Running back Roland Dempster has waited for his opportunity to shine at the collegiate level, and, in a huge turnaround season for the Stony Brook football team, he has taken his chances right up the middle.

Dempster latched onto football from a young age. When he was just four years old, his father — who was an amateur football player — began to show him the ropes, as the pair watched football and footage from Dempster’s dad’s own playing days together.

It was around that time that Dempster began his playing career, participating in pee-wee football in his Staten Island neighborhood. Like many others who are just starting out, he played a variety of positions but took a liking to the quarterback role.

Dempster continued playing throughout elementary school and eventually into middle school. However, he took more of a benchwarmer role during that time. It was not until his team’s primary running back got injured in the championship game that Dempster got his first chance to shine. In that game, he went on to score three touchdowns, leading his team to a championship victory.

“I didn’t know what I could do because I wasn’t playing,” Dempster said in an interview with The Statesman. “But after that game, I [knew] I could keep going now that I saw what I was capable of.”

From there, he molded his ground game by studying some of the National Football League’s best running backs, like Marshawn Lynch and Le’Veon Bell. Their aggressive and powerful style is still evident in how Dempster plays today.

In his first year at Tottenville High School, Dempster realized the importance of surrounding himself with the right people and, more importantly, staying out of trouble. His mother, Theodosia, pushed him to follow the right path by stressing the importance of integrity.

“‘Do the right thing, even when no one is watching,’” Dempster said. “She always preached that to me. It took a while to click, but it was always [in my head].”

Dempster’s focused mentality materialized in his first year of high school football, when he was called up to the varsity team before playing a single game. After practicing with the team, he had concerns that he would see limited time on the field. This led to a request to be sent back down to junior varsity, where he would get more reps during games.

In his second year, he took the offer to get called up once again. This time, head coach Brian Neville ensured Dempster that he was going to be the starting running back.

Neville did a lot for Dempster during the three years they were together. While doing the necessary coaching duties with practice on the field, he also pushed Dempster to maintain a good academic standing , something that was becoming a problem. 

“My full focus was football, but I still had to put in the work [in the classroom],” Dempster said. “I didn’t get a handout or anything. [Neville] always looked out for me, he guided me. He didn’t want me to lose, and I [will] always appreciate him for that.”

On the field, Dempster was a force on both sides of the ball. In his senior year, he won a two-way player of the year award, as although the offense ran through him as a running back, he also took on a defensive role as a linebacker.

It was not a position that he was interested in. However, his team was shallow in that spot, as linebacker A.J. Roberts — his current Seawolves teammate — was the sole contributor in that area of the field. Dempster stepped up to help the team win.

“Not to be selfish, but I didn’t like [playing defense],” Dempster said. “It was for the team. Whatever the team needed. That’s all I wanted to do.”

It was in his junior year — before he started his defensive stint — that he received his first offers to play college football for his true position out of the backfield from Wagner and Stony Brook. Wanting to leave Staten Island, and considering Wagner is located in the county, the choice for him became clear.

The end of each school season did not signal the end of Dempster’s training. In the offseason, he went to Bali Johnson — a prevalent speed and agility coach in the Tri-State area — to work on his game. It was there that Johnson helped him not just physically but mentally too.

“[Johnson] asked me if I wanted to be a sheep or a wolf,” Dempster said. “You can either wait to be hunted or be the one who is hunting. That stuck with me. I wasn’t going to be a sheep.”

He redshirted in his freshman year at Stony Brook, a season that was heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in his second year, he started to get more action. In nine games, Dempster rushed for over 300 yards, setting the stage for further improvement in the 2022 season.

However, those aspirations came to a screeching halt before the season even began. During a training-camp scrimmage in the summer of 2022, he was dragged down by a defender and tore a ligament in his toe, which required surgery.

Dempster did not take the injury well; for the first time in his life, he could not play football. The excitement of college football dwindled, causing him to miss team meetings and diminishing his mental fortitude. He missed classes and separated himself from others.

“I was depressed,” Dempster said. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, see anyone, I didn’t want to go to the games. I just wanted to stay in [my] house.”

His change in attitude made the coaching staff put him under a microscope. Dempster had more pressure to not only recover but also to come back stronger than ever. So, once he got his cast off, he got back to work.

Dempster credits Stony Brook football’s then-head athletic trainer Craig Burke and assistant athletic trainer Timothy Koehler for helping him recover physically every week. Burke and Koehler dealt with Dempster’s unmotivated attitude and did what they could to get him back to where he was before the injury. However, all of the physical therapy in the world could not make him play that season, and that plagued his mind. 

“I probably could have been in [the training room] more,” Dempster said. “But [it felt] like no matter how many times I went back in there, I wasn’t going to get back on the field [that season].”

Dempster described his road back to the field as “traumatizing,” but he persevered because of his love for the game. His work in the training room allowed him to recover his toe, but the only way for his mind to recover was to get back on the field.

He got back to the field at the start of the 2023 season, rushing for 50 yards and a touchdown in a season-opening defeat against Delaware.

“It felt so good to run without [pain],” Dempster said. “[Getting back on the field] made me understand. If you just keep going and have faith, things can work out.”

A couple of weeks later, another problem plagued Dempster: losing. In Dempster’s early football days, his team always won or made the championship game. In high school, it was the same. He got comfortable winning. Perhaps that is what made the 2023 season so difficult. Although he was healthy, he was constantly losing. 

The losses piled up quickly for the Seawolves and the scores were not particularly close. It did not take long to realize the team had a chance of going winless on the season and that is exactly what happened, as Stony Brook dropped all 10 of its games.

“It was honestly just disappointing and disgraceful,” Dempster said. “That’s just not where I come from. I didn’t go out, I didn’t party, because like, what are we celebrating for?”

Dempster did not know it at the time, but a new era was on the horizon. Just days after the final game of the season, the Seawolves parted ways with head coach Chuck Priore, and not long after that, they brought in current head coach Billy Cosh. Although he was skeptical at first, Cosh quickly won Dempster over with his coaching style, and Dempster earned Cosh’s trust with his skills.

Turns out, Dempster and Cosh have won just about every Stony Brook football fan over as well. Under the new coaching regime, Stony Brook has already won six more games than it had all of last season, and it still has four contests left to go. Dempster is shattering his previous career highs and is the focal point of the Seawolves offense.

He has already won multiple Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) Player of the Week awards, as well as a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) National Offensive Player of the Week award. Through eight games, he leads the CAA in both rushing yards (947) and rushing attempts (176), while his 14 rushing touchdowns rank second in the conference and are also tied for the third most in the FCS. Additionally, Dempster has been an all-purpose back as well, racking up a career-high 18 catches and 196 receiving yards.

“The coaches have put me in the best position I’ve ever been in,” Dempster said. “They’re putting me in spots where I can win. In the past, I wasn’t put in those positions. I’m happy I [am getting the chance] to show off my talent.”

Dempster is above and beyond a point that he once thought he may never get back to. His game still resembles Lynch and Bell, and his skills are only getting better by the week.

“I never take it for granted,” Dempster said. “I’ve learned that anything can end in the snap of a finger. [I stay] humble, keep my head down, and stay on the right track.”