of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), Sunshine State Conference and Rollins Halls of Fame. Roach earned the NCAA Division II Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008-09 and was named the NACDA Southeast Region Division II Athletic Director of the Year in 1998-99.

Roach earned a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education from Ohio Wesleyan University. He completed a master’s degree in physical education-communication and a Ph.D. in higher education administration at Ohio University. Roach works as an athletic consultant with the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. He and his wife Linda reside in Flat Rock, N.C. They are the parents of three grown children Jennifer, Michael and Allison.