Virginia Tech, Brent Pry Hire Stu Holt To Coach Special Teams, Offense

On Friday, Virginia Tech football and head coach Brent Pry announced the hiring of Stu Holt as Special Teams Coordinator and an Offensive Assistant. Holt is the fifth addition to Pry’s new coaching staff. (For all articles related to coaching staff hires by Pry, click here.)

A coach with 22 years of experience at the college level, Holt ventures to Blacksburg from Louisville, where he was an Assistant Coach, Tight Ends Coach and Special Teams Coordinator on Scott Satterfield’s staff. An original member of Satterfield’s staff, he was hired in December of 2018.

Holt has experience coaching a variety of positions at numerous places.

Before he was with the Cardinals, he spent four years at Appalachian State coaching running backs and special teams. He was at South Florida the two years prior, where he was the Director of Player Personnel and once again had special teams duties. Holt also has coached at Western Kentucky (eight years in two stints) and Tennessee State (one season) since 2004. Before that, he had college stops at Bethune-Cookman and Western Carolina, along with coaching three years of high school ball down in Florida.

A native of Hamptonville, N.C. (off of I-77, 111 miles from Blacksburg), Holt played at North Carolina from 1992-95 as a long snapper for the Tar Heels. He graduated from UNC in 1995 (B.A., English) and got a second degree at Western Carolina (B.S., Education) in 2000, where he was a graduate assistant for the football program.

As his Appalachian State bio reads, Holt “attended high school at Starmount H.S. and played for his father, B.W. Holt, the fourth-winningest coach in North Carolina high school football history.”

In both his time with the Cardinals and the Mountaineers, his position groups were very successful.

At Louisville, his tight ends combined for 17 touchdowns in his first two seasons. In 2021, Marshon Ford leads the Cards in receiving with 47 catches for 530 yards, both team-highs, and two touchdowns. Four of his other tight ends have combined for six catches for 120 yards. Ford led the league’s tight ends in touchdowns in 2019 with seven and was second in 2020 with six.

His special teams units have performed well too. Former walk-on kicker James Turner was 13-of-15 in 2020 and earned All-ACC Honorable Mention accolades. His Louisville bio states “the Cardinals finished fifth nationally in kickoff returns at 27.4 yards a return” in 2019.

In Boone, N.C., Holt helped guide the Mountaineers to three conference championships. In his four years there, a running back eclipsed the century mark in every season. Darrynton Evans, for whom Holt was the primary recruiter, was a top-20 rusher in the country in 2018 with 1,187 yards (6.6 ypc). Evans was a First Team All-Sun Belt and Third Team All-Purpose player in 2018, and he was the Sun Belt’s Offensive Player of the Year with 1,480 yards, including 2,064 all-purpose yards, and 24 total touchdowns. He is currently with the Tennessee Titans.

Appalachian State’s special teams were solid as well. The Mountaineers had four touchdowns on kick and punt returns in 2018 and ranked second nationally in kickoff returns, averaging 28.8 yards per return. They also blocked six kicks, good for fourth in the country. App. State was also top-20 in net punting, punt return defense and punt returns.

Holt’s all-time commits list shows he can recruit a variety of areas, particularly in the southeast U.S. He has recruited players from Florida, South Carolina and Georgia, as well as Washington D.C. and North Carolina.

Holt was a Broyles Award (National Assistant Coach of the Year) nominee in 2013 at USF. His special teams unit with the Bulls was No. 3 in the nation, per ESPN Stats & Info. Freshman kicker Marvin Kloss was one of three finalists for the Lou Groza Award (national kicker of the year).

His salary at Louisville in 2020 was $390,000, per The USA Today. He and Pry worked together at Western Carolina, where they were on the same staff (Holt as a GA, Pry as the DL coach) for the 1998 and 1999 seasons.

Full press release from Virginia Tech: Link

Brent Pry’s Announced Staff

J.C. Price: Associate Head Coach/Defensive Line Coach
Chris Marve: Defensive Coordinator
Shawn Quinn: Defensive Assistant (Likely DL or LB)
Derek Jones: Defensive Assistant (Likely DB)
Stu Holt: Special Teams Coordinator, Offensive Assistant