Some coaches teach the recruiting game from a textbook. Cory Colder lived every hard chapter of it — and that’s exactly why his message lands. When the 2026 College Bus + Camps TOUR rolls into Furman University, the athletes will be welcomed by a coach who once sat in their exact seat: young, hungry, and chasing a dream on a multi-stop college bus tour.
Fifteen years ago, Colder was the kid on the bus. Now he’s the one waiting at the door.
A Young Buck on the Same Kind of Road
Long before he was coaching All-Conference running backs, Cory Colder was a high school prospect grinding through the same model this program is built on. Back in 2011, he was part of the prestigious George Whitfield Rock College TOUR — the same brand of in-person, get-in-front-of-the-coaches journey that the College Bus + Camps TOUR carries forward today.
That summer, Colder camped and visited a who’s-who of college football: USF, Miami, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Purdue, Michigan, Notre Dame, Illinois, and Northwestern. He was a young buck on that trip — soaking it all in, learning what it really takes to compete in front of a college staff. The lessons from those camps would shape the rest of his career.
The Hard Road to Division I
Colder’s story is one every undersized, overlooked athlete needs to hear.
At Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Virginia, he was a flat-out producer — racking up 2,815 rushing yards and 42 touchdowns in two years as the starting tailback and leading the Falcons to three straight Virginia state championships. He earned all-state, all-district, and all-region honors. By any measure, the film spoke for itself.
And yet, coming out of high school, Colder held just one scholarship offer. At 5-foot-8, he was labeled too small to hold up against the next level — a verdict that ignored the downhill, punishing way he ran the football.
So he did what champions do: he kept working. Colder took the prep school route, heading north to East Coast Prep in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to put more on tape and prove the doubters wrong. It worked. He bolstered his stock, caught the eye of college coaches, and earned his shot at East Tennessee State University — joining the very first recruiting class of a revived football program that had been dormant for over a decade.
That’s the kind of belief-and-grind story these TOUR athletes need to see up close.
Building a Career as a Buccaneer
At ETSU, Colder became exactly the kind of leader you’d hope a former overlooked recruit would become. A lifelong running back, he finished second on the team in rushing in 2015 and built a reputation as a tone-setter on and off the field — serving on the program’s leadership council, making the honor roll, and capping it all with a 2018 Southern Conference championship that punched the Bucs’ ticket to the FCS playoffs.
He graduated in May 2018 with a degree in sports management — and immediately turned his attention to coaching the next generation.
The Rise of a Running Backs Coach
Colder’s coaching résumé reads like a man on a steady climb.
He started at Valparaiso, where he coached All-PFL running back Robert Washington, the league’s top rusher. From there he moved to Davidson, where he helped fuel two FCS playoff berths and a 2021 Pioneer Football League regular-season championship. Davidson’s 2022 rushing attack was nothing short of dominant — averaging an FCS-leading 331.5 yards per game — led by Colder’s top product, two-time All-PFL back Coy Williams (801 yards, 10 TDs), with teammate Dylan Sparks earning All-PFL honors the year before.
In January 2023, Colder returned to the Southern Conference, joining Furman University. The impact was immediate. In his first season, his running back corps was a key engine of the Paladins’ 10-3 campaign, a SoCon championship, and an FCS quarterfinal playoff run. That unit featured All-SoCon performer Dominic Roberto, who closed out a standout career with 767 yards and 11 touchdowns. In 2024, Colder developed SoCon All-Freshman honoree Gavin Hall.
Now in his fourth year at Furman — and elevated to Running Backs Coach / Offensive Recruiting Coordinator — Colder has become one of the SoCon’s most respected developers of talent. Off the field, he’s married to Emily Baumgartner, formerly of Fishers, Indiana.
Full Circle on June 3rd
On Wednesday, June 3rd, the 2026 College Bus + Camps TOUR athletes will visit Furman University — and Coach Cory Colder will be there to welcome them home.
It’s a fitting full-circle moment. The TOUR is led by Coach Shane Dillon, himself a former alumnus of this very type of journey, and now Colder joins that lineage of coaches giving back. He’ll speak directly to the athletes about his own experience riding the bus and chasing the dream when he was a young buck just like them. The group will meet Furman’s coaching staff and take part in a special presentation built just for them.
For these athletes, it’s a chance to hear from someone who was overlooked, undersized, and underestimated — and who turned grit, belief, and a college bus tour into a thriving Division I coaching career.
The road they’re on right now? Cory Colder has already traveled it. And on June 3rd, he’ll show them exactly where it can lead.