Touchdown Club of Richmond names VMI’s Wachenheim its Bobby Ross Coach of the Year Award winner

The Touchdown Club of Richmond recently presented the Bobby Ross Coach of the Year Award for the 2020-21 football season to Scott Wachenheim, head football coach at VMI.

The presentation was made on June 17 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as the Virginia Military Institute Alumni hosted its “Evening with VMI Athletics.” Making the presentation on behalf of the TD Club was the award’s namesake, famed coach Bobby Ross, a 1959 VMI graduate and current Henrico County residents.

While the 2020-21 football season was impacted by the pandemic, many Football Championship Subdivision teams played a spring season, and VMI made the most of it, posting a 6-2 overall record and winning the Southern Conference football championship for the first time since 1977.

The SoCon title also earned the Keydets their first-ever trip to the NCAA FCS playoffs, as well as their first-ever national FCS ranking. VMI was nationally ranked 12th in both of the final FCS football polls.

Wachenheim completed his sixth and most successful season at VMI and is now the longest-tenured NCAA Division I coach in the state.

The Bobby Ross Coach of the Year Award is one of several collegiate awards selected by the membership of the Touchdown Club of Richmond following the completion of each college football season. The organization is a 501(c)(3), sports-social organization, based in Richmond.

In naming the Coach of the Year Award for Richmond native Ross, the club is honoring a legendary career by a football coach who won a national championship with Georgia Tech in 1990 and, then, following the 1994 NFL season, guided the then San Diego Chargers to their only Super Bowl appearance.

Ross and his wife, Alice, live in Henrico.