Episode #148: Emily Kohan

🏐 Emily Kohan on Building a Sustainable Division I Volleyball Program at Colorado State

In this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, Matt Rogers sits down with Emily Kohan, head coach of Colorado State Volleyball, to break down what it really takes to build and sustain a successful NCAA Division I program in today’s college athletics landscape.

Four years into her tenure as head coach, Kohan shares how she leads with intention—developing systems, prioritizing communication, retaining players in the transfer portal era, and balancing elite performance with family life. The conversation covers program-building, staff leadership, player development, organizational habits, and what separates healthy, stable programs from ones constantly chasing the next fix.

This episode is a must-listen for coaches, aspiring head coaches, recruits, and families who want a clear look at modern Division I leadership—without shortcuts, noise, or gimmicks.

🔹 Topics include:
• Building a Division I program with clarity and consistency
• Player retention and development in the portal/NIL era
• Leadership habits that scale under pressure
• Balancing family life with the demands of college coaching
• What sustainable success actually looks like

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On the latest edition of The Significant Coaching Podcast, a presentation of the coach Matt Rogers YouTube channel. Also available audio only everywhere you get your favorite podcasts. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. Before we get into my conversation with today's extremely talented guest, a quick reminder for athletes and families navigating the recruiting process. My book, significant Recruiting. The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes and the new volleyball recruits journal are both designed to simplify college recruiting by helping athletes better understand their value. Communicate with the right college coaches while guiding families through the college visit, admissions and financial aid process to help them make informed decisions with confidence. You can find both@coachmattrogers.com and on Amazon in part one of our two-part conversation, I sat down with Emily Cohan, head volleyball coach at Colorado State University and one of the most impressive program builders in the nation. Since taking the helm in December of 2022, after seven seasons as Tom Hilbert's, assistant Cohan has led the Rams to a Mountain West regular season championship. As well as back to back seasons with Mountain West Tournament Championship game appearances including winning the tournament championship in 2024 and clenching of birth in Colorado State's 32nd NCAA tournament. Cohan was named the 2024 Mountain West Coach of the Year in just her second year as head coach, the first coach of the year award of her career so far. In this conversation, we get into how Emily leads, how she builds systems, develops people, communicates with intention and balances the demands of Division one coaching with family life. She's a great mom and she loves being a mom. That made me so happy. If you're a coach, an aspiring head coach or a volleyball family, trying to understand what a healthy, sustainable Division one program actually looks like. You're in the right place. Let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Coach Emily Cohan. Coach Cohan, so great to see you, and you had a really good season, and you got a young group. How you feeling about where you're at and where you're headed? Yeah. I'm headed into season 11 at Colorado State and fourth season as the head coach and I think CSU volleyball is prime to have one of the best years yet in 2026. We were really young last year, 2025 was this kinda rebuild year. We were replacing six. Starting seniors from the year before and you didn't know who we were gonna be our fans, and sometimes even myself had to go look at the roster and be like, wait, who's number four and what's my outside hitters? And there was a lot of, I think. Learning faces and what are they gonna be like for everybody that's involved in the ramlee? And I just am thrilled for what that experience of this year was. We were second in the conference with the young team and then all of them committed to come back. Right. And in, in an era of transfer portal and rev share and NIL to have a spring roster. Surprised entirely of returners is pretty rare. And we're gonna roll up our sleeves and make 2026 an incredible year for CSU volleyball. Well, let's get you a contract extension just for that. I mean, return, it's amazing. Return to return that many kids. Yeah. And it's just it's amazing. I want talk about Tom a little bit. I know you've been running the program for four years, but I know Tom, Tom will talk about his great legacy there. What was it like for you, Tom? Tom's one of those rare coaches that got to retire and leave on, on their own, which doesn't happen very often anymore. How have you kind of put your fingerprints on this program and make it yours over the last four years? Yeah, so I was with Tom for seven seasons. I'm from Colorado, so I've known Tom for even longer than that. And incredibly grateful for so many things that I learned from him and the opportunity to grow and be mentored. And we knew for a couple years before he retired that he was thinking about retiring. And I got to attend some of like the conference head coaches meetings with him. And there was, there's a little bit of a succession plan in place. To make sure I was as prepared as you can be for this opportunity. So, and then when he did retire, he stayed involved with our program running our collective, and he is in the office a lot of weeks and he'll swing by practices sometimes. And it didn't, Tom's retirement didn't end his impact on this program, which I love. Right. I know he's a phone call away to help me. With any issues I would have or advice or sometimes just celebrations right after big wins, he's the first person to say I'm gonna buy a drink. And so he's become one of my dear friends in life and I love our partnership still as we work through how to make CSU volleyball continue to matter. Very. But then there was the moment of, hey, when he leaves, what are things that I would change or adjust? I was really deliberate to evolve some of the program. We didn't change everything in that first day that Tom was away. Our players. Had committed to a certain way that we had done things and they all committed to stay in my transition to head coaching. And so we wanted to honor some of the great traditions and legacies and keep a lot of the way we do some of the warmup things or the way we sing the fight song in certain ways. But there, there were other little things. We brought a whiteboard into practice to put the practice plan up and we used a little bit more technology and, my strengths are a little bit different than what Tom's strengths are, so what I delegate to assistants is a little bit different. But yeah, each year we were able to peel a little bit of different back and add a little bit of my flavor to it, and we just graduated the only the last two players that played for Tom as a head coach. 26 is the first roster that knows me only as a head coach and there's some freedom in that too. I hate to say, we talked before we got on, we talked about that old school approach. I hate to say that it's old school, but it's so invigorating to me to hear that you have a program where a head coach retired. You coached his kids, you've graduated his kids, you've brought in your own kids and kept them. It's a statement to you coach on who you are and what you're doing. It should be a prototype of what we want college athletics to look like across the board. What I'm interested in. Is and this is four years ago, so I think we have some breath here where you can look back and have a little bit of nostalgia and look back. Did you have that a hundred days vision when you took over the program that I know you said these are the things we're gonna try and keep, we're gonna keep some traditions. What, were there things that you did that you're like, this is me, I gotta have my program, it's gotta have my stamp on it. Where there's some of those things in your mind where you're like, this is where I've gotta go. I had a 90 day plan and I had turned that into admin in the interview process, let's call it. Yeah. There's definitely certain stakeholders in Fort Collins that you need to make sure stay on board with you in terms of boosters and donors and fan support and, I being a little bit younger than Tom, digitized quite a bit of our life, right? That he would practice plan on paper a lot. And we figured out ways that the staff could collaborate on shared documents to on the iPad and get that up on the whiteboard. And so I think the digitizing of a lot of our lives was a big piece. I'm happy to. Give Tom pieces of paper with what he needs on 'em. But my brain works a little differently. And that was a big project. And now we have our own systems, right? And everybody's used to the digital way that we do some of the recruiting sheets and how we discuss things as a staff on different things. Yeah the 90 day plan, keeping the. The great people in the ramlee involved was the biggest piece, right? Going to coffees and lunches and making sure the players knew that they were gonna be supported, like that was a big part of those first three months. I'm curious if you had to go back and do those 90 days skin, would you do anything differently? No. I was pregnant. And so I guess if I could change one thing, I would not be violently ill and growing my second child at the same time as doing that. But we just ripped the bandaid off and it was two of the greatest gifts of my life to be a head coach and then get my little daughter out of it. Oh my gosh. You're a superhero for doing that. You probably don't even remember some of those 90 days, it was a going through. Yeah. What would you teach somebody if you were in a. If I put you in front of a classroom with a bunch of aspiring head coaches, what would you talk to 'em about in terms of building a program the right way and how to build that foundation the right way? What kind of advice would you share? Learn to be a great communicator. There are a lot of like hard skills that you can learn. If you don't know how to do coding, the stats for our volleyball team, you can learn how to do that, it doesn't take a lot of talent or skills to be a great. Communicator. You just have to spend some time doing it. And so I think whether you're an assistant or a head coach, we have so many hats that we wear as a head coach and you're running so many different parts of your program of like yesterday meeting with nutritionist, strength coach, your marketing department, all these people, and they all have things that they need from you. So whatever your system is, you gotta take diligent notes and then you have to get people what they need to keep doing their job well, and you have to keep. Sowing the seeds that you care about those people. Right. I go through a very organized roulette of meeting with our players, right? And four per week, like I'm taking 'em to coffee or going to lunch with them, and same thing with your staff. And every night before I go to bed, I make sure I've answered. This is a little type A, all my emails, all my texts, all my dms, right? And even if the answer is, I'll get back to you, I want people to know I got it and I'm gonna get back to you. And then I actually get back to them very quickly. So I love my peace of mind comes from giving everyone involved in this program what they need to thrive. And sometimes they just need me to make a decision and be able to move on with that next thing. So be a great communicator and be able to, juggle all those different modes of communication pretty seamlessly. You seem like an executive function pro where Calendars, yeah, timelines sticking to them. Can a coach that's a little bit more A-D-H-D-I won't name anybody, can that be taught. Or can you get away with the job at your level if you don't have some of those OCD qualities and type A qualities? For sure. I think you have to come up with your own system, right? My system, I'm not gonna pretend like will work for every single type of person in the Myers-Briggs Matrix, right? But if you know that about yourself that the details are not your strongest suit. Hey, let's get somebody around you who can help. Take the notes and do the follow ups and just remind you, Hey, you need to get back to X, Y, Z. Right. I thought me and Tom had a really great dynamic in, in that I would kind of help prompt him for some of those things. And he's a visionary. He loves to create big visions and, um, but that the prompting of the answering of things can be something you surround yourself with too. Yeah. I, and I love your dynamic. My, my wife and my daughter was a volleyball player for a long time, and we came to your games a lot and we got to see that dynamic and it was great. The way your kids played and the way you guys communicated and you could tell there was a really great system that you guys had in place. Talk a little bit about what a division one coach's life looks like. You've got kids, you've got a family. What does a day look like in your life? Ooh, there's not a days, there's not a lot of days that look the same, right. Right. It is a dynamic industry and it depends on the time of the year, that those in season days are gonna look a little different than when we are in recruiting season. But I'll be honest with you, I have kids. I have two young kids. I have a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old. I love being a really involved mom. I love being the one who takes them to school, and that is around for family dinners and for that to function. I wake up very early, right? I wake up around four 30. I'll get a couple of hours of. Communication outta the way, or maybe I work out or maybe I plan my day, but I work from probably four 30 to six 30 in the morning, hang out with the family, get 'em to school at eight, and then try to be available for what my staff needs, right? The in-person discussions and the practices, right? You can't replicate the, I have two hours that I gotta be in that gym, and that's not flexible yeah. But yeah, it, I would say. My social life probably takes a hit. I'm not available for as many things for my friends or vacations or things like that I used to be, but there'll be a phase in life where I will do things like that. But right now I love my family. I love being around for this program and the players and the staff and this program and what. Gets sacrificed is probably a lot of your, I'm gonna call it balance of a social life. I don't go skiing a whole lot. I, I don't leave for girls trips a lot, but yeah. What's worth it to me? It's just, it is just one of those things we sacrifice, we choose to be coaches. It's your family and then it's your kids, and then it's your university and then maybe you have some time left a couple months out of the year where you can piece together some other things. But yeah, when you're a coach you're probably still not great friends with your friends from high school and college, and may maybe you see them every once in a while and zoom with them every once in a while. But that's about it. Yeah. All right, so you had a great career at Iowa, team captain. How much of being a captain. Allowed you to kinda learn how to be a coach. How much of that experience has transitioned these last years? Yeah. I have known my mom has a art project from when I was in second grade. I was seven years old and I made a life plan and on it says I'm gonna be a sports coach. So I think my whole family has known for a long time that I love sports and that coaching and, leading a group of people is something that I've always done. So I've been on, I've been a captain for all the teams I've played on, and it helps you become a coach because if you're gonna be a great leader, whether it's a captain or coach, you're gonna have to have, hold people accountable, have hard conversations. It doesn't always come with. People loving you. I've always been very well respected, but sometimes when you're telling teammates to do better and you got more in you feelings can get hurt sometimes. And it's never really bothered me because when we are better and we win championships and I see the, my teammates or my players get the most out of their experiences, that's what's worth it to me. And yeah, from a very young age I've been pretty assertive and. If some people call bossy but it's never bothered me to have hard conversations and squeeze people to get the most out of 'em. Yeah. If you wanna call me bossy, step in my shoes for a day and see how you handle it, and not being a little bossy and a little, and being a delegator. I get this question a lot 'cause I was a coach for a long time. I still work with kids. I still do a lot of coaching and speaking. People always ask me where my leadership came from, my desire to coach and teach. I had 14 niece and nephews. I was an uncle at seven. So for me that's where that came from. Where did it come from for you? How do you be six years old and decide I wanna lead and I wanna be a volleyball player? Where does that come from? My mom's a teacher in an education, so I think I, I watched my mom be in the education system and she was never a sports coach, but she loved impacting young lives. And I have an older sister who's an incredible athlete, and I wanted everything to. Keep up with her. And she was a great leader. And so I just wanted to emulate these two powerful females in my life that I wanted to be exactly like who I had great role models that I was around all the time, and I really think that I just was striving to keep up with them. And maybe still am. I analyze that in my life. I still wanna be exactly like them. And really lucky to have people that shaped me and gave me a north star of what I was trying to be like. Isn't that cool? Yeah, it's a great way to grow up. You're look at what your kids are gonna have. They're gonna be surrounded by these strong, unbelievably talented women. They can come in the gym every day and they get to see what it looks like at the peak of ability every day. A coach's kid has such a great ladder to where they wanna be and getting to see what work ethic looks like what team teamwork looks like. So I'm really happy for you that your kids have that and you have that. That's really cool. Let's talk about your program. Let's talk about your great team that you have and that you're continued to build. When you look at, when you get a chance to step back, and I know as a division one coach and a head coach, you don't get to do that very often, but when you get to take a step back after a season and you. Get to analyze what you did well, what you wanna change, where does that start for you? I always went back and watched every single game we played that year. I just, I had to watch every one and I would fill notebooks full of notes, and then I would take those notes and I'd start to break things down. Where does it begin and end for you when you get that breather? Yeah. The division one volleyball calendar. When we ended our season and lost in the championship. Around Thanksgiving week. It really started there. Hey, why did we lose? And that championship game haunts you and you watch that one back and you look at stats and but we honestly roll right into portal window season. Yep. And so the. Time to reflect and watch a ton of, it doesn't come until later in December, right when we were able to retain our team and we knew we weren't gonna be in the portal really hard. I took a break a little bit. I took a five day break and went on vacation with my fam. But since January we've really been in here and the office is filled with visuals and the stat crunching and. The Myers-Briggs personality and the internship plans and the practice plans. And I was very fortunate that, again, we got a break this year, but in January we've really rolled up the sleeves that when the players come back in a week, they get here in about a week. That we are starting that, that quest for the PAC 12 championship. And sure. Our staff also, same thing that it's good for us to be away from each other and not have group think. I think when we all get back together after a few weeks away from each other, everybody has their own great ideas and they've had a different perspective of what a kid might need to reach peak performance in this year. Yeah, I don't know if it ever ends. We did get a little break, but we have been going since January 1st for sure. Those five days with your family on vacation, are you able to turn it off for those five days? Most years, no. This was the first year and my staff celebrated this. I didn't crack my laptop open. Once coach, it stayed closed. I took it, I'm ready. Text me if you need something. But I really, for the first time in 16 years of college coaching, did not open my laptop on vacation. That makes me feel good. Keep doing that. Find a couple of those weeks throughout the year. Would you please? Yeah. I wanna be talking to you about this when you're 70 and you've won 10 national championships and we're Oh, I love that. Let's do that. We're gonna, we're gonna talk calendar. We're gonna, we're gonna talk about the breaks that you take every year to keep you healthy. It's funny, I just I just had a great conversation with Candace Moats, who's the head coach at Indiana was when they won three straight national championships and Candace has had that career, and it was just, it was amazing to me to talk to her because she was like, Matt, up till three years ago, I was thinking about retiring. I was just like, I don't think I can get over the hump. I lost my energy. And she, she did a 180 where she goes, you know what? Hell with this. I'm gonna stop worrying about winning. I'm gonna start having more fun. I'm gonna start enjoying these young women I have. I'm gonna start really breathing every day and feeling it. And all of a sudden they went three straight national championships. When you think about coaching and that 16 years of grind that you have, and I know exactly what that grind feels like, how do you keep yourself fresh? How do you keep this great mindset that you have and this great energy that you have? Where does that begin? Yeah, I was really intentional and listen, there was some luck in here and some great support in here that I waited to have kids right until I was in my thirties and I spent my twenties grinding. I do think climbing the coaching ladder and networking and it requires so much time. And again, not everyone has this luxury. I'm aware of this, but I really made. Intentional decisions to just put my head down for 10 years and work my way up that ladder and say yes to everything. And I had a boss one time that asked me to staple I don't know, a hundred packets of something and I did it sloppily and he came back and he was like. You're gonna do this again, and you're gonna tap the corners and you're gonna get the staple 45 degrees and you're gonna impress me with your stapling, or you're never gonna get more than what I'm giving you for stapling. Yeah. And it was a, I, this obviously has stuck with me that I learned to be a great staple. You want me a staple? I'm gonna be the best dang stapler you ever saw. But that's how I think I. Was able to keep impressing different great minds that I was around. And it just took a lot of time. So 10 years, honestly I didn't have a whole lot of balance. I just said yes and wanted this more than anything to get an opportunity like head coaching at Colorado State. Yeah. I've always taken care of my body. I think that's important in athletics especially. I love working out and I work in a place where there's a gym, 20 minutes on the way to practice, just go to a quick workout and it makes me into a better human, a better mom, a better coach. And I think the players see that as a life skill that they can also use their body long after their career to stay healthy. Absolutely. And it's it's great advice for all of us coaches because it's real easy to get caught up eating hot dogs and popcorn. 'cause you watch so many games and you're outta your, our time is. Is never relative. You never know when you're gonna get a chance to eat. So being able to pencil that workout in and be healthy is such a big deal. All right. Let's talk a little bit about volleyball a little bit. You are a great defensive player. And obviously defense is a huge part of Colorado State and how you guys play and how you guys attack and why you're doing so well. Where does your brain work When you're building out your practices and you're building out your scheme, do you think about the player you were and how you love to play? Or is it more systematic on how you gotta beat the Pac 12? How do you tack building out that strategy for your season? Yeah, it's funny, my whole assistant coaching life, I got bounced around into different position coaches. I was a libero, which is digging and defense and passing for the most part. So obviously that's been a natural strength for my coaching. But I think it was a big gift when certain bosses said, you're gonna take on blocking or you're gonna take on attacking. And I did not win the genetic lottery. I'm five foot eight and I think because I've always been undersized and had to. Mentally engaged myself more than maybe some of my more physical teammates or opponents. It made me learn to like, analyze the game differently. Yes. So I, again I love that I've coached different positions. When I became the head coach, I now coach the offense more than anything. Yeah. And because of my undersized, stature I've had to learn to look at the game versus just be more physical than someone, which helps me, I think, as a coach. So when we roll into practice at Colorado State we have some positional coaches that people are experts at, but I'm grateful that I've bounced around to a lot of different ones and we go into it and we've been the best offensive team in our conference historically, almost every year. But the last two years, we've been the best defensive team and that's something I'm really proud and hope we can continue to be. Best offense and best defense, and that'll be hard to beat. So hard to beat, so hard to accomplish. I was a basketball player and a college basketball coach, and I was a point guard, so I was always the smallest guy on the floor. And I had some great division one coaches that took the time to work with me on post play and teach me post play. And I loved, if you put me in a JI board, that's what I want to teach. I don't want to teach the ball handling. Yeah. I wanna teach with the big guys. I wanna teach the footwork and the body shape, and how we work. So I'm with you there. It gets a little hard. I I'm getting close to 40 years old and I'm really competitive and sometimes I'll still talk smack and practice and try to play against them or yeah, try to show them what I'm getting, trying to have them do and yep, it's a little harder than it used to be. And last year I was talking smack to our all conference 50 year blocker who's about my side. She's about my thing. And we were getting chirpy with each other and she's you do it. And I was like, I will do it. And I made this big. Dynamic block move and I ripped my calf up and I was like, I probably can't do that anymore. I'm almost out. Yep. Yeah, it's coming. Coach I was able to do it till I was about 42. I was still playing with the college kids and still getting out there and mixing up, and then I think I blew up my back and my ankle in about a three week stretch and that was it. And I was like, okay. I came, friend Kennedy was like, did you just hurt yourself? And I was like, I'm gonna need to see a trainer. So yeah. It's the 18-year-old in our head. Never goes away though. Yeah. It's always that. We always think we could be that person again. Yeah. When you think about building out your roster, and we're gonna get into recruiting in our second segment, but I really want to just how your brain works. When you look at your team, you look at the PAC 12. I know that championship game still stings it. I, I've got 15 years of games that still sting in my heart. What does that do to you in terms of how you approach next year? Are you looking at going, gosh, we just have to be better in the middle. We have to be better in our swing percentage, we've gotta be better in our swing, our serve receive. Is there things that you're like, I need 10 more minutes of practice every day and these things, or is it more big picture for you? Yeah, a little bit of both and a little bit on any given year. Let's use last year. We're bringing so much back and I really believe the physicality is in there. And they were really young. We started a bunch of freshmen and they need a little bit more time in with the speed of the game and the system that we play in. And that there is some time components for we just need more time for those kids in the gym. Yeah. There's certain years where you graduate, you're all American, and, you might need. The transfer portal I don't dislike. We have great transfer portal players, right? We've had players that leave our program for really good reasons. In the transfer portal, I have no good or bad versus a transfer portal. It's here. And again, some of my favorite kids I've ever coached have transferred into Colorado State. And so every once in a while you say, Hey, we know exactly what we need to plug in this hole. And it's something we can get in a transfer portal with an experienced player. And we're a blend of a little bit of everything. And I, I try to look at case studies of peers. In this industry that are doing it well and how are they doing it and how did you do that? And make the phone call or take 'em to coffee and learn from that. And you also learn sometimes it doesn't work at my school because of X, Y, Z and it works at your school because you have master's programs that are one year or you are on a beach and you can do that outdoor segment or there's always some constraints that you can't completely blueprint someone else's plan into your program. I'm gonna tread lightly with this question and you can slap me in the face and say, Matt, that's a terrible question. We need to move on from it. But I wanna respect Colorado Strai 'cause it's a great, one of the great institutions in our country, and I'm a Colorado guy. I live an hour and a half from you. I'm gonna, if you let me, I'm gonna sneak into a practice or two in the next couple of years, and I want to just, I want to come learn from you as well. But when you look at Nebraska, you look at Texas, you look at Penn State. And I'm sure there's some times where you're like I just wish I had their money. I wish I had this or that. Do you allow yourself to go down that road or do you just say, I have an unbelievable opportunity here. I have great kids. I know we can compete with everybody. How do you navigate that when you see the Joneses, then they've got. $5 million in their collective, more than you have or whatever that may be. How do you deal with that when your ultimate goal is to win a national championship? For sure. Yeah. I think everybody in the country tries to look at the standards and how do we compete with that and how do we beat that, right? So when you talk about the standard for NCAA division one volleyball, it is Nebraska and Wisconsin and Texas and Penn State, and there are resources there that Colorado State is probably never going to be able to replicate. And some of it is the conference. The, I'm really thrilled that we're going to the PAC 12. I think there's great opportunity. I like that for you too. In terms of media rights deals and actual financial resources that come with making that move, that will be a huge positive for all of our programs at Colorado State volleyball included. We've been seventh, we were seventh in the country for attendance this year for volleyball. Gosh. Like volleyball matters here, and we have 8,000 people show up at our games. And so that's not an excuse. I got a picture behind me, that, yeah. Playing in Moby Arena in front of 8,000 people. Like we, we have some great resources, but yeah, there's been certain things that you can't change. As the coach I couldn't change the conference. Our admin and our, leadership in the university did a great job at positioning us to make that move to the PAC 12. But the money in the Big 10 and the SEC is a legitimate competitive advantage for schools that have access to that. But I feel lucky for what Colorado State has, they are. Giving a ton to volleyball. Not every sport at those SEC and Big 10 schools matters and is resource to, to be nationally competitive. And our admin here has said volleyball is gonna matter here. Yeah. It shows. We love coming to your stadium. You're, it's, it is a great place to watch volleyball. Yeah. It's so exciting. It's so vibrant. There's such great energy, and it really doesn't matter who you're playing, it's just it's a pump you up way. So if you're a mother and a father and you've got a 10 to 16-year-old that's loves volleyball, if you're not going to Colorado State when you live in Colorado and going to some games, you're missing the opportunity to really show your daughter what it could be. And how cool it is to play at that level. Looking at the big picture again, are you looking for kids that you can develop? Or when you recruit, and I know we're gonna get into this in a little bit. When you recruit, are you more looking for that kid that goes, I just replaced that All American. We've got to replace that analytic. We've gotta replace that. The blocks that we're not that she's taking with us, with her as she walks out. How do you go about. Constructing that model every year. 'cause it's a crapshoot, right? You never know what you're gonna have on that Ross. You don't know who's gonna get hurt. You don't know who's gonna be sick or, look at Penn State lost their setter when they had no idea they were gonna lose their setter. How do you attack that? Yeah, I think at the core of who Tom Hilbert was in his 30 years, almost 30 years here. And what I took away is we can develop really athletic players who might not be great at volleyball, integrate volleyball players, right? So we've made a lifeblood in a lot of our all Americans, right? We've had 42, all Americans have been kind of raw athletes that their freshman and sophomore years aren't wonderful, but. Junior, senior, fifth year, they're unbelievable. And some of those blue bloods don't have to take that model. It's a lot of work to develop kids for two or three years and patience. It takes patience. It takes trust in your coaching and it takes retaining them, right? Yeah. It can be hard to develop 'em for four years and in their fifth year they go use their greatness for another program. But we still are really true to that. The, I'm gonna say again, some of the traditional recruiting models of the high school kids that come in and red shirt and then go on to have great careers as they develop has been, something we excel at Colorado State. We've started in the past few years because we are really good. There's really talented transfers that wanna come in here and they're ready. Yeah. They are ready to come in and I'm not gonna tell those kids no, but we still we played freshmen last year that will be incredible in their fourth and fifth years because of the experience that they're getting in getting to play as a freshman. Yeah, it's amazing. There's nothing better when you can have that freshman get that taste and earn that opportunity. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And the crowd falls in love with them, right? Yeah. Our 8,000 people it's a reason for the retention. They adopt them into internships and they have them over for dinners and Cool. They make the signs, the little kids that come to our games that make the signs for. Their favorite player and then get 'em in camp. And the relationship part of sticking around with the school for a while can't be replaced. And the ramly, our Ram Nation does a great job at adopting the freshmen and saying, Hey, you gotta stay here and we're gonna support you. Yeah. That's very cool. That's very cool. You talked about Tom helping with make, taking a major role with the collective for the. The families out there that don't really understand where NIL really starts and how it happens and how that money is able to be distributed. Talk a little bit about the collective in a layman's terms on what it is, what it does for you, what it allows you to do. Yeah, I explain in the recruiting process that athletes are getting paid financially in three different buckets. You have the traditional scholarship that most families understand, and you get a scholarship stipend out of that, and that's changed a little bit in the new rules. That started in July that they can be, no matter what the sport is they can be divvied up. Your academic aid has never been more impactful for a program. So you have this scholarship that. Can financially assist a player. You have now revenue sharing and not every school has revenue sharing for every sport. So that's an important question to ask in a recruiting process. At Colorado State, does volleyball have revenue sharing? Yes, they do. The details of that are really hard for anyone to, to understand, like, how much does a player get paid? How much does volleyball have? Those are still like trade secrets with people. But revenue sharing is a contract really with the university that you are getting paid for your name, image, and likeness within the university, but the check really does come from the university. And then the third bucket. There to be distinguished is the NIL and name, image, and likeness deals with collectives are coming with businesses in the community or with nonprofits in the community. But you gotta do something. You have to make social media posts, you gotta make appearances. You have to do something with those businesses to be getting paid And, different collectives and different universities are helping organize that as a third way for people to get paid. We have a player on our team with a car deal and she gets a free car to drive around that's leased, but she has to make posts about the car dealership and she has to do appearances at the car dealership. So those are what we call NIL deals. Yeah. So scholarship, rev sharing. And then NIL are three different ways that college athletes are now getting paid. When you look back at your career, at Iowa there wasn't really these collectives. No. Especially for volleyball. There wasn't this kind of money 20 years ago. When you go back and look at what you had to do, just to work every day to get that scholarship, to get your education paid for, what does that do for you? How do you look at this when you know what you did 20 years ago? How do you go about looking at that? Have you been able to accept that this is how it is and I like it 'cause it's more of a transaction now, you're a great relationship builder, I know how important communication with your girls are, but there's still that transaction. How have you come to terms with that? I think a lot of like traditionalists and old school people and my generation like, ah, kids these days they don't know. Like I had to, I don't know, eat a granola bar in the gas station after the game. And here. I think the rules the US court system has said they were illegal, right? And this is maybe the way it should have been. And so I have accepted that this is the free market legal system that maybe should have been in place a while ago, and at least more of it is above ground now. And I'm a big enough feminist. They listen, if the football, men's basketball players gonna do it, you better make dang sure that my, my females get access to the same opportunities. And again, playing in front of 8,000 people has your name, image, and likeness being spread a lot, and I want them rewarded accordingly. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I am excited that. I'm at a place where females are respected and paid very similarly to some of their male counterparts. And the evolution of what that means for the next generation and what my daughters will have access to, gives me a ton of hope and optimism that we're gonna be okay. I hope so. I'm with you. I love where it's going. I just, I. I want there to be a little bit more balance. Yep. You know what I mean? I want you not to have to look at Texas and Penn State and Kentucky and Nebraska and go, gosh, I, if we were only on the, we were only on the same playing field with money, what would it look like? Because, so I, I love that Texas a and m and Kentucky. One got to where they were this year and you look at football, you look at Miami and they're still, we're still talking about big time names, but Indiana's gonna play in an as action for football. I love that. We're, there's some mix up here and people have to pay attention. Okay. You can put all the money in the world in Ohio State, but Yeah. You can still beat 'em, so I love that mentality. Coach, I wanna do a little rapid fire with you. You've been great. I want get people to know you a little bit better. These can be quick questions, they can be long questions, long answers. That's all right. But we'll do a little rapid fire. Okay. First drill you learned is the lab baro that's still influences how you coach. Is there a drill that's gosh, that's, oh yeah. Floor moves. Like being comfortable diving around and not being afraid to roll up your sleeves and do some dirty work. And so teaching correct floor moves. I love that one word your players would use to describe your practices. Intense, yeah. Has to be best part about coaching in Fort Collins. I. My family's all here. I got my grandparents, my sister lives here. And I get to do everything I love with all my people with me, and it's so much, it's so much more fun racing kids when you have family. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with your work. Where'd you grow up? Twink, Colorado. Swank. Okay. I thought so. I remembered that name. Okay. Most underrated skill in volleyball serving. I've been hearing that a lot. Yeah. Are you one of those coaches that gets frustrated when we, when you miss serves, or do you, are you that got that much? We got Go for it. We're gonna rip it. We're gonna rip it. Okay. Yeah. Coffee or tea? Coffee. Coffee. Coffee in the morning. Tea at night Tea. Okay. All right. I'm with you there. One habit you refuse to compromise on during the season. Discipline ball handling, like first contact of taking care of easy plays. There's that ro coming out of you. Yeah. Toughest lesson you learned as a first year head coach comparison to the last head coach. There were always compare, right? Every loss was the social media chatter of bring Tom back. And that can be hard. Yeah. I think you've proved everybody wrong there. If anybody did know where you were headed, favorite road gym in your league? Ooh, new league. Let's talk about Pac 12 New league. Let's talk about Pac 12. Yeah, Washington State's always fun. I played there, I coached in the PAC 12 a long time ago. Yeah. We've played NCAA tournaments there. It's a volleyball specific gym, like volleyball also matters there, so that'll be a fun one. That's cool. Berro brain or head coach Brain who wins on match night. Had Coach Brain now. Yeah. I think in my early years of coaching, I still was in a very player oriented brain, but it's slowly evolved into a coaching brain a little bit more. Have you found that you're able to let go of those needs to have your fingers on everything? Are you able to let your staff really have that labro brain or that middle hitter brain more than you, you used to. Yes. And I think I'm getting better at that My first year as a head coach, that was hard to let things go. Oh, me too. I have great people around me and now I'm like, Hey, just do your thing with them. Yeah. We're gonna talk about your staff in the next segment. I want you to be able to praise them. Last one, what thing your players would be surprised to know about you? Ooh thing that my players would be surprised to know about you. I was wild in college. I'm pretty buttoned up, right? I, again, I wake up really early. I go to bed pretty early. I'm very disciplined now, but I, in my college years, had a wilder side to me. Yeah. Yeah. Were you one of those kids? I was. I was an altar boy all the way through high school. Never drank, never partied, never did anything because I wanted to play. I knew I wanted to play in college, and I knew if I got caught, I was gonna hurt. That. Were you that way, and then college allowed you to do all those things that you didn't do in high school? I've always been ornery. I think my mom would say in high school she was glad I loved volleyball 'cause it was a hear it to dangle in front of me to not make bad decisions. Yeah. Hey, if you go out, you're not gonna be able to play the next day and if you drink, you're not gonna be able to do this. And but I've always been a little bit ornery and my kids though I cannot be ornery and wake up with my kids and be a good mom. So that's kinda what got me in line. Talk about balance. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a little turned off when coaches aren't a little bit ornery. If you're not a little bit ornery. I've got some, I've got some red flags. Yeah. So when players come in here and they, I don't know, they get caught partying or have made some silly decisions, like I've been there and I shouldn't be as intimidating as you probably think I am, because I also had some learning lessons along the way. This is this part of the podcast is gonna get passed around your team very quickly. I have a, I'm sure, yeah, coach, thanks for doing this. I'm excited to talk to recruiting with you. Anybody that has enjoyed this conversation, please come back Monday and we're, you're gonna hear some great advice from Coach about college recruiting, especially at the D one level. Thanks for doing this, coach. Yeah, thanks. So impressive. You just heard the end of a powerful talk with Emily Cohan, head volleyball coach at Colorado State University. And if you're paying attention, you heard exactly what sustainable success and significance at the division One level actually looks like. Coaching isn't about taking shortcuts it's about systems. It's about communication. It's about treating people the right way, and you can see that in her retention, which is again unheard of in this era of college sports, Emily is proof that you can build a program that wins and take care of people in an era that constantly is trying to pull programs apart. If you're a coach, there's a blueprint here. If you're a recruit or a parent, there's clarity and perspective here on what healthy leadership feels like and looks like. And if you're trying to understand where college athletics is headed, you should be excited that we have leaders like Emily Cohan being a role model, an example for all of us. Please come back on Monday. Don't miss part two of this conversation where we're gonna dive directly into recruiting. We're gonna talk about what Division one coaches are actually looking for, how decisions are made, and how families can better position themselves in today's landscape. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.