Episode #109: Ryan Callahan on Recruiting

🎙️  From the AD’s Chair: Ryan Callahan on Recruiting 

In Part 2 of my conversation with Ryan Callahan, Director of Athletics at UW-Whitewater, we focus entirely on the world of college recruiting—but from a perspective most families never hear. As an Athletic Director who has led programs and supported legendary coaches, Ryan shares what really happens behind the scenes of recruiting: what coaches and administrators look for, how decisions are made, and what recruits and parents should be doing right now to stand out.

If you’re a student-athlete, parent, or coach, this episode gives you insider clarity on how the process actually works—not the myths, not the message boards, but the reality straight from an AD’s chair.

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welcome back to The Significant Coaching Podcast. This is our recruiting segment, and I'm your host, Matt Rogers. Before we dive in, a quick reminder, if you haven't already, make sure to favorite this show. Leave a comment and subscribe over@coachmattrogers.com. That way you'll never miss an episode, a recruiting tip or the tools we're building to help athletes, parents, and coaches. Today's episode is part two of my conversation with Ryan Callahan, Director of Athletics at University of Wisconsin Whitewater, and our focus is all about college recruiting. Ryan brings a rare perspective. He's led as an athletic director, supported legendary coaches. He was a professional athlete. He is an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, and he's seen firsthand how recruiting decisions, shape programs and families alike in this half of our discussion, Ryan shares insights from inside the athletic director's chair, what families need to know, what coaches are really looking for, and how the recruiting process truly works behind the scenes. If you're a recruit, a parent or a coach, this is a conversation you don't wanna miss. Let's get into part two with Ryan Callahan. Coach Callahan, so great to talk to you again. I want to talk a little bit recruiting let's start with how you got recruited to Whitewater. I want to hear that story. Yeah. I was born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin. Janesville was a it was a General Motors town. Yep. It, I think it had one of the oldest plants in the country. Strong tradition for a number of sports. So I think at an early age I was fortunate to be around some really good athletes, and that was, men and women. When I was in high school, Misty Bass was the state player of the year in Wisconsin for basketball for four years. Went to Duke, WNBA, Terry Ryan, the GM for the Minnesota Twins at the time as a Jamesville Parker guy. Chris Keeland, his son just got drafted in the first round by the Giants. His dad was a Janesville guy, went to Southeast Missouri or Louisiana State. So I was fortunate where, you hear these stories about these athletes from your town that were playing at a pretty high level, which also means that there was people that were watching that town, right? People were there, they knew the names. And my coach. At the time coached a lot of these guys that played division one baseball. They went to Purdue, like I said, Southeast Louisiana State, some solid jucos Indian hills out in Iowa, which you're probably aware of. Yeah. So he was really impactful if with talking to coaches about, Hey, check this guy out, check this guy out. I was a pretty late bloomer man. I was like five seven, five eight, a hundred and twenty pounds. Going into my senior year and wow. Played three sports, soccer, hockey, baseball. Wasn't sure which one I really wanted to pursue. And my baseball coach had a good relationship with Jim Miller, who used to be the coach up here. Said, Hey, see what happens. See if you can get this guy and. Wanted to go close to home. My dad was diagnosed with cancer in 20, or in 1998, so I graduated in 99. So I knew I wanted to stay close to home, for family reasons and everything else. And that was my story. It's traditional, but untraditional, right? It was a little bit late in the game, but grateful that Jim Miller and Whitewater gave me a chance and I was getting looked at by, some other jucos and some other schools. The funniest thing is that I actually wrote letters to three other WIC schools that didn't let me in. So now I give their coaches grief in saying, man, I could be the ad at Lacrosse or Oshkosh or Steven's Point if you would've let me in. No kidding. I love that. From an ad's perspective, how do you talk to your coaches about recruiting? Matt, this is really tough. This is tough. It's a lot different. So I'll give you, so I'm 44 years old. Back in the day you played, your youth organization, whether it was basketball or whatever it was, and now it's such a different beast now. Volleyball, some of the sports like volleyball, they've always had a strong club scene. So you knew that if you played for the Milwaukee Sting and you're on their A team, you're probably gonna be a pretty high level Division one fringe, division two high level division three player. The sting team number two. Now baseball's gone to a very club. Model where some of the best players in the state are playing with different clubs and not necessarily on their high school team basketball. Think back in the day when you know Matt, for you, there might've been two AAU teams in the state. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I would've had to drive three hours to play AAU in my, yeah, my In the eighties and NI in the early nineties. Yeah. And nowadays, like I think my 9-year-old son who's never played basketball is asked to play au. It's everywhere. It is, so I think the first thing you have to do is you have to maintain those relationships with the coaches that you trust. We're, whitewater is, our flagship programs are education and business. So a lot of our folks that graduate that wanna stay within athletics are going into education. They're going into coaching and teaching and everything else. So having those relationships with your alum, where, you know, if they're coaching in Greenfield, Wisconsin, whether or not you have somebody that can play. Let me talk to you about the teams that you're playing this year. That's right. So then you can not only coach, but help me evaluate some of these, if it's a soccer player, Hey, can you watch Heartland Har, Heartland, Arrowhead? They got this, outside back, or number 10 take, lemme know if she can play at our level, so having those networks, it's no different than the professional side, right? That's right. If you have a network that knows somebody who's knows somebody that can get you in contact. That's just like our coaches. So making sure they're building their network of high school coaches and club coaches that they're honest with them, which ultimately turns into a trust relationship. And we're fortunate that we've had a lot of success in in, in many of our sports over the last 20 years. So now you're getting some of these coaches that. Club coaches specifically, they wanna send their kids to division one, right? It's a resume boost. Come play here. I got 15 kids going to division one, but they also wanna send 'em to some of the higher level d threes. And we're in that category of, if you can have a kid play for your club and say that they want to EW whitewater, that's a feather in their cap too, the other thing that we talk a lot about is, I think there's a level of. And coach Guard talked about this and I thought he did a great job of building your team, which is your identity. Going out and getting some renegades, 'cause they can play doesn't mean that it's always gonna work. So you have to find out what level, what you know, plug and play, which, what? What type of student athlete do you want? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? I joked with my basketball coach, I get these emails from these kids from Croatia that say they can ball, and I'm like, Hey, jokingly check 'em out. He's Ryan, he's a five 10 guard. I don't need any more. Five 10 guards, yep. Evaluating talent that way where it's okay, I know in three years I'm going to, I'm gonna lose my, six five wing. Then you better recruit a 6, 4, 6 5 wing, so then you can replace it. So having that recruiting plan no different than the facility plan that we were talking in the earliest earlier segment and making sure that, you're getting the right. The right people. Yeah. I fully believe in diversity, I fully believe in equity and giving people the opportunity that might not look like me, might not have the same history as me, might not have the same backstory as me, but giving people a chance to succeed at our level, I think is pretty special. And if you look at a lot of our rosters, we're gonna look very different than other schools. I take pride in that, we're gonna recruit for more of the cities, we're gonna recruit recruits for more of the bigger cities, where it's more diverse and let's not shy away from that. Let's embrace that. That's right. But if we're going to embrace that and we're gonna be intentional, then my campus has to buy in and support everybody. And that's where we're pretty lucky. We do have a very, a solid support system at Whitewater. So if you're coming from, Podunk, Wisconsin, rural town, or if you're coming from the inner city of Chicago or Milwaukee. Hey, we're gonna support you. We're gonna serve you, and we're gonna get you outta this place with a degree. Yeah. We're gonna teach you how to care about each other, even though you're from different places and a hundred percent. And that's the beauty of sport. Yeah. Talk a little bit about camps. How important are camps to your coaches and from your perspective that your coaches are running camps, not just to find talent, but to create that culture with the community and build that embrace of the community. Yeah, and I think, we talked about earlier if you're gonna have a program, then you gotta support your program. And we're fortunate where our budgets for our varsity teams probably are about 60 to 70% of what we're gonna spend. So we have to find ways to fundraise. And we're lucky, we've had some really successful camps over the last 30, 40 years, and a lot of those camps are gonna generate revenue to subsidize, the shortages in our operating budget. But it's a great way to get the community involved. Work with the local boys and girls clubs, work with the Whitewater Youth soccer. Get 'em over here, get 'em practicing, get 'em working, getting on our facilities. If you walk into Perkins Stadium where we play football, we got. Man, we've had lacrosse camps in there. We've had boys soccer, we've had girls soccer, we've had obviously football camp in there. We'll do some softball stuff in there. We'll do some baseball stuff in there, showcase those facilities. And I think the other part of that is getting those young people excited about college. That's right. I'm a firm believer in higher education. The better educated we are, the better our society is. And if we can get some of those young people to come to our campus, and even if they don't go to Whitewater, that's fine, but if they're like, can't. I wanna go to co, I wanna go to Whitewater, I wanna go to wherever. Sure. That's a great experience. So really the focal is, the focal point is obviously gonna bring 'em in, get 'em a great experience. 'cause a lot of those kids, this is the first time they're on a, they're on a college campus. And the last thing I want is these kids to walk away from a college campus, going back to their parents and it's that stunk. Yeah. I don't wanna go to college anymore if that's what it's like, so a lot of it it's getting 'em on campus, getting 'em excited for their future. Yeah. Letting our coaches hopefully make some money to, to support their program. Provide a little relief in the fundraising aspect. And then the other one is, it's a great way to, have some of your recruits come to campus and get a taste of what it's like. Yeah. If you're going to play, football at UW lacrosse, and I go to a camp there and I'm like, eh, it wasn't that great. Guess what? That's probably how it's gonna be. On the flip side of that, if you go to lacrosse football camp and you think it's great, then that's, then you made the right decision. So it's just, it's huge for our region. And we're, our tennis camps have been going strong. If you Google Wisconsin tennis camps, I'm pretty sure we're the number one hit that you're gonna get. Our volleyball camps are selling out every single week. Our coaches do a great job. So it's just, the other part of this too is like the community service aspect, and I'm probably light on my coaches with community service because I know they work so hard in the summer. With summer camps and working youth camps, and that to me is community service as well. It's for sure. Yeah. I'm interested in, I'm always interested in talking to eighties about. Their expectations that they provide to coaches about recruiting in terms of numbers and where roster sizes you, you and your chancellor want that roster size to be, but also what that roster, you talked about diversity, but. What that roster looks like in terms of the character that you want represented. And you touched on that a little bit too. What are those conversations like when you're talking to your coaches, whether it's a staff meeting or your one-on-one meetings with your head coaches? Yeah, so we have a roster plan that that, that predates me, I don't know how many years, but what I tell my coaches a lot is I want you to have a manageable roster for what staff level you have. So I'll give you an example. My, we have a bowling coach a bowling team. And our bowling coach is ultra successful. She was like the division one bowler of the year a couple years ago. National champion. Crazy good. So she's a new coach a fresh coach, tons of talent. I can't give her 20 bowlers as a 50% coach. That's not fair. That's right. I also don't want to give. Require my football team who has probably the largest staff, 225, because that's not fair either. So we try to have those conversations with the coaches to say, women's soccer, what do you want? Men's soccer, what do you want? Softball, baseball track, men's and women's. What do you want? Let's try to figure out how we can manage that roster while maintaining title IX compliance with proportionality and everything else. I don't want you to go to the division one model where they're, golf has eight players. We're not gonna go there. Let's see what we can do. So you're not going crazy. You're not getting burned out and you want to come back next year and coach. That's right. Yeah. And we're and we're a little bit different than some of those schools that we were talking about previously, where we're not 60% of the incoming classes athletes. We have, I don't know, 9,000 undergraduates. We have about 600 athletes. Yeah. So if I go from, five 50 to six 10. That doesn't necessarily move the needle a ton, in the overall enrollment space. And I wanna stay in that. I wanna stay right there. I just have a hard time. If I'm not staffing my, if I'm not staffing my teams in a certain level, then how can I ask them to get more, take more players? We always fall back on the student athlete experience, right? Yep. How are you gonna have a positive student athlete experience? Matt, if you and I are number 41 and 42 on the baseball team I've been saying that for years. I, I don't know how you keep that many kids happy. I don't know how you go into it thinking you're gonna keep that many happy. You can't. Yeah, you can't. Or, and then it's a safety issue too. Maybe it's not, maybe it's not happy. You're right. It's a safety issue, but it's also a developmental issue. Yeah. Okay. We have eight coaches, but we still only have one field. We have only so many cages. You're only getting so many reps when you got 45 kids or 42 kids on a field. Yeah. And it's tough. One of our, one of our friends their softball coach, and we were talking rosters and not to throw out any names, but she gave me their roster that they would like her to have. I'm like, especially in softball I know, you need four pitchers all year. You don't need eight. That's right. You don't need 10. That's right. You need four. So how can you possibly have a softball roster that's at 40? We hosted a volleyball team last year. I'll never forget this. We put out 20 chairs on the opposing on each side of scores table. There were volleyball players that were sitting in the first two rows of the bleachers. 'cause that's how many players they had on the team. Oh my gosh. What does that budget look like? That they could travel with that many kids? Your numbers. On a volleyball team, if you're number 17 through 30, I don't get that either. That's tough. That's tough. I don't get that at all. What do you want from character? Is there that conversation about what we want, that whitewater kid. To look like, not so much look but how they represent who you are. Yeah, for sure. And I think it's gonna be different, right? I think, when you get some of these kids that are 17, 18 years old, they don't know, they don't know what it's like. Yeah. Part of my job and this firsthand, is you gotta deal with some from, with some compliance. I've had people that have come into my office and we're talking about a situation and they just start bawling. They made a bad decision. Yeah. Like I don't want that to impact the rest of their life, and I'm not saying, cry your way out of a ticket, you can tell in some of these conversations that like, those people felt really bad. Yeah. And you have some other kids that are like, whatever, man. It's I think you're gonna screw up again. Yeah. Yeah. They don't really have remorse for what they did. That's right. We talk about that threshold of you can only have so many people have that have this attitude before it just becomes con it's a cancer. That's right. You can have a couple people that, that, that. Might have a certain ability, but they don't have the best personality that melts, meshes with the team. But once you get over a threshold, that's when you lose a team. That's right. So that's a lot of what we talk about is, if transfers. Famously one of one of my mentors always said, everybody transfers for a reason. Now this is before the portal, so take that with a grain of salt. And every transfer that we've ever had. They'd been right. What happened? Oh, I didn't get along with the coach. Was that you were the coach, oh I didn't get along with the, the players and come to find out it was our guy that didn't get along with the players. It wasn't the players that didn't get along with him. With her. So we talk a lot about that. And the other thing is, I tell all my coaches, you're spending that much time with these players. Do you really want to be around a jerk? Do you really want to? Yeah. There's a lot of good athletes that out there that are just really nice people. Yeah. And being young and naive is different than the other side of that. That's right. So it's really figuring out what, who they are as people. And I think at our level, recruiting is a little bit different, like at the division one level, you go on an official visit, for a couple days. And our old football coach, his daughter was a successful division one basket or volleyball player, and he was telling me, he's going to Minnesota and Wisconsin and all the Big 10 schools and he's they're recruiting my wife and I more than they're recruiting my daughter. 'cause they're trying to figure out how crazy we are. Yeah. And I'm like, I never heard that. But I think that's true is you're not just recruiting the child. You're recruiting the parents too. That's right. 'cause a lot of it, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So you're trying to figure out what are the parents like. 'cause that's something that I can deal with for the next four or five years, yeah. You know that as a coach in an ad, it only takes one parent that doesn't get it. To really hurt a season and to hurt the coach long term. A hundred percent. Yeah. There's a great quote last one that our baseball coach uses. It's not who you can win with, it's who you can lose with. That's right. And that's what's great coach and I tell our coach, our coaches that all the time we wanna win and I wanna win. I never wanna be the ad that takes over when Whitewater lost its reign over, certain sports. But when it's all said and done, who can you walk away from a loss with? And that's even for coaches too. If a coach has a bad season, who can I go through that with? Yeah. It's easy when you're winning. Yeah. You can win with anybody. Yeah. But once the, once their cards are down and you're not having a great hand, who can you deal with that with? Yeah. Coach, I like to end the recruiting segment with a little bit of advice to parents and kids that are going through that recruiting journey. Is there a piece of advice you'd give to a parent out there that's, that wants their kid to play at White water? Are their kids excited about weight, white water? What direction would you give them about playing at the next level and getting there? The biggest piece of advice I would give them is your child has to want it more than you, if's you want it. If you want it more than your child, it's not gonna happen. Yeah, it's college sports are an absolute grind, and I hate using that word, but if you're not in it, you're not gonna last. No. If your child doesn't want it, they're not gonna last. You're waking up four days a week at five to go out. You're coming back to workout, you're hitting in the cages, you're shooting free throws, you're in the pool, you're wrestling one-on-one every single day. Yeah. So if your child wants it, they'll find a spot to play. They will. There's a place for everybody. Yeah. But if you wanna come to Whitewater and you think your kid wants to come to Whitewater, but you want it more than your child, white water's not the place. That's right. I, yeah. I wrote a book on recruiting and my first chapter is Commitment and I walk families through. What that looks like as a parent and what that looks like as a student athlete. Because if you're not committed, you can forget everything else. We don't have to talk about anything else. You gotta be all in and your kids gotta be the one that's driving it, like you said. How about a piece of advice for that 16, 17, 8-year-old that really wants to play in college? Maybe they're at Leanna, maybe they're at Janesville, they're at a smaller town and they don't get all the attention. What advice do you give them? To get the attention of your coaches or to get the attention of college coaches? Yeah, I think the first thing is that I'm a firm believer in reaching out personally to the co to the coaches, with the, the iPhones or whatever phone you have, like the video's pretty clear. Like I, Matt, I think you and I could probably make a highlight film. It might take us a little bit, but we could probably do it. It might take both of us. Yes. But yes, I agree. We'll get it done. Yeah. There's ways that you can record your son or daughter. Competing, whatever that is. And I would encourage, clipping some of those together and putting some footage together. And it, hopefully your high school coach is supportive. Having them let a write a letter of rec and having the student be the person contacting the coach, having that that, that initiative, that respect have, that maturity, whatever you wanna call it. Reaching out to these coaches, and you're exactly right. If you're from a small town and you wanna do some things, it is a lot harder, right? Because you have more, so much more access in the larger towns of, we'll say 60,000 and above. You're gonna have, more sports, you're gonna have more travel opportunities. I think if you're looking at a really high level, people will find you. It doesn't matter how small the town is. Like they, you will be found, with huddle and football. And obviously if you're thinking swimming, cross country and track, those times are your times. And those distances are your distances. That's right. So there's a lot of sports where it's very, I don't wanna say it's easy 'cause nothing's easy, but your metrics are right there. Yeah. If you're a miler. Your mile is this time. You know where you're at in the state Honor roll. That's right. You probably know where you're at in the Midwest. You probably know where you're at nationally. Yeah. So if you're there, you can send those out to the coaches. As far as some, some of the ball sports like soccer, baseball, softball, football. I think that's where it's a little bit more of, you have to do it organically. Cut some film for yourself, send it out to the prospective coaches. Be diligent. Just because a coach doesn't get back to you within five minutes, like a text message from your buddy. It's okay. That's right. That doesn't mean that they just deleted it and if they did delete it, send it to 'em again. That's right. You talked about camps. Go to a camp. Yeah. If you wanna play baseball at co college, call the coach at co college and say, Hey, I'm from this town. I'm in Iowa, I wanna play baseball for you. You know what can I do? So there's things that you can do. There's the technology that's out there. There's also more people that are trying to get some of those spots. And the other thing I will say, and I really believe this, is that every year that pyramid gets smaller and smaller. People quit. People decide that they want to go to, they want to go to a trade school. People decide that they want to go work for this company or corporation or whatever it is, so by the time you get to your senior year. There's enough baseball players at most schools to have a freshman baseball team or a freshman basketball team. There's probably only three or four seniors left. Yeah, yeah. And that's across the, that's across the country. That's right. So just getting to senior year of com competition, that's something to be proud of. Now if you wanna go past that, you can. You gotta do some of those things. And I really believe, there's enough good people out there that are doing their hard work, they're putting in time. Talent will find itself. There's gonna be a college coach who's buddies with your high school coach, who's buddies with this person that says, Hey, you gotta check out this softball pitcher, from Nebraska. Yeah. And here you go. Yeah. It's a grind and it's changed a lot over the last 20 years. I don't know if it's changed for the better, but the recruiting nets have gotten a lot further. Yeah. When I was recruiting for baseball in the, 2008 to 14, if I'd looked at a kid from 30 miles away, there was no chance that there was a division one school that was reaching out to them. And now all of a sudden the division one nets are so wide. Yeah, they're so expansive. And they're taking some of those kids from, rural Wisconsin, which good for them, right? Good for them. But now it's even more competitive, all over the country. So you gotta be really trying not to get recruited today. It's so easy to put yourself out there and say, Hey, I'm here. Would you take a look at me? It's a lot easier than it was 30 years ago when I was going through this. No. And they have the recruiting companies and that's tough, right? Yeah. I talk to a lot of coaches and some say, oh yeah, I'll take a look at it. And others say, I don't even look at it. Yeah. And those are a lot of money. It is. They're a lot of money for those parents to put into that. And, from what I've heard is, of course, the, of course the recruiting company's gonna tell you how good your child is. 'cause you're paying them to do that. So if you're a coach, you're like that's not really. Unbiased. Yeah. You paid 2,500 bucks for this company to tell me how good your child is. Yeah. They should 'cause you paid 2,500 bucks. Yeah. But I don't know. It's if you want it. You can get it. It's just a it's gonna be some work. I agree. I agree. Ryan, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. Everything. I hoped we would get outta this conversation we did and more, and I'm so thankful that there's people like you leading athletic departments. 'cause you've got such a big heart, such a great soul. And I want families to understand. That's 99% of athletics is really great. People that are your neighbor that you'd see at a barbecue are running athletic departments and coaching these teams. They're good people. And I don't want parents afraid. I don't want parents and kids afraid to reach out and say, Hey, we're interested, or We want to come watch a game because they're, it. It'd be such a value for them to be a part of a school like UW Whitewater. Oh, a hundred percent. We're lucky. We got 16 head coaches, and I'll be comfortable having all of them as my emergency contacts. Yeah, it's pretty special. Thank you for doing this. I wish you guys all the best of luck and we'll be cheering for you as you continue to ride this great run of success you've had. Appreciate it, Matt. You have a good one. You too. Thanks. And that's a wrap of part two of my conversation with Ryan Callahan here on the Significant Recruiting Podcast. I hope you picked up on the depth of his perspective, how recruiting isn't just about filling rosters, but about finding the right fit for athletes, families, and programs. If you're a recruit or a parent walking through this journey, take Ryan's advice to heart. Understand what coaches and athletic directors are really looking for. Be intentional in your communication and remember that the best opportunities come when you know your value and where you belong. As always, if you haven't already, make sure to favorite this show. Leave a comment and subscribe@coachmattrogers.com. That's where you'll find the full library of podcast episodes, weekly recruiting tips and resources like my significant recruiting book and the new recruits journals. Thanks again to Ryan for sharing his insights and thank you for listing. Until next time, stay focused, stay humble, and be significant.