Riser

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Wayne Riser is best known for his ambitious ways, both in coaching and promoting everything concerning baseball.

He was a high school player at Hedgesville, before traveling to play collegiately at Henderson State University in Arkansas. Returning to the Eastern Panhandle to play at Shepherd University, he graduated there in 1989, before becoming a youthful assistant baseball coach for the Rams.

It wasn’t too long before he was appointed Shepherd’s head baseball coach and began putting his aggressive stamp on the program.

Riser completely overhauled his home grounds at Fairfax Field, successfully getting the football team to find other practice grounds than in his outfield.

Shepherd’s schedule quickly showed more games against non-conference opponents, and he promoted his program all around the Eastern Panhandle, gaining sponsors and contributions from alumni and friends alike.

Riser’s Rams quickly joined Cal Bailey’s West Virginia State teams, and then Concord and Charleston, as the teams-to-beat in the WVIAC.

Success came to the ever-present Rams. Riser became the winningest coach in any sport at Shepherd. His successful ways earned him conference Coach of the Year honors in 1994, 1997 and 2002. He was voted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame while still coaching.

In 2013, when he moved on to the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., he had 410 career wins at Shepherd. Riser was at Mary Washington for seven seasons, registering an overall record of 142 wins and 117 losses.

In recent years, he has taken an assistant coach’s position at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, before returning to Berkeley County’s high schools.

He has never held an administrative position in sports at any high school. Until now.

The Berkeley County School Board recently named former baseball coach Wayne Riser as the new athletic director at Spring Mills High School, when Mark Salfia moved from the athletic director’s seat to the school’s principal’s seat.

Now 56 years old, Riser inherits a sports department at Spring Mills, which was first seen in 2013, when the school opened in northern Berkeley County.

Dan Comer was Spring Mills’ first athletic director, before going to the board office in 2021, and Salfia became the athletic director for one year.

Riser is no stranger to his never-seen-before work responsibilities. He’s likely to color the everyday life and dictate the mood in the athletic department at Spring Mills, the same way he did at Shepherd and Mary Washington.