0:00:12 - (Toby Brooks): It's a great day to get better. Welcome to another episode of Becoming Undone, the podcast for those who dare bravely risk mightily and grow relentlessly. I'm Toby Brooks. I'm your host, your tour guide as we invite new guests each week to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. What would you do if you were an aeronautical engineer? A literal rocket scientist, but you just couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was more to life than lending your considerable brain power to the creation of weapons of mass destruction?

0:00:44 - (Toby Brooks): If you're Colorado native Bill Ryden, you'd set your first professional career aside and get back in the gym. Growing up in the Rockies as a self professed adrenaline junkie, Bill spent his youth racing dirt bikes. But eventually he found his way into a gym where he quickly fell in love with the sport, especially the high bar. After a highly successful collegiate and brief exhibition career as a competitive gymnast, Bill thought he'd hung up his grips for good and turned to a life of a working stiff at Lockheed Martin. But the lure of the gym kept calling him back, and a chance to jump back into the sport as a coach was just too much to resist. A job offer at the University of Arizona in 1990 as an assistant coach changed his life forever. Leaving the safety and security of the engineering world for the uncertainty and the grind of college coaching was hard enough, but he follow his heart Mentoring, coaching and pushing young gymnasts to success in the gym and in life consumed the next two and a half decades, eventually being named head coach of a PAC 10 program in 1998, where he stayed until he retired in 2015.

0:01:43 - (Toby Brooks): It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows from there, it was road trips and recruiting trails, exhilarating wins and gut wrenching losses and relationships, always relationships, that made the journey simultaneously so very hard yet so very rewarding. And like every wild motorcycle ride at mach speed with his hair blowing in the wind that he'd taken years before.

0:02:04 - (Toby Brooks): As exciting as it was, eventually it had to end.

0:02:07 - (Toby Brooks): Hear Bill tell his story of dirt bikes and trampolines, Cold war science and chalk grips, and just how happy he is to have coached in an era before transfer portals and nil agreements. In this episode, seven Fearless really excited.

0:02:21 - (Toby Brooks): Today to welcome my first coach. My first job as an athletic trainer out of undergraduate was with the University of Arizona gymnastics team and fortune brought us together. But I've been thankful for that two years of my life for the rest of my career because my head coach, Bill Ryden was an absolute Rock star of a coach. He was a molder of people. And honestly, his story was something that I'd heard bits and pieces of along the way.

0:02:51 - (Toby Brooks): But I'm really excited today to get a chance to hear Bill's story as an athlete, as a coach, and as someone who has exited college athletics and lived to tell. So, Bill, welcome to the show today.

0:03:05 - (Bill Ryden): Well, thanks for having me, Toby. It's great to see you and hear from you.

0:03:09 - (Toby Brooks): Well, with all of these, I always just have our guests start at the beginning, wherever that was for you, I.

0:03:15 - (Bill Ryden): Guess, the tale that brings us together. It's kind of weird. I mean, I've always been kind of a thrill seeker into high adrenaline type sports. And I grew up riding and racing motorcycles. And my sister was a gymnast, a very good gymnast. So grew up with a trampoline in my backyard. And as I'm racing motorcycles, I'm bouncing on a tramp and watching my sister compete in whatever. And all of a sudden I turn 16.

0:03:43 - (Bill Ryden): I'm good enough racing that it's becoming serious, but yet I just there for fun. And the guys I'm racing against are there for a little bit more serious attitude. And fear of getting run over constantly. The stress of that sort of drove me away from rac. If I knew then what I know now about competing, what gymnastics taught me, yeah, it'd be a whole different story. But back then, I knew nothing of it. I was just out there riding.

0:04:09 - (Toby Brooks): You know, there's an irony in the fact that you chose to leave a sport for the safety of gymnastics, isn't there?

0:04:16 - (Bill Ryden): No. Well, you know what, it's. It's funny because that's exactly what went through my mind. I'm like, okay. You know, I'm like, okay, I need something new to do. What's a new sport that I can die doing? Hey, I can do men's gymnastics, which I'm into that thrill thing or whatever. And, you know, and it's just. Long story short, I got into it a little late, later than what gymnasts usually typically get into.

0:04:41 - (Bill Ryden): Didn't really feel like I had much of a chance. There's one definite item you need to be in men's gymnastics, and that's just willingness to not be afraid and willingness to get hurt. And I had that. And that sort of helped propel my gymnastics career. Left racing, went on to gymnastics, went on to compete high school, then competed at asu, Arizona State. Loved my time there. Learned so much from my coach.

0:05:12 - (Bill Ryden): And I constantly believe that you end up coaching like you were Coached.

0:05:17 - (Toby Brooks): Bill's right. The science actually supports this concept. Whether we're talking about coaching, teaching or parenting, we all undergo what researcher Dan Lordy referred, referred to as the apprenticeship of observation. In this model, we either have a good example to aspire to or a bad example to overcome. Either way, we know that it's much more likely that we coach, teach and parent the way we were coached, taught or parented.

0:05:40 - (Bill Ryden): And if I step back a few years before that, while I was still in high school, grew up, both my parents were educators. My strengths in school were always science and math and I'm very right brain, I'm very type A. And as soon as I got my driver's license, my mom's like, guess what your job is, you get to drive your sister to gymnastics practice. I was like, oh joy. So I sit there watching and it became obvious as I was watching the athletes, watching their movements, their biomechanics and going, oh, well, that's why that isn't working. And that's why that isn't working. And that's why that isn't working.

0:06:15 - (Bill Ryden): And soon my sister's coach came to me and said, hey, you want to try coaching? And so I sort of got sucked in as I was actually progressing myself, but then started coaching and ended up coaching at a very high level very young. My very first top level team I coached at 18. And there's so much connection, my whole story with the University of Arizona and that whole situation, because a member of that team was a 10 year old state champion who went on to become a University of Arizona hall of Fame member and a prime reason and the reason why I ended up at the University of Arizona.

0:06:58 - (Bill Ryden): So now we'll jump forward. Her name's Diane Bell, Diane Monte back then. So I get out of college, at the end of college, I'm done. I'm like, okay, you know, it's time for me. I've gotten an engineering degree, I'm searching for jobs, whatever to take to pass the time and make some money. As I was finishing up my studies, the current head coach at asu, John Spini, had left a club, was the head coach of a Phoenix club that he left to take the ASU job. And I kid you not, literally, as I'm getting off the plane for my final NCAA nationals, he comes up to me and says, now that you're done, will you take over this team that I left to become the Asuka, which was Arizona Twisters? And I said, sure. You know, I had coached that level and whatever. So I Ended up being their team coach and was coaching and whatever. And the problem for coaching for me was the girls always became my.

0:07:55 - (Bill Ryden): It became a thing where it became very hard to leave. But yet, when I finally got an engineering offer, the owner of the club, Ro Kreitzer, said, you need, you've been studying, you need to take this, whatever. So leaving the girls was hard. And at that point I decided, okay, I'm done with coaching.

0:08:12 - (Toby Brooks): Isn't it funny how sometimes we can be so positive that one season of our life is ending, yet when we don't have the benefit of foresight, we have no idea of recognizing whether that's truly the case or not? For Bill, it may have seemed like the end, but such couldn't have been further from the truth.

0:08:26 - (Bill Ryden): I'm like, okay, I'm an engineer. Lot better money than coaching, right? So I moved back to Colorado and that was where the job was. I didn't. I mean, I love Colorado, but I didn't move back just because it was state. It was the best job.

0:08:43 - (Toby Brooks): For so many of us, the end of a sports career can feel like the end of our lives. It's central to our identity. For Bill, he had not only ended his competitive career as an athlete, he'd also ended as a coach and now transitioned full time into being an engineer.

0:08:59 - (Toby Brooks): You were late to the game, especially as gymnasts go.

0:09:02 - (Bill Ryden): Yeah.

0:09:03 - (Toby Brooks): And I guess your. Your collegiate career was highly successful. You'd shared with me you had opportunities to, to do things as a collegiate athlete and maybe even professionally, and then suddenly that career's over.

0:09:17 - (Bill Ryden): Right.

0:09:18 - (Toby Brooks): Did you just transition over into coaching without giving your competitive season or that closure of that chapter of your life much thought, or was that a conscious choice? Talk me through the emotions with that.

0:09:31 - (Bill Ryden): Well, certainly an emptiness hit me immediately because I can still remember my final national, my NCAA with official NCAA ties was at Penn State University. I can still remember it vividly. Staying. Our team stayed in State College, in, you know, the one that's right on the campus and all that stuff. But so I had a harder time. I had been successful. I had that last year. I was ranked second in the nation on horizontal bar.

0:09:59 - (Bill Ryden): I had started doing bigger tricks and inventing skills and whatever that. And I just love that adrenaline rush in doing. And it was hard to lead. And so immediately after that ncaa, I still wanted to compete one more time. And I went out and competed on my own at the Pasadena National Open Invitational. Gymnastics was different back then. Men's gymnastics was much bigger, and there were opens and many universities had programs and it was just a much bigger thing than it is nowadays. And so drove out to California.

0:10:34 - (Bill Ryden): One of my old roommates who was working in California became my coach. And I ended up and went out and did that invitational and won it. And at that point I said, okay, my competitive is over. I can. I finished on a win, so to speak. But even after I moved back to Colorado, I would go in gyms and play because there's nothing like flying through the air. It's a great feeling. And for me, horizontal bar and the stuff that I could, you know, I didn't want to do the painful stuff, like the stuff that required severe flexibility, like the shoulders for the alternate grip, Giants and all that other stuff. But release moves and dismounts, oh, yeah, I'll just keep flying. And played around and did clinics and started coaching a little bit at different gyms. And in fact, one of. One of my favorite memories of my whole life was one of my friends growing up.

0:11:28 - (Bill Ryden): He was a coach, a theodigenous who was a famous high bar man in the state of Colorado and in the nation ran a club in Greeley, Colorado. He invited me up to be in the Greeley Fourth of July parade. He was a crazy man like me. And so what he did is he strapped a high bar to the back of a flatbed semi. And so we're rolling down the street, Main Street, Greeley, Colorado, and we're doing a show. We're doing Giants and whatever.

0:11:54 - (Bill Ryden): And I had done a ton of shows because in those days NCAA allowed us to go do shows to earn money for our program. So my old coach, Don Robinson, I've been performing shows, double high bar routines, whatever, my whole college career. We would pack up equipment and go to Sun City and earn money from the program. But one of the interesting things of this Greeley parade is a high bar is 8 1/2ft tall and it's strapped on the back of a flatbed semi. So as I'm up there sitting on the bar waiting to cast to start a giant swing, which you know what is, but you know you have to look back over your shoulder to see the streetlight coming and sort of duck your head to let the street light go.

0:12:35 - (Bill Ryden): And then, then you'd cast and go and, and get done and get off the bar before the next streetlight came at the next intersection.

0:12:42 - (Toby Brooks): The visual of this story is absolutely tremendous. You've got a high bar which is eight and a half feet off of the surface of a tractor trailer, which is probably three or four feet off of the street and you've got these muscled up gymnasts swinging from it, dodging street lights as they go. Absolutely fantastic.

0:12:57 - (Bill Ryden): Back then I did a skill, a double twisting, double back, which is a common skill now, but back then I was like one of the very few people in the country doing it off horizontal bar. And one of my favorite things is I did that skill rolling down Main street in Greeley on the back of a rolling semi surrounded by guys around the landing mat. So something went wrong. I didn't go flying off into the asphalt.

0:13:22 - (Toby Brooks): Right.

0:13:23 - (Bill Ryden): The adrenaline didn't leave me from competing. You know, I sort of finished up the competing part with that Pasadena thing. I never got over the, the actual enjoyment of the sport itself and something which you may remember, I mean, I always wanted my athletes, the people on the girls on the team to never forget just the joy of being a gymnast. You know, it's, everybody loves to win. And before you ever got into the point of to 10, 0 and you know, I scored a 9, 7 last week, I want to score 98 this week, all that stuff. The reason we all started this sport is because you love to fly through the air, you love to flip. And I never wanted them to forget it. And I, even to this day, at my age, I toy with the idea of, you know, what I could. I still want to get up there and swing on a high bar and whatever. And of course, I've abused my body so much between the motorcycling and the gymnastics. I've had a number of surgeries, a number of repair jobs and hurts to do stuff like that. But even now, sitting here, I can envision, you know what, I can go get a pair of grips and see if I can do a giant. Now, of course, my brain still thinks I'm 18 years old.

0:14:35 - (Bill Ryden): My body knows that I'm not right.

0:14:38 - (Toby Brooks): This is something Kara Fry referred to in my interview with her and something I've heard other athletes share over the years was that once their careers were over, Bill would spend the next week or two in the gym, allowing them to do skills that they hadn't done or likely wouldn't do again, just as a farewell song, almost like a love note to the sport, because he understood that eventually he had to give it up and he missed that opportunity. So for them, it was their chance to end on their own terms.

0:15:04 - (Toby Brooks): I think it's very common for athletes to transition to coaching or athletic support services, in my case, to kind of fill that void that athletics had in our lives. But as you said, you had that conversation with the founder of your club and it was time for you to move on and to leverage that degree that you'd work so hard on. So you make that transition and you go from, I like to say, coaching biological ballistic missiles. Now you're building and refining intercontinental ballistic missiles. So talk to me about your time as a, as a literal rocket scientist.

0:15:38 - (Bill Ryden): Well, it was very interesting. I, I really love the science of it and flight. And it's very humbling to be working on a nuclear missile, seeing test flights and analyzing data and having a secret clearance because it's a government contract. And it was interesting because during that time, word got out that I was back in Colorado and all the clubs that I had coached against and coached with before I even went to ASU started calling me and saying, would you come and look at my kid? Or whatever?

0:16:13 - (Bill Ryden): And I would be like, I'd go in and say, okay, well, if this were my kid, I might try this skill or that skill, blah, blah, blah. Well, as it always does, coaching sucks you back in. And all of a sudden, three or four years into my engineering career, I'm also coaching, so work all day. And then back then when athletes actually still attended public school, so every high level gymnast in the country trained at night because they had to go to school during the day like a normal kid, you know, and that isn't quite the situation anymore, is it?

0:16:44 - (Bill Ryden): So as that happened, now I'm coaching and working as an engineer, the bug gets back into you. You're still about competing or whatever. And honestly, I started getting bored with engineering, thinking to myself, now I made good money, but is this all there is? And not to sound really cornball, and this is going to sound cornball, but even to the point where I think, is this what I want? On my gravestone or headstone, he made nuclear missile. I would think, is there more than that? Can I do more than that?

0:17:16 - (Toby Brooks): Such a sobering thought that your work, grounded in science and math, intended for good, is actually being used to build weapons of mass destruction for Bill, Even though the salary was good and the work was somewhat rewarding, couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was more that he was supposed to be doing. He was still undone.

0:17:33 - (Bill Ryden): I mentioned a while ago, Diane Monte. During this time I coached Diane and helped her do her recruiting video and ended up helping her. And she obtained a full scholarship to the University of Arizona and so was following her and she became the star at the U of 18. While I'm doing all this, working 16 hours a day. At one point, University of Arizona was competing against University of Denver. So I okay, I'm going to go watch the meet and root on Diane and whatever. And after that meet, Jim Galt, the head coach at University of Arizona, invited me out to dinner and basically said to me, you know, I'm going to need a new assistant coach next year. What do you think? And I thought to myself, you got to be kidding. You want me to take a 60% pay cut to move?

0:18:22 - (Bill Ryden): And honestly, when I was at asu, living in Phoenix, all I ever thought, tucson's this small little town down south. What's up with that? You know what I mean? I never, I'd only been to Tucson like two or three times during my entire college career, had no idea, never thought about it. But then, as I find out later, Diane was the one who put the bug in Jim Golf's ear. In Diane's mind, I was always meant to be coaching. I didn't know that I agreed with her at that point, but that's what she said, she and I. And literally to this day, Diane is family to me. Absolutely.

0:19:00 - (Bill Ryden): And I've known her since she was a young, young thing, and I was not much older than her. I basically learned upper level coaching, coaching her. I mean, I learned a spot with this little 10 year old that could do any skill, entrusted her life to me, and I was like, okay, here we go, we're going to try this. And she would say, okay. So between Jim Galt and Diane Monti sort of pestering me, as well as the fact that I was growing uneasy with my time as an engineer.

0:19:29 - (Bill Ryden): Not that I was dissatisfied. It was a great company and working on nuclear missiles is way cool. But it was kind of like I wanted to see, is there more out there?

0:19:39 - (Toby Brooks): There's a facet to Bill's story that I just can't shake. I've been a professor for 20 years now, and increasingly I've been looking for opportunities to grow as an administrator, to increase opportunities for me at my current job or even go elsewhere. And I've sought those out. What I hear in Bill is opportunities always came to him. He focused on being the best coach he could be, and those opportunities found him out. So I'm learning from Bill. Patience is an absolute key in a journey towards success.

0:20:07 - (Bill Ryden): So I decided to, in the summer of 1990, to leave engineering and move to Tucson, Arizona and become the assistant coach. And at that point I thought, two years max, I'll do this to scratch this Itch, get it out of my system and then I'll go back to engineering and yeah, the rest is history.

0:20:26 - (Toby Brooks): So it's fascinating because you're in one world, move to another and now you're back.

0:20:31 - (Bill Ryden): Yeah.

0:20:32 - (Toby Brooks): What did success look like to you in 1990?

0:20:35 - (Bill Ryden): You know, I don't know that I had ever quantified it like that. I mean, I knew. I mean, at that point, I had coached Diane, who was a USA national team member. I had coach Carol Ulrich, who's also a USA national team member, who went on to a full ride at UCLA. That was in 88, while I was still doing club and was on the USA national coaching staff. Now I believe in the sport of gymnastics and what it is.

0:21:03 - (Bill Ryden): And I guess at that point, I don't know, success, maybe. Could I just make a career of coaching and make it be happy or whatever? I'm not sure. Right. I did it because I needed to see what it was like. I loved my time being a collegiate athlete. And of course, ASU had offered me a job being their assistant the year before for John Spiny. And I said no, because I knew that John and I probably would have been like oil and water doing that. I had known him so long and I thought, Jim Gal is sort of a legend of women's gymnastics anyway and came exactly from the same boat as I did. He was a former club elite coach. He understood teaching gymnastics. His philosophy was that the college program was still going to be a learning program.

0:21:51 - (Bill Ryden): As you know, in collegiate gymnastics, if you're good enough, you can just come in and coast, keep your same skills. If you have a tennis start value, go out there and. But that didn't interest me. If I wasn't with a program that believed the gymnast should still progress and learn skills, even though it didn't make logical sense for the win loss record. I wasn't interested. I wasn't interested in just babysitting athletes for the highest 10. Zero. I wanted to. And I was very proud that Jim Galt. And then I continued that tradition when I took over the program of always being a teaching program. And you mentioned Marion and Kara, the fact that Kara Fry came as a National team member and ended up doing even better gymnastics in college, that's something I'm very proud of. Whether, regardless of her score, if you look at the beam routine, and I was talking with Carol last year about this, her beam routine, compared to what's being done even nowadays, it's embarrassing what beam workers do nowadays. I can go down the street and find a 12 year old that can do a beam routine as good as any collegiate beam worker right now because the rules have dumbed it down so much. But we didn't do that and Kara didn't do that. And Kara was an amazing beam worker.

0:23:08 - (Toby Brooks): You have to love the fact that even though it was okay, acceptable, even encouraged for collegiate gymnasts not to push the envelope, Bill wasn't satisfied with that. He wanted them to get better and he did the things necessary to encourage that. And you saw the results of that in athletes like Kara Frei Meyer and Mary Reese, who he's talking about here, as well as hundreds of other athletes that he coached over the years.

0:23:28 - (Bill Ryden): Mary first met her at a camp, gosh, up in Wisconsin, umpteen million years ago. And to see her grow and become who she's become. Yeah. My idea of the program, I think, for getting back to your question, success from the program was that it was a family first and that people relish the fact that they were given this opportunity to be a gymnast and flip through the air and, and appreciated it. And it wasn't just, I'm here doing my times and just be thankful. Because I was so thankful for what college gymnastics had given me, I guess I wanted to sort of, in a way, recreate the experience.

0:24:05 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah.

0:24:06 - (Bill Ryden): As it turned out, as generations change or whatever, that becomes a totally different animal because the athletes are different, they're raised different, their parents are different, their values are different. And so that becomes a whole different topic.

0:24:20 - (Toby Brooks): So 90 comes and you transition into the college, the power five. I mean, in gymnastics it's a different animal because there are relatively fewer programs, but it's elite high level collegiate gymnastics. Eight years into that, Coach Galt says he's retiring. How was that discussed with you, that transition from assistant to head? Did you consider other options or did you just go full head of steam into the opportunity to be a Division 1 head coach?

0:24:48 - (Bill Ryden): Yes, I explored many other options. That eight years with me personally was a growing time for me in so many ways. My old company, Martin Marietta, which is now Lockheed Martin, had kept in touch, had offered me my job back numerous times to return to engineering, which many times I considered because it's sometimes the thought the college coaching, I'm such a tunnel vision coach and there's a lot I have learned over my time as a coach to the point of where I even tell my former athletes don't become me. And they sort of chuckle because they can see what I'm talking about. But University of Michigan tried to hire me Away from Arizona.

0:25:32 - (Bill Ryden): University of California offered me their head coaching job a couple years prior. I turned it down. And I knew that probably. I don't know if it's a fault or whatever, but one of the traits that I believe in most and admire in people more than God, more than anything, is loyalty. And I was loyal to this program, and I was loyal to Jim Golf. And when Cal offered me the job, I talked to him and I Talked to Rocky LaRose, the SWA at Arizona, who I think is one of the best humans ever.

0:26:09 - (Toby Brooks): For those of you not in the athletic space, an SWA is a senior women's administrator. And Rocky LaRose was certainly one of the best. Would love to have Rocky on the show. If anyone knows, put her in touch with me, please. Thanks.

0:26:21 - (Bill Ryden): I couldn't have dreamed of working for a better person between her and Jim. Live and good. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I was lucky.

0:26:28 - (Toby Brooks): I was really lucky.

0:26:29 - (Bill Ryden): But when they offered me the job before I decided, Jim came to me and said, well, just so you know, I'm going to step down after next year. Jim had fought with health issues during my time when I originally came on board to be the assistant at U of A and to help coach Carrie Strugg. So I would coach the college team from 2 to 6. I would coach Carrie from 6 to 10 every day. Yeah. So I was still doing the working a lot or whatever.

0:26:58 - (Toby Brooks): That's Olympic sweetheart Carrie Strode before her gutsy performance in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Bill was her coach.

0:27:05 - (Bill Ryden): He had never said to me, you're going to take over the team, or whatever. But when he originally talked to me back in 89 or whatever, he said, you know, I'm not going to be there that much longer. Who knows what's going to happen? And then I had Diane chirping in my ear, you know, you need to do this. This is what you were meant to do. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

0:27:24 - (Toby Brooks): That's the kind of friend Diane Monte was for you, Bill. I could use a Diane Monty in my life.

0:27:30 - (Bill Ryden): And then I'm coaching Kerry. I just got done coaching Carol Ulrich on the national team. Here was Carrie Strugg, arguably one of the top junior gymnasts in the entire world at that moment. I had thought about it. And then when I, during my time as the assistant, Carrie went through her issues. We decided to recommend her going to Bella. She goes to the 92 Olympics. She wasn't happy there. They come back, they talk to me about taking over as Kerry's coach.

0:27:58 - (Bill Ryden): I declined that Offer. She goes back to Bella. Meanwhile, at the U of we were. We were struggling at the U of A. We had had some good teams. And then all of a sudden in 96, we had the top recruiting class in the country. And that sort of, that sparked my fire because all of a sudden we were really, really, really good, really fast. So that was fun. And then in 97, I get the Cal offer. So in 97, Jim says to me, you know, I'm, look, I'm going to be leaving.

0:28:30 - (Bill Ryden): And I decided, okay, I'm going to finish this out. And I thoroughly thought about, okay, this was going to be the end of my coaching career, which I was fine with because I was kind of like, okay, this will put a bow on it. This will put a wrap on it. I had no guarantees. And Rocky told me this. There was no guarantee I was going to be the coach of the program. And in fact, I had started my MBA studies at the U of A just in preparation because I was going to put an MBA on top of my engineering degree, thinking, okay, I'm going to have to go find out a way to pay the rent here pretty soon.

0:29:06 - (Bill Ryden): So all of 98, his final season, I had no idea what was going to happen. And honestly, I had pretty much. I wouldn't call it pessimism, but maybe I have sort of a built in cynicism about not overlooking or not assuming the things are going to always prepare for the worst. You know what I mean? Not just anticipate. So I never thought about it as.

0:29:30 - (Toby Brooks): Every good rocket scientist does.

0:29:32 - (Bill Ryden): Yeah, well, there you go. Yeah, you don't want things going down over San Francisco or whatever. Right. So I had planned for nothing to happen. But as the season went on, then talk started and of course they interviewed me. And a lot of things happened behind the scenes that I was unaware of that happened. Rocky interviewed the team, asked them their opinions of blah, blah, blah. And they were very strong.

0:29:56 - (Bill Ryden): What I hear from them, they were very strong on me remaining. And then Rocky basically said, we just want you to take over the team. And of course they. We had to get special permission from the board of regents to not open up the position and sort of promote me. And it was a whole thing, right? But yeah, at that point I took over. And being the head coach at that point didn't even phase me other than I wanted to live up to what Jim had.

0:30:23 - (Bill Ryden): Had started originally and what I had helped him continue because I really believed in the full product, the family of being a gym cat, so to speak. And I always wanted to be a bright spot to the athletic department, something that the department could be proud of, because you quickly learn that you're one cog of a system, including from a PR standpoint. So if other programs are having issues or whatever, you like to have programs that, that people could say, yeah, but look at them type thing. So there was a lot of motivation and of course I took it all on my shoulders immediately to try to live up to Jim and Rockies and Jim live and goods and everybody's faith in me, so to speak.

0:31:07 - (Toby Brooks): Sure. So this is 1998. You're at the helm of a highly successful program, Certainly a culture there that Coach Galt and you had had built. At this point in your life, had you really encountered disappointment or opposition, or do you feel like you had just succeeded at everything you did?

0:31:27 - (Bill Ryden): Well, no, I don't feel like I succeeded at everything to do. I always felt like I came close in a lot of things, but always fell a little short. And maybe that's because being anal retentive and being a gymnast, our worlds or my world have always revolve around perfect, the perfect 10, whatever. Right. You're always striving for the perfect, but yet if you get down to the reality of the situation, perfect can't be achieved. So I'm always feeling like I'm falling short or whatever.

0:31:57 - (Bill Ryden): I didn't finish my NCAA career at Penn State at the national meet the way I wanted to. I don't know, I guess I felt like I had been very fortunate to be where I was, but I always felt like there was always something more. So I never ran out of motivation, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's not like I was tripped, fallen down, and at this point had to get up and rebuild, but I always felt like, yeah, but I'm not here, I'm not there. There's always something more I could be doing.

0:32:30 - (Toby Brooks): The first time I set foot in a gymnastics practice facility, I was struck with a realization that literally every piece of equipment in the building had the word death written right on a sticker plastered on the side. So it's not hard to figure out, out why someone in Bill's situation would be a perfectionist. Your life literally depends on doing things the right way. And that's a double edged sword. What starts off feeling like a search for excellence can very quickly turn into an unattainable search for perfection.

0:32:56 - (Bill Ryden): I guess that drove me as much as anything, if that, if that, if that makes sense.

0:33:01 - (Toby Brooks): Absolutely. Yeah, it does. So you take over, you're at the helm and the next several years, you want to craft and build and improve this program. Certainly no small measure of individual success. Eventually you kind of reach that promised land of a team NCAA appearance, and then it starts to get a little bit more commonplace. How would you characterize your head coaching career at the University of Arizona? What are some words you'd use to describe it for you?

0:33:27 - (Bill Ryden): Personally, I feel really good about what I accomplished and did. I also feel like I didn't complete. I never feel. I don't know that I would have ever felt like I had achieved everything or whatever. On paper, it looks good, right? I mean, I feel like I've done okay. I'm the winningest coach in school history. Tons of all Americans, national champions, conference champions, regional champions, coach, three AI finalists, one winner. All of that is great. I mean, I look at, but I feel really happy about that. I tried to build a program that was a family to me. It was very much about, this is a place that you can always go back to. Like, even to this day, I can still go back to my teammates and my old coaches and see we have relationships.

0:34:21 - (Bill Ryden): And yet back in women's gymnastics, back then, a lot of women were leaving the sport not satisfied or get me out of here or feeling used or I'm glad I'm done with that or whatever. And I really wanted that to never be from my athletes. I wanted them to have this family so they would have this family and feel this family long after I was gone. Whether I accomplished that or not, I don't know. You'd have to ask them, you know what I mean? But that was always the goal. It was never simply about the wins and losses and whatever. And I always felt fortunate that Arizona, to a point, allowed me to do that. And hopefully that's what I brought. That's what I felt. Right, that makes sense.

0:35:06 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, absolutely. So through all that success, eventually it comes to an end. Is it 2015, you. You announced that you were going to step down. What was the thought process there?

0:35:16 - (Bill Ryden): Well, it was the years leading up to that were a struggle for me. Things were changing. The environment was changing. Gymnastics was changing. Collegiate gymnastics was changing. I sort of felt an uneasiness or a lack of ability to make this dream of family first. And I didn't feel that my goals were enmeshed with maybe the department's goals anymore, if that makes sense. Rocky had gone, Jim Livingood had gone.

0:35:48 - (Bill Ryden): I had the highest graduation rate and APR in our department, stuff like that. I was very proud of what my athletes had gone on to do or whatever, but it never seemed to be enough. It seemed to be more about win loss and whatever. And certainly I cared about win loss too. But in some aspects we were a little bit under the gun to, to match win loss with some other programs also. I had sold my soul to the sport and the program. I was such a tunnel vision coach.

0:36:18 - (Bill Ryden): I was the poster child of don't be this, we've all heard the term of having a balanced life. You know, your personal life and your work life. That was not me. I sold my soul. I mean I can guarantee, I can state without a fact I'm not married because of the sport, I'm not married because of my career. I sold everything. I mean I was all in to the point of it was all consumed, consuming and honestly I was burning out. I've learned things since that time.

0:36:50 - (Bill Ryden): I've not gone back, I've had opportunities, but I felt like if I had ever gone back to NCAA coaching, I'd have like a little different approach to it and look after myself more. To me it was all about my athletes. I mean I lived and died with their success and their well being. And I'll have to say this at the detriment of my own physical and mental health.

0:37:12 - (Toby Brooks): It's no exaggeration to point out that Bill had traded a potential family as well as his physical and mental health for the sake of the sport of gymnastics and for the University of Arizona. It had to have been a bitter pill then to be pressured by the administration to step down after the 2015 season. Ever the gentleman, you won't hear Bill complain about it as he recounts what was undoubtedly a painful season of his life.

0:37:33 - (Bill Ryden): I was failing and I knew that I was failing. And then the stress level of trying to live up to what the department was demanding or I felt the department was demanding. I used to joke with people at that time, people who knew me well, who were come back to say, between you and I, although I guess it's not going to be between you and I, but I used to say I either need to start therapy or start drinking heavily or both. Because it's getting to that point. You know, the stress is just getting to that point. And it was funny because even to this day I'm still in touch with Rocky. She was very much on board with go live your life. I couldn't have more respect for a single person than I have for Rocky LaRose. And to this day she sees things in people that maybe others don't see in themselves. I certainly did not. Yeah. And, you know, and I think in a lot of ways, she was right. I wasn't really too amenable to hearing it.

0:38:28 - (Bill Ryden): Right. You never. You always feel like, as a coach or whatever, I can work my way out of this. Part of my problem as a coach is I felt like no athlete was beyond help that I could fix or I could make the situation work. And sometimes the situations just don't work. I look back now and I remember it at the. The end of Jim Colt's time and him saying to me, the athletes have just changed, and I don't get it anymore. I don't see how they're. And of course, I'm younger. Then I'm like, what? I have no problem with these athletes, blah, blah, blah. And then I'm looking back at my time towards the end, and I'm like, I don't get it. How do they not see?

0:39:06 - (Bill Ryden): How do they not appreciate? But in my world, no, not everyone gets a ribbon. That's. You know, that isn't my world. I'm. In my world, you earn what you get and you're thankful for it. And you say thank you and you show respect. Things were changing, and it's weird how, God, you look back and go, oh, my God. It's just history repeating itself. Now I'm in a different role. I look back now. But getting back, Rocky was right. Because after I did leave, it was interesting.

0:39:34 - (Bill Ryden): I probably have never felt that empty and alone in my entire life because my family was all tied into that program. My identity, my family, my friends, everything I have learned since that maybe that isn't totally the case, but that's how I felt at the time.

0:39:55 - (Toby Brooks): Two things here. First of all, Bill's a friend. I wish I had known. I certainly would have reached out to him during this time. Second of all, I think we need to understand that any of our friends or family or colleagues who are going through big transformation transitions like this, they need our support. A simple phone call or a text message would have gone a long way.

0:40:11 - (Bill Ryden): Yeah, it was a rough time because for someone as type A and anal as I am, that sort of thrives on. Okay, this is what today's goals are. I'm going to achieve these goals. I'm going to do it. When you. When you. You get up in the morning and you don't have a goal or whatever. Yeah, it's. There's a void there that is scary to people like me.

0:40:34 - (Toby Brooks): There's a scene in Cheers. I don't know if you were a Cheers fan. But sure. The series finale, it's so heart wrenching to me where Sam is getting ready to leave the bar and he looks back and he just kind of takes it all in and he flips the lights off and he walks out.

0:40:49 - (Bill Ryden): Yeah.

0:40:49 - (Toby Brooks): And I'm getting emotional just thinking about a sitcom, which is funny to me, but I've often wondered, and I've put myself in that situation when I'm leaving Seasons of life.

0:40:59 - (Bill Ryden): Yeah.

0:41:00 - (Toby Brooks): What are the thoughts going through his mind? So as you flip that light switch off in McHale center for the last time, I'm curious what your thoughts were.

0:41:08 - (Bill Ryden): Loss, Emptiness. Because in my world, there was never a bucket list of achievable goals. There was always. I felt sort of sense of failure. I mean, people would tell me, look how many people you've shaped or helped or whatever. But I. And I truly believe these words. I don't believe that any person can judge themselves accurately. And maybe that's coming from the world of gymnasts and maybe coming from the world of female gymnasts because you walk at them and you've experienced this. You've never seen a female athlete be able to walk by a mirror and not look at it because they're judging themselves, rightly or wrongly.

0:41:48 - (Bill Ryden): So I can't judge myself and say, I don't have near the ego to say, yes, I made this difference and I did this. Yeah. I mean, I have the records. I can show you. Yeah, this girl did this. I have this many wins, whatever. But did I make a difference? That's really what matters to me. And of course I felt failure because I don't know that I. I hope I made a difference to every one of those athletes. I know I tried, but it's not for me to say that did I make a difference. So I felt an emptiness and a sense of failure and a sense of what's next and a sense of where do I go from here? And for a while there, I clawed and tried to find opportunities were presented to me and then they weren't right and other things. And so I spent a year sort of like wallowing. Honestly, I am not a doctor. I don't know, but I would assume I probably had symptoms of depression.

0:42:46 - (Toby Brooks): Despite being the winningest coach in school history, having spent his entire career at the University of Arizona, Bill was shown the door and understandably, it hurt.

0:42:55 - (Bill Ryden): Financially, I was fine. So I didn't have to sort of like, okay, I'm going to go work down the street doing this or get a job at a Local club or whatever. But in a way, maybe that left me alone to my thoughts, even more that way than I should have been. So, yeah, I spent a year of really struggling until I sort of got into other things that certainly have since. Totally re turned around my viewpoint both on my career and just the things I've been blessed to experience since then as well.

0:43:31 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, well, that's a great segue into the next question. What do your days look like today?

0:43:35 - (Bill Ryden): Well, you know, today, today pretty open and empty right now, but I have a totally different look at it. About a year after I left Arizona, a very dear friend of mine who owns a gym up in Phoenix asked me to come help him coach his upper level kids. He had the strongest team in the state at the time and he knew I didn't want to deal with lower level kids. That's not what I had been doing for the past 25 years at Arizona, obviously.

0:44:01 - (Bill Ryden): So I went up there and I would help him two or three days a week and we coached these upper level kids which they became very successful, went on to win age group national championships and so forth. Helped him build a new gym, helped him design a gym. I had designed two gyms for Arizona, so certainly designing and building new complexes were not beyond me. Then after that time started coaching elite again.

0:44:27 - (Bill Ryden): Was on a coaching staff of a couple of elite gymnasts. One, of course went on to win a Olympic gold medal. So that was quite humbling and a very proud moment of mine.

0:44:39 - (Toby Brooks): Bill's referring to Phoenix native Jade Carey, who went on to win Olympic gold and floor exercise at the 2020 Olympics.

0:44:45 - (Bill Ryden): In Tokyo, was inducted into the USA Gymnastics State of Arizona version of hall of fame. So I'm in that hall of fame. So when I look back at what I did at Arizona, since then I've coached national team members, an athlete who's an Olympic champion and a world champion, multiple national age group champions, athletes that have gone on to very prestigious scholarship opportunities and have become all Americans in their own right, in their own college, which to this day call me and contact me and you know, we go out to lunch or whatever and consider me a coach that made a difference in their career.

0:45:27 - (Bill Ryden): And that all happened post Arizona. So all of a sudden now I'm like, back to my roots, back to a coaching elite gymnast. Pack the coaching gymnastics at a higher level than what is actually the level of college now. I'm sort of now the reigning expert on college gymnastics. When people ask me, okay, what do I need to be a college? I go, well, let Me tell you how it was when I was coaching, what I looked for. So I do seminars on recruiting and whatever, but has made me appreciate my time. I look back now at Arizona as a segment of my life, but certainly I've had what I would consider some great opportunities and successes since then that I never counted on. You know, when I left Arizona, I was thought, is that it?

0:46:15 - (Bill Ryden): It is that it. Well, then my career is 80% complete or 80% success, 20% failure or whatever. I didn't feel in any way satisfied with my time at Arizona. But since I've gone on and now done even different things, higher level things since Arizona, to me, my time at Arizona is now in my mind more about those athletes fortunate enough. My time there earned me. I have lifetime basketball and football tickets to Arizona so I can show up when I want. Right.

0:46:49 - (Bill Ryden): And I look up in the ceiling and I see all those names that are in that ring of fame and it's like, yeah, I coached her. I coached her, I coached her, I coached her. I mean, I recruited. You know what I mean? Yeah, that flood of memory. And then I see that retired jersey of Heidi Hornby hanging on the wall. And I remember recruiting Heidi and coaching Heidi and helping her and her winning her national championship. And now I have a sense of, of pride because.

0:47:15 - (Bill Ryden): And I don't want to put. I don't want this to sound bad in any way, but I feel like I was there at the pinnacle, you know what I mean? At a success rate that's been unheard of since. And I can only thank all those athletes, the chance to be a steward of a program which I, I think is their program, their family or whatever. And I was just fortunate enough to be given the keys to the car, so to speak.

0:47:41 - (Bill Ryden): But I look back and go, that was the heyday. Yeah, I was there during the heyday.

0:47:45 - (Toby Brooks): I hate to drag a second sitcom reference into our time, but in the office, there's a scene where Andy looks straight at the camera and says, don't you wish there were a way to know that the good old days were occurring before the. That they were over?

0:48:00 - (Toby Brooks): I butchered that quote. Andy Bernard actually said, I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually, actually left them. Thanks for not calling me out on it, Bill.

0:48:10 - (Toby Brooks): That's so poignant to me, to be in the midst of something so special. We rarely recognize just how special it is. It takes time, it takes distance, it takes context for us to understand that, wow, there are national team members, there are world class athletes here. And this team and its current composition will never be the same again. Next season, the roster changes just a little bit. And the season after that, the roster changes just a little bit. And there's just kind of that surreal moment when you look around the locker room or you look around the bus, look around the plane on the trip and you realize that we'll never be together again.

0:48:42 - (Toby Brooks): And that's the bittersweet part of leaving athletics for me is you miss that, that connection. And that season is so temporary, but you don't appreciate it in the moment because you're so busy doing the business of the sport.

0:48:55 - (Bill Ryden): You're right. I agree with you 100%. And my whole thing, and that was a lot of why I feel like I can go back to my team and my team members at any time. And I wanted my program back then to be a family. I mean, I don't know if you remember this well, but one of my things as part of the program, I felt that all the athletes on the team should know who the alumni are. They paved the way. They were here before you.

0:49:20 - (Bill Ryden): They're the older sisters of your program. You're all in this together. That meant a lot to me and whatever. But you're right, you know, back then when we were even, when we were doing so well and we had so many great athletes and whatever, I was always wanting more. I was always feeling this or that. And now I look back and yeah, we could have done more. There was always, unless you're winning. Everybody else says they could have done more, right, Unless you won the thing.

0:49:50 - (Bill Ryden): But I look back now and I see all of the honors that those athletes achieved. And then what all of my athletes have gone on to do since, yeah, is just blows me away. And when I run into people now and it is weird. And the one thing about being at Arizona and even being in the state, gymnastics is a very small world. It's so funny when people get caught up in having a name in a sport like gymnastics. Being gymnastics famous isn't being famous.

0:50:20 - (Bill Ryden): No one knows who you are. No one cares. But it's weird in the small world. Like, I'll walk into a gym and people will recognize me even to this day, which blows me away because I haven't actually been actively coaching. I'm still at meets because I get hired to be a meet director at meets. But then when I also run into my old gymnasts, like two years ago when I was at the Olympic trial, Jade and Riley were Both in the Olympic trials, not only did I run into one of the very best U of A gymnasts ever, Jenna carried Bill, who's actually in the U of A Hall of fame as well. And I would consider a dear friend.

0:50:59 - (Bill Ryden): I ran into an athlete I coached back in the 80s when she was a youngster. And funny thing is, her daughter now goes to the U of A, not as a gymnast or whatever. And we're still very close. I coached this athlete when I was 18 and 19 years old, and she was 14. No, 12. I don't know. It's a long time ago. Right. And the Trials were in St. Louis. She lived in St. Louis. We were able to meet up while there. That type of family and whatever, you look back and go, man, these, those were good old days. So getting back to what you were saying, whether it be at the U of A or for me even before then, what's going on right now will never be repeated or whatever, but you just don't want to forget it because it's special for sure.

0:51:48 - (Toby Brooks): Absolutely. So as our time's winding down, I want to land this plane. I've got two questions left. The first one is thinking back to that pair on Fire, fearless 16 year old on a dirt bike, and you had a chance to plop him down straight across from you and say, bill, here's to the advice that I have to give you. What would you say to Bill?

0:52:06 - (Bill Ryden): I would say two things in the world of competition, get your mind straight, don't be emotional about it. Don't let things get to you. And I think I would have been better at competing gymnastics would have taught me how to be a better racer, without a doubt. Because the pressure, being out there by yourself and the fact that you can, you know, you can die if something goes wrong and it's all on you.

0:52:29 - (Bill Ryden): That kind of pressure put all of racing in perspective. And then for the person, I would have said, you know, balance your life. There are other things out there than just coaching and trying to be successful and trying to always win that next meet, get that next recruit, learn that next skill. There is more to life. I certainly learned that after I left Arizona. Many things have happened since the time I've left Arizona which have really slammed me in the face, saying, perspective, perspective. I have a much broader overreaching type of a view on things, whereas back then I was so tunnel vision. Yeah. It was the program, it was the athletes.

0:53:15 - (Bill Ryden): So that was my life. That's all it was. Yeah.

0:53:18 - (Toby Brooks): Well, that leads us to our last question. What for Bill Ryden remains undone.

0:53:22 - (Bill Ryden): You know, I guess I just want to be at peace being as I am. Maybe that'll never happen because I'm so goal oriented, but be able to just sort of look back and just say, put it in the past and maybe I never will. Gymnastics is sort of winding down for me from a coaching. I mean, I still coach on a person by person request basis. Like this summer, some of those athletes I had coach that are on to college requested I come back just to coach them over the summer, which I did. But I don't actively look to coach anymore.

0:53:53 - (Bill Ryden): I don't know. I'm looking. I'm looking for that next thing, that next goal. Whether that be maybe a move, maybe a change of senior. I don't know. Yeah, I really don't know. In my mind I'll have a sense of peace and know it. Although in my mind I also can't fathom. Okay, how are you going to. What does that exactly mean, you know?

0:54:17 - (Toby Brooks): Well, in my mind I see you with t tops out and kiss blaring over some six by nine.

0:54:22 - (Bill Ryden): There you go.

0:54:23 - (Toby Brooks): And there you go firing down I10 with your hair on fire.

0:54:27 - (Bill Ryden): There you go. That could be it. Exactly. I mean, there are worse things, that's for sure.

0:54:33 - (Toby Brooks): Well, Bill, it has been fantastic. I really appreciate your time and your insights and it's. It's been great to reconnect.

0:54:39 - (Bill Ryden): Well, it's. It has been great to reconnect. Toby, anytime. I consider you a friend, a dear friend, and I certainly want to stay connected and best of luck with this venture and all everything else you have going on in your life.

0:54:52 - (Toby Brooks): Thanks so much, Bill Ryden.

0:54:54 - (Bill Ryden): Thank you.

0:54:55 - (Toby Brooks): Becoming Undone is a nitro hype creative production, written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone, please contact me at Undone Podcast. Becoming Undone can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Till next time, everybody. Keep getting better.