Queen City Senior Bowl football all-star game names head coaches
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- Sam Greiner and Kennedy Tinsley named 2025 Queen City Senior Bowl coaches
- The all-star game honors seniors from seven counties; set for Dec. 20 in Charlotte
- Greiner led West Charlotte to 2024 state title; Tinsley posted a 10-3 record at Mallard
West Charlotte High head coach Sam Greiner and Mallard Creek’s Kennedy Tinsley — whose teams play in The Observer’s game of the week Friday night — have been named head coaches for the 2025 Queen City Senior Bowl all-star game.
The annual game will be held Dec. 20 at 1 p.m. in Charlotte. The location has not been announced.
The Senior Bowl annually honors some of the top high school football seniors in the greater Charlotte region.
Players from the following counties are eligible: Mecklenburg, Cabarrus, Cleveland, Gaston, Iredell, Rowan and Union.
Players (and coaches) can nominate themselves for the game. The deadline to register is Oct. 4.
Greiner was named The Charlotte Observer high school football coach of the year last December after leading West Charlotte to its first state championship since 1995.
Last spring, Greiner was named The Observer’s overall coach of the 2024-25 school, the highest award it hands out to a boys’ coach annually.
Before Greiner got to West Charlotte in 2021, the Lions were 31-77 over 10 season, churning through multiple coaches.
West Charlotte was 0-11 in Greiner’s first season, but the Lions were 7-5 in 2022, then 9-4 in 2023, before last year’s 13-2 team delivered the 3A state championship. Greiner also helped Harding High win its first state championship in more than 50 years in 2017.
“I knew we could change things,” Greiner said of changing the program at his new school. “The prestige of West Charlotte is different. We worked, and things changed.”
Tinsley came to Mallard Creek in 2020, after three years at Southeast Guilford, where his teams went 32-9.
At Mallard Creek, his teams have had five straight winning seasons, including a 10-3 record in 2024.
After playing four years at North Carolina, from 2006-09, Tinsley signed with the Los Angeles Rams in 2010 and was cut before preseason games began. In 2011, TInsley was drafted by the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League.
While training in Chapel Hill with then Dallas Cowboys’ linebacker Bruce Carter in the summer of the 2011, Tinsley tore multiple knee ligaments and needed micro fracture surgery.
While going through rehab, Tinsley landed a job at Eastern Guilford, in Gibsonville, near Greensboro. As a high school athlete, Tinsley led Greensboro Page to the state championship game, during a season where he rushed for 1,148 yards and scored 10 touchdowns.
It didn’t take long for Tinsley, then 23, to realize he’d found his calling in high school coaching.
“I remember doing the interview with the durn cast on,” he said. “I was going to practice on crutches. But I enjoyed coaching and teaching so much, and my family was happy. I was kind of like, ‘Man, I’m good,’ and I said, ‘I’m going to work on this and move forward.’”
This story was originally published September 26, 2025 at 1:20 PM.
