Episode #150: Bill Cleary

 “Bet on You” – Building Confidence and Player Ownership with Bill Cleary (Part 1) 

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Matt Rogers sits down with Bill Cleary, Assistant Athletic Director and Head Women’s Basketball Coach at St. Thomas Aquinas College, for a powerful and honest discussion about coaching women and developing true confidence in today’s athletes.

Bill shares what he’s learned over more than two decades of coaching about the growing challenge of self-worth, the impact of comparison and social media, and why many athletes struggle to recognize their own value. Together, Matt and Bill explore what it really means to build confidence that isn’t dependent on playing time, statistics, rankings, or outside validation.

You’ll hear why Bill tells his players to “bet on you,” how language shapes mindset, and how coaches can create player-led cultures where athletes learn to believe in themselves, embrace mistakes, and grow through adversity.

If you’re a coach, parent, or athlete who cares about leadership, mindset, and long-term development, this conversation will hit home.

Part 2 drops next, where Matt and Bill dive into the realities of college recruiting and what families need to understand about finding the right fit.

Resources for basketball families, including the book Significant Recruiting and the Basketball Recruit’s Journal, are available at CoachMattRogers.com.

Learn more about Coach Cleary:  https://stac.edu/directory/cleary-william/

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• 25:35 (Cont.) Episode #150: Bill Cleary

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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 podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. Today's episode is part one of a two part conversation with Bill Cleary head, women's basketball coach at NCAA Division two St. Thomas Aquinas College in the East Coast Conference. And I'm telling you right now, I had an absolute blast with this one. Bill and I are kindred spirits. We come from the same blue collar mindset where you show up, you do the work, you own your part, and you keep fighting. Whether the scoreboard loves you that day or not. And in this conversation, we didn't tiptoe. We dug deep, we got honest. We talked about coaching women, we talked about leadership, we talked about confidence, and we talked about something that I think is becoming the defining issue for young athletes today. Self-worth, not the kind of self-worth that gets handed to you when you score 20. Not the kind that disappears when you go, oh, for seven. Real self-worth. The kind that says, I know who I am, I know what I bring. I'm gonna bet on myself no matter what's in front of me. Bill has a phrase he uses with his players that hit me right between the eyes. Bet on you. And he's not saying it like a poster on a locker room wall. He's building an entire culture around it. Because if an athlete doesn't believe in herself. How is she supposed to fully believe in a team? How is she supposed to lead? How is she supposed to handle the pressure, the setbacks, the adversity, and still show up as the best version of herself? One of my favorite parts of the episode is when Bill shares a simple bus ride exercise that turns into a major life lesson. Be on the lookout for it. And before we get into it, I wanna say thank you to a mutual friend and a friend of the show Bet Nki for introducing Bill and me. Bet you made this one happen and I'm so grateful. Alright, part one is significant coaching. It's about leading people, not just running a program. It's about building athletes who can stand on their own two feet. It's about confidence that doesn't depend on outside validation. Then make sure you come back for part two on Monday, because Bill and I are gonna get into recruiting and tell the truth about what families need to understand right now today. Let's get into it. Coach Cleary. Here we go. Okay, coach Cleary you and I just had a great conversation. I'm upset with myself that we didn't record it all'cause there was I already love you. You and I have talked a couple times already and I, I love your approach to coach you. I love your background. Let's jump in to coaching women.'cause both, I coached women, you've coached women. We both coach men and women. Let's talk a little bit about self-worth, self value coaching women and some of the things you're hearing from your women in your program, and then some of the things you're doing to get that self-worth and that value where it should be, right? No, it's funny. I first off, coach, thank you so much for this opportunity. I think this is fantastic. I love what you're doing. You're getting. You're getting different philosophies, perspectives out to different people. So I think what you're doing is fantastic. So I really appreciate this opportunity and I'd be remiss if I didn't give coach Bet a shout out for setting us up here. So I think the world of her, and I think she's phenomenal, but yeah, agreed. But no I really it's I first started coaching women in 2003. Coming from the men's side you're, coaching the men. I, people ask, what do you like, who'd you like coaching better, men or women? And I'm like, it's a no brainer. It's women. It's, and they're like, really? Why? And I'm like, because the guys know everything. It was amazing. Like I tell you, the kid, yo Jacob cut back door. He is I know. I'm like, but you didn't, you're still standing there. What do you mean, then do it, and then with the women, when you when your players knew you were there for them more than just basketball, when it was a family, when it was truly a family, they ran through the wall for you. And I've been blessed. I've been at four different programs. The players, I've been able and have the fortunate opportunity to coach. They've treated me very well, and they've ran through the wall for me. And as much as I hope I was able to learn from them I, or excuse me, they were able to learn from me. I can promise you I learned a lot from them. But it's funny you take a look from 2003 to 2026, it has spanned such a it's gone from one spectrum to the other. And what I mean by that is the players. When I first started coaching, really had a lot more self-awareness, self-worth way more confident, didn't have a problem to being confident. And so it was great. They really bought, they, because if you're not bought into yourself, how can buy into something else, right? And they really truly were bought into themselves, which made it easy to buy into us. And. Today, I think the biggest struggle we have is getting our players to realize their true value, their true worth. And one of the things we try to say to our players all the time is bet on you. And I know we play a team sport, but if you don't bet on yourself, how can you bet on others? And it's one of the things we try to say before we leave the locker room is always bet on you. And, we got to me, I got 15 of the greatest kids in the world. I love them. I think they're the best. They give me everything they have. We're trying to get them to realize they got a lot more. And and what I mean by that is just having more confidence in themselves because, with what they're capable, they, I think sometimes today I noticed that they limit themselves. They hold themselves back and it's why and I'll I'll throw this to you, coach. You read a lot of things on social media. Are kids afraid today to fail? Or are they afraid to choose? And it's one of those things where,'cause it's what do you mean afraid to choose? We're trying. One of the things we talk about in recruiting is we wanna empower our players. We want'em to be strong, confident, decisive. Loud individuals to learn to be that while they're here, so that when they leave here, that's who they are. It's not just about basketball here and everyone gives you the whole cliche, right? It's always more about basketball, but it really is. And we wanna get our players to be not just great basketball players, but great people as well. But are they able, are they really see able to see their true self worth and are they able to see their true value? And I think sometimes they're holding themselves back. I, that's where I'm struggling with right now. Are they afraid to fail or are they afraid to choose? And so one of the things we try and tell our players, just choose but choose. Choose'em perfectly. Who cares? Just make a decision. As long as you make a decision and you communicate that decision, we're gonna be okay. You talk about 2003 to now and what's changed? How much of that is social media? Where there's the world to compare yourself to. There's every 18-year-old girl on TikTok in Georgia and New York, and California, and Japan and Germany to compare ourselves to how much of that is restricting their ability to go. I know who I am. I know what I like to be. You've just accept me. Who I am is that where it's starting? I'll throw one back out. Do they accept themselves or who they are? Exactly. And I think that's, I always tell our players, are we asking the right questions here? Yeah. You know what I mean? Because when I was at Colgate, when we would recruit these kids, we would be offering kids. It's funny, I offered four kids in eighth grade. It was crazy. It was absolutely crazy. But we got one, one went to Georgetown, one went to Ohio State. And where one went to Drexel. And that's a pretty good recruiting right there. Yeah. We only got one. We didn't get all but you, your evaluation, I'd say that's pretty good evaluat. Good evaluating, maybe not good recruiting, you sit there and talking to these kids and they're so young. And I would say, listen, just have a conversation with me. I'm not gonna judge you. Let's talk about what you're thinking, what you're feeling. Because when they're 14 and 15, like no disrespect, I have nothing in common with that. I'm a 45, 40 6-year-old male, and they're a 14, 15-year-old female. So obviously there's not much in common. So we got, I had a watch. Netflix episodes, Hulu episodes, just to have certain lab conversations. We had Netflix and Hulu for recruiting purposes at my house, but we would talk about social media and they would talk about how, coach, I just don't understand how so and so has an offer from this school. And I don't. And it was neat because like I didn't look at it as, wow, that's selfish. It's I get it. You know what I mean? Because you want'em to be themselves. You want them to be able to speak freely and so you're able to sit down and even the parents would be on the phone.'cause we always made sure the parents were on the phone and it was good for them to get educated on this as well. And I'm like, listen, you can't worry about what others are getting over you. One of the things we tell our players is don't compare yourself. Don't compare yourself to anyone on the team. If you compare yourself as a freshman, if you compare yourself to a junior or senior, you're gonna have a lot of issues because you're gonna be looking at them going, wow, they're just so much better to me. They should be. They've been there for two, three years. You gotta be comparing yourself to your only yourself. Were you better than you were the day before? So we would tell the parents in the recruiting you don't know what those schools are looking for. You just don't know. They might be looking for a tall, a big, they might be looking for a wing, they might be looking for a point guard. They may be looking for this, they may be looking for that. You don't know what they're looking for. And then everybody's philosophy's different. We look for different things. Like one of my son's au coaches, Christy Denny, she's fantastic. Love her. And she treats my kid great. And we she's bill, you gotta look at this kid, like all my, in my program. She's great. I love her. She's fantastic. Everything that Christie said was true. The kid was a fantastic kid. She just didn't fit our philosophy of what we did. Yeah. It doesn't mean she was a bad player. I thought she was an excellent player, but she just didn't fit. And so like people don't understand, there's so many variables. And then when they talk about I don't know how this kid has this ranking, or this kid has that ranking rankings are nothing. Rankings just has a number in front of a person's name, and there's so many different variables on why that number's in front of that person's name, who cares? Do they fit? Where do they fit, where the program which they're trying to go to. And if parents even understood who's doing these rankings and their lack of experience of doing these rankings. I got a story for you with rankings. I don't know if it's meant for this, but we had a top 100 class. At Colgate was the first one and we were excited. And so we, we get a phone call from the guy that runs the ranking thing and I was like, ah, this is great, appreciate it,'cause we really worked hard. We got it. And he goes to me, bill, are you gonna re-up on. Subscription. Now, the pre previous coach had gotten the subscription. I didn't, we were I'm a dinosaur. I'm old school. I had my own, I had my own way of doing recruiting. We can talk about that later. But he goes to me, I said, I can't. I said, we're getting budget cuts here. I said I'm not gonna be able I'm cutting the recruiting services. I said,'cause so and so I do it my own way and but I really appreciate the love that you gave us. Thank you so much. A week later, we went from 97 to 1 67, so didn't pay for it. That tells you didn't pay for your top because I, you just answered the question. I didn't pay for it. That's right. That's right. And that's how recruiting works too. That's how these recruiters and that's what parents don't understand and that's what these poor kids, so now these poor kids are seeing all this stuff. So we're talking about why these kids have. Have such negative self value and self-worth is because I'm sure someone like I work really hard. I do this, and this kid I know doesn't do that, but she has a higher ranking than I do, and now it's because mom and dad knows someone. Then that person knows someone and that person knows sewing, and that's how it works. But a majority, not all of them, not all. I don't mean the paint a broad brush, but that's the majority. Unfortunately, we have to paint a wide brush every once in a while. It's just the nature of the beast. All right. My, my wife, what I'm about to talk about and the question I'm about to ask you, my wife would probably slap me in the face and go, what are you doing? You're two middle-aged men. What are you doing talking about girls and women and, and all and self-worth when you don't know a lick? This is, we coach them. We love them, we care about them. You have daughters. I have daughters. I wanna go back to social media on this because I'm gonna use Sophie Cunningham as an example and I wanna get your thoughts on it. I love Sophie Cunningham. I, I probably don't love her the way other people do, but I love her confidence'cause I never had it. I love the fact that she goes through the life. It seems to me that she goes through life going, this is what makes me happy. I don't really care what anybody thinks. I'm, if I feel joyful, I'm gonna express joy. Correct. I wonder how many,'cause I, she's the type of person I want my daughter to see. And I go, that's how you live your life. Yep. Not so much with blinders on, but when it comes to your heart and your spirit in your soul, you almost have to have blinders on and you have to go, I like what I see. I'm proud of what I see in the mirror. So I, my first thought is I want my daughter to look at Sophie Cunningham and go live your life that way. Joyful, free, give energy, give positive. Don't be afraid to talk trash. Don't be afraid to, dive on the floor. I felt the same way about Dennis Rodman. Yeah, absolutely. We can go on and on about the negatives of dentist, but. But there, I'll be honest with, there's more positives and negatives. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's more positives and negatives, but go ahead. But I think my question is how many 16-year-old girls are looking at a Sophie Cunningham and going, oh my God, look at those long legs. Six foot one, beautiful blonde hair. Gorgeous. I can't have her confidence'cause I don't, my body's not built like her. I, I. I haven't done, I haven't done enough to have that confidence. I haven't, I don't see in the mirror to have that confidence that she has. Is that a reality or is that another false impression we have in our heads that's what perfect is or that's what ideal is. Again, I think it depends on the person. What do they believe? What is perfect to them? What is beautiful to them? What is, because I think if you get with my 15 players, I think you'll get 15 different answers. Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm using Sophie as an example'cause Yeah. And so popular lately on social media. But I would, what I would throw back at you is we're having a film session. And I have our players a lot of times run the film session because instead of we, we talk about recruiting, we wanna empower, we want'em be confident, strong, decisive, loud individuals. It's not something we just talk about. It's something that we actually believe in. So they're running film. I'm like, all right, first clip. What do y'all, they, the leaders take control. So and we didn't do this. We didn't do this, we didn't do this, we didn't do this. And I'm like, stop. What did we do? That's right. That's right. How come we don't see so and so doing this? And so doing that, and so do, like, why is it just the bad we're pointing out as opposed to the good that we've done as well? You go to, we're watching film yesterday and we didn't have a good game on Saturday. Those things happen and first play of the game, one of our players, I'm like, all right, what happened here? She goes I made a horrible path. I said, stop. We're not using words like horrible or terrible or stink or that. I said, because that reinforces the wrong thing that we're trying to do here. Yes, and I'm not giving, I'm not giving you guys like, it's not i'm saying these things just to paint. Hey, he's a happy joy. No. Like we're entrusted with people's children here. Yeah. Yep. And we're trying to teach them that, listen, mistakes happen. We have a great guy here, Mackay Matthews. He does a great job with our sports performance. He's our sports performance coach, and I heard him talk to one of our players. He's yo, every time make a mistake. Just wipe it off. One of our kids missed a couple laughs they took around. I'm like, yo, wipe it off. Come on, wipe it off, throw it out. It's good. Next play. You know what I mean? Like why are we always going to the negative? Why? Like, why did you say horrible? Why didn't you say you know what? I've had the right read here, but if I just bounce past the ball, I make the play. That's right. Yep. You have to change their thinking. Yeah. And I go back to you coach so where, like where are we getting this negativity from? And I, to me the biggest answer is always comes back to what you're talking about is social media. Yeah. And again, they're what they perceive as exactly beautiful and perfect. To, to me, I, when I go speak at schools I typically start the conversation with something I was taught years ago with I, whether it's parents or kids in the room or professionals, I say, I want you all to take the word success, and I want you to throw it out the window and don't use it anymore, and I want you to exchange it and replace it with significance. And the difference is a success. Anybody can walk into a gym and throw a ball up over a matter of time and they're gonna make a basket. Significance is understanding what do I gotta do to make that basket over and over again? My feet and my strength and how I use my legs, and how I foul through and understanding the significance of this. And it seems to me that's what you're teaching the young women in your program is. All right. It wasn't a stinky pass. Okay? It was turnover. But we wanted her, she, we wanted to get her in the corner for a three, and you let her, and she had to go forward and fumble the ball. If we would've hit her in the back of the shoulder, if we would've caught it here, it would've slowed her down and give her a chance to get set and make that shot. All right, so we know how to fix that. Let's talk about how we gotta make that pass better next time. Correct. There's the significance in it to get to the success that we want over and over again. Correct. I don't know how we do that with social media when they're just, it's like a fire hose. Yeah. And 90% of what they're getting in that fire hose, it's telling them stuff that probably isn't real or doesn't make any sense, or there's no significance to it. It's just so I don't know how to do that. So let's go back to how we started.'cause I love this story that you told. Talk about going around the circle and going, what are you good at? I want the audience to steal that because I love that I'm gonna steal that for the rest of my career. Going back to what we're talking about, just not understanding the value and worth so we're on the bus we're traveling. I forget to where we're by ourselves. It's just I think we're going up to St. Michael's in Vermont and on our way up I'm like, Hey, so and what do you do? Yeah. And she's, and she sits there and she's thinking, and she's thinking, and I'm like, hold that thought. I'm like, everyone else give me, tell me what does. Next thing you know you're, she attacks, she shoots, she defends. She knows the defense. She has a high iq, like everything's coming out. I'm like, all right. Then I go to the next person. I went to the first person who said something about that kid, and I'm like, all right, what about you coach? I don't know. All right, hold on. Okay. Tell me about her. And then next thing everyone's firing things off. I'm like step up. I Are you recognizing here, are we able to be able to compliment and see the good. Everybody else, but we can't see the good in ourselves. And the value in ourselves. I said, I'm confused. Yeah, I'm confused. Again. That's why I brought up Sophie Cunningham. She was the one that just popped in my head's she gets her value. She's gonna tell you I'm good at this, and this. She's not gonna have to think about it. And it doesn't have anything to do with her looks or her beauty. Or her shape. Or her size. Yeah. Everything to do with what's inside. But she's, I don't know, 25, 26 years old too. We're dealing with 18 to 21 year olds most of the time, and oftentimes I'm working with 15 to 18 year olds a lot of the time. Yeah. That's what I'm seeing a lot. And that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. And I and I think there's that part of it where they just have to get to there. They have to struggle a little bit. They have to make some mistakes. They have to realize who their people are. Who are the people that are gonna tell me the straight scoop and who are the people that are just gonna tell me what I wanna hear?'cause they want something from me, I agree. I'm gonna throw this at you. We talk about social media, but let's also talk about society because what do we prop up? We prop up success. That's right. We prop up people that win. We prop up people that score. We prop up people that you know are rich. Not everybody's that, and everyone has a role in What about the kid that made the cut that got the kid open for the point? Or what about the kid that made the extra pass? That got that kid that shot. Or what about the kid that took the charge? Or what about the kid that had the screen assist that the, like, why aren't we, we beautify tangible things. Yep. And we don't celebrate the things that actually make it come into existence. And I think, the other thing is people don't realize a lot of these people that you see that are successful right now have failed. And we're trying to tell our players failure's. Okay? Failure's. How you learn. Failure's. How you learn and get better. Because, we talked about, yesterday I talked to our players about adversity and I said, I'm gonna educate you here. I said, I think it was, I don't know when Virginia lost in the first round, was it 2018? 2017, yeah. To UNBC. Yeah. That was, yeah, that was Bennett. That was Bennett. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, ladies, that was the first time on the men's side that a one seed lost to a 16 seed. Yeah. I said, and they, the embarrassment, quote unquote, that happened from it. I said, A lot of teams, there's so many ways that this could have went for Virginia and for Bennett. And he talked about adversity. He talked about, sometimes you gotta go through some hardships and some pain and some conflict to get to that other side. And I think as a society we, we say conflict's bad, we say failure's bad, we say all these things are bad, as opposed to no it's part of the growth and it's part of the process. Yeah, we all wanna win. We all wanna win, we all wanna be there, but there's a process to it. And we have to own. They owned that loss. They owned what happened, and when you own it, then you're able to move on from it.'cause then you're taking responsibility. And I said, lady, they went on, they hit the adversity head on because again, he spoke about it's a ticket that can take you places that you never thought you could go. And they won the national championship. The next year, I believe. The next the very next year. Very next year. Yeah. The very next year. I said so yeah. We're, are we where we wanna be right now? Absolutely not. We all can agree to that. I said, but we have all the answers in this locker room right now. We don't need someone from the outside coming in to fix this. We can do it, but we gotta see the fire and we gotta run towards it and we gotta put it out ourselves.'cause we can. What's amazing to me is that the second girl you asked how good they were. Still struggled. Still struggled. Still struggled. No. She heard the support that the other girl got from the team. And the sup felt the support she probably gave to the first girl. I'm a huge Bears fan. Ah, sorry about that. That was a great game. That's exactly my point. This is what made me feel so good about this game last night. Talk about society. This is what gives me hope. They lose a heartbreaker. Yep. And 70,000 people stayed in that set, in that stadium and clapped. Yep. And video of the bears walking off the field and they're going, thank you for great season. Thank you for your effort. And it was never quitting. Thank you for fighting every game. Absolutely. That's Chicago. That's how I grew up. It's, and you grew up the same way. We were surrounded by blue collar people that you went to work every day. You gave everything you had. Yep. A hundred percent. And if you didn't get the result you wanted, it wasn't because you didn't give everything you had. Yep, absolutely. It isn't that sum up what we do every day. Isn't that sum up what you're doing every day? Every single day. Every day. And that's the thing,'cause people like. I've been blessed. I've had a lot of success. And obviously right now we're struggling a bit and I'm going through a time where I haven't gone through something like this before. Yeah. But yeah, you have. Yeah. But I'm looking at it as a challenge. Yeah. You know what I mean? As instead of going. I need new this, I need new that, or maybe I can't do this. I'm like, no, I'm saying a word I shouldn't have said no I've been here. That's right. I've been here. We like, the difference is I came in and we know, I know how to do this. We're a fixer. We're going to do this. We're gonna get through this, but we gotta do this together. And we have everything that we need right here and we do. And we do. And it's just changing that mentality and changing them to understand like every, like it's not just about basketball, it's about life.'cause you're gonna have relationships, you're gonna have work, you're gonna have family, you're gonna have situations that you're going to encounter, good, bad, or different, but you're gonna be able, when we get through this, you're gonna be able to use this experience as a way to help you get through whatever it is that you're gonna have down the line. And it's just, it's true. It's true. I'm not gonna keep going back to the Bears all our entire conversation, but I love the fact that Ben Johnson showed the Patriots Eagles or Falcons Super Bowl to the team in spring training in the summer. And so we're gonna get to a point where we're gonna be down by three touchdowns, and I'm gonna show you, it's possible, I'm gonna show you that it's possible that you can overcome that. I love that mentality. As a coach, I wish I would've. I've done more of that when I was coaching. You brought something up. So I get the job at Bloomsburg. Yeah. And it's 2008 and I have an assistant Diane Decker, who I hired, and she was fantastic. We looked, we worked very well together. I really enjoyed my time with her. We really clicked. We really connected. I was blessed. We were, we worked together for seven years outta my eight years at Bloom and. One of the things that we did was we brought, bloom had only won one conference championship in their whole existence as a women's basketball program. And so when we had our first recruiting class come in, what we did was we brought that trophy and we put it in the locker room, and the players look at that trophy every day and as freshmen, as sophomores, as juniors. And they were like, this is what we want. Each year we got better and better, and it was their senior year and we're playing well, and we're up 18 on Millersville at home, up 18. Everything's humming, everything's on, and then. A lid went on the rim, a lid literally goes on the rim, literally goes on the rim. It was by two. Ugh. And it was on the second hand, like we brutally like just and it was just uncharacteristic. But it was, but you could tell there was something more there. I'm like I know my players, I know my players. So after the game, like we're all defeated. We're all defeated. And I'm looking around the locker room and I'm like, you know that something's off. That's right. You know what I mean? And you're like, I don't know what it is. Something's not right. Because we were humming, we, everything was going great. So I texted Alyssa Flanagan, she was our captain. I said, are you guys still around? And she said, yeah. So her and the seniors came into my office and it's probably about 11 o'clock at night and they were still in the locker room. And I'm like, what's up? And they're like, coach. Now we had just won, we had just won the east, I think two years in a row. And it was on the east side to host this year, so you really wanted to host. And they're seniors and they're like, coach. It's just, it's a lot right now. We wanna win the east, we wanna host we wanna win the conference championship, we wanna get to the N NCAA A tournament. We wanna, I'm like, all alright. All right. I get that. I know that. I said, but you're playing for. Something that's not, we're not even there yet. We still have eight more, nine more conference games. So it's the beginning of February and I'm like you gotta relax. And they're like, we just can't like, like you're you. I'm feeling it now. I'm like, oh my God. Like you can feel the pressure that they are literally putting on themselves. Yeah. So parents are probably not gonna like this. Administrator. Administrators are definitely not gonna like this. But I was like, F it. Look at me. I'm like, F it. If it happens. If it doesn't. It's not gonna define what you've all done here. Yeah. I said, so don't have it paralyze you. Yeah. Just one game at a time. It was hilarious.'cause that unfortunately that became the the team motto from there on out. It was just f it and yeah, we won the east, we hosted and we won the conference championship and that's all they wanted. F it might be the best coaching sometimes we ever do it. It really is. It might be and. Time. Something came up. Yeah. They'd walk during the game. They'd walk by me, Hey coach. I'm like, what's up, F it. Got it. Got it. You know what I mean? And and sometimes they'd tap me on the shoulder because I'd be heated. Yeah. Yo, coach F it. Yeah. All right, let's go the next flight. Let's go. But the best part was when they put the conference trophy next to the se, the first one, because that's all they wanted. Yeah, it's all one. And they got it. But you gotta f it. I love how you use the phrase bet on you with your individuals bet on you as a team. Bet on who you are. Bet on yourself. I like the why not you. Why can't you do this? Yeah. You're down 18, you're down 20. No one's won a conference championship here in 20 years. Why not you? Yeah. I just, I love that mindset, and we're sometimes gonna have girls, and I know you've had years where injuries have just derailed things and I've had it too. And there's certain things you just can't control. Yeah. It's getting, and I was, I paralyzed myself'cause I had the same, I, that's how I, at 19, I was not anywhere close to my potential'cause I couldn't get past the goals. I needed somebody to say what happens if all the gyms burn down and we have to play in a parking lot conference championship somewhere, in March. And we got, and there that's all we got is a ball and two metal rims. And they're, it works round flare rims like we had you and I grew up on. Are you still gonna love the game? Are you still gonna play hard? Are you still gonna fight for that? Let's go. That's the only thing that should matter. I wish somebody would've talked to me that way when I was 18, 19 years old. I needed it. I needed someone to kick me in the butt and say, if you don't have a team, if you don't have a uniform, if you're not practicing every day, if you're not playing ball every day, how you gonna feel? I feel but I think it goes back to what you said, but I think, again, we go back to different times and there was, social media was starting to come around, but we said we'd play anyone, we would play anyone anywhere, anytime. We didn't care. And we didn't care how good you were.'cause we knew we were gonna beat you. Yeah. Like our kids had a swagger. Like it was a swagger before there was swagger and my kids at Wilmington had it. Oh my gosh. My, my kids at Wilmington, they're the ones that taught me swagger. You know what I mean? And then, yeah. We went to Bloom, and then they had it and now it's if you have it, it's oh, you're cocky, or you're like, they're look, almost looked upon in a negative light. And it's confidence is not a bad thing. No. It's not a bad thing. All right. Betting on yourself is not a bad thing. Never a bad thing. It's having the confidence to do it and having the will and the worth to say, I'm betting on myself and if I gotta say F it and I gotta think f it, then that's the way I gotta beat man. But I'm not gonna fail because I'm gonna have paralysis by analysis. I'm not gonna fail'cause I didn't try. I'm not gonna fail'cause I didn't give it everything I had. Yep. I agree. All right. I'm teleport you in a machine. Bill Cleary, the 23-year-old coach. Are there some nuggets you would give him to say, this is your foundation. If you stay true to this or these principles you're gonna have a great career, you're gonna have a ton of fun. It's gonna be what you want it to be. As when you're a young coach, you're sitting there and all you're thinking about is making a name for yourself, right? Yeah. And you just go out and you're just like, I got a, you watch you I can speak for me. I'm watching how all these coaches handle themselves on tv, and I was blessed. I worked for two really great guys Chris Mooney. Who's at the University of Richmond right now. One of the best basketball minds I think I've ever been around in my entire life. He just got it. It was at Arcadia University, which was at that time was Beaver College, but he just got it and just sitting on his bench and I worked with there. That bench had three division one head coaches on it. Yeah. Chris who went to Air Force and then Richmond. Kevin Mcgain who went to Campbell University. Yeah. There was myself who was at Colgate and ironically, probably one of the better coaches, or the best coach I think of the four, was Bernie Rogers, who's an athletic director in high school coach at the Harford School in Philadelphia. Like you look back at that staff and I was on mute on that staff. I brought that staff down by like light years. Let me tell you. But I would tell myself to have to bet on you. Like the same thing I'd tell to my players right now. I would've tell, I would tell my 23 year self bet on you. Stay true to who you are. Don't be something you're not. Yeah. Paul Hewitt, I worked for Paul Hewitt. Paul Hewitt at Georgia Techs grad assistant, one of the greatest human beings in life. Incredible coach. Absolutely unbelievable recruiter. Yeah. And. A poor man I would've to drive him to players' houses for home visits. So that guy. I had to answer all my questions for four hours, two hours there, two hours back. I was like, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Like I got him next to me, so I'm just gonna pepper him with questions on, it's a master class, and I'm like this. And then what I would do is I had a backpack. I would literally, he'd go into the home visit and then I would write down everything he wrote or he said, and he didn't know he was being recorded ba because that was recording. We didn't have phones at that time, phones was just coming out, so he didn't realize he was being recorded. But, I wrote everything down and you wanna talk about just how to run a program and how to treat people and I don't think you'll find anyone better than Paul Hewitt. I don't. And so good. Just trusting in yourself and trusting in the people that you had as mentors. Chris Mooney and Paul Hewitt and Pizza Harris and Dean Keener, cliff Warren. You know what I mean? And I apologize, I'm probably forgetting somebody, but those are the ones that really damn Williams. Oh my God. He was a huge influence. And he was the former head men's basketball coach of Holy Family. So Tom Shirley at Jefferson University is another one. So I, I was blessed to have some really great people that helped me and helped mentor me to. The coach I am today. That's fantastic. I could do this all day with you. Coach. I'm I'm gonna have to come see you at some point and just sit in your office and watch a couple practices for a couple of days.'cause this is fantastic. I'm gonna do a little rapid fire for you to wrap it up and give you a chance to think real quickly here. One trade every great team you've coached has had in common together. Play together. Yeah. Hardest rebuild you've ever taken on Colgate. Tough place to recruit. Tough place to grow. I think the problem there, and we did it. Yeah, we did it. It was, yeah. We took over a program that had went eight wins on average at division one for 31 years, had one winning season and. You saw after our first year, you saw, okay, this is going somewhere. And then I rolled the dice. And of course when I rolled the dice, as my wife will tell you, I'm the worst gambler in the world. So we lost one our I just, I couldn't have one of our best players get hurt. And unfortunately, like we were four four, we were up three in the third quarter against Holy Cross First conference game. She attacks it scores. M1, we're up five, we're going nuts. She's not getting up. Ugh. To ACL. And then we lost 13 in a row after that, but we were in it. I give those kids a ton of credit. They stayed with it. We ended up winning three of our last five games and it carried over to a following year. And then my last year there before COVID. We won 19 games, set the school regular season record at that time, and we had a birth in the WNIT tournament and it was phenomenal. Yeah. And we were then getting Power four recruits. We actually had two that we had committed. It was going in the right direction. And, I think, you gotta do what's best for you and your family sometimes. And, I have no regrets with what we did and how we did it. And, but it was, it's a tough, it's a tough place to recruit. It's cold snows all the time. But we had some great kids. We had some great kids. It's, and you'll never forget those years either.'cause you know how hard it was Yeah. To get where you went. Yeah. Absolutely. Best advice you received early in your career? Worry about the 80% and not the 20%. Yeah. That's such good advice for any young coach, isn't it? Geez. It really is. I think sometimes I, there's been times I've been, I have been guilty of trying to get that 20% to come along, but it's like you got 80%, so just go with them. Yeah. And then that 20% has to make a decision. Do I get on board or not? And I think sometimes you can get this distracted with that. Tell me if I'm wrong, but when we talk about the 20%, we're not talking about your four best players. We're talking about the heart of the team and the 20% that are struggling to get on board with the rest of the team. Correct? Yeah. Yep. I love that advice. I One habit that separates good players from great ones never satisfied. Yeah. Always wanting more like Rachel Thompson comes to mind. Kelsey Gallagher comes to mind. Yeah. You talk about Nodia Henry. Oh my gosh. Amelia Simmons. I to, I look at those kids. Nordea came to me. We were at Wilmington my first year. I took over a program. I won two games six years in a row. And, you talk about arrogance, I'm like, I can win more than two games. Yeah. Won two games my first year and got humbled really quick. Yep. And brought in Nordea and we went from two to 14. And Norty was never satisfied. Nordea was always pushing me, pushing her teammates, pushing herself. And it was, we went from a two win team to a 22 win team and we won a championship and we had, Amelia Simmons was one of the best players I've ever coached, if not the best player, but Nordea Henry she made that team go. It's amazing what happens when you get lucky and recruit the Pied Piper. The kid that's just gonna say, this is where we're going. Everybody get on board and you don't know it Too. Hundred percent. Yeah. Your definition of a player led culture where I'm quiet, like you don't wanna hear my voice all the time. And I think that's where. This generation struggles a little bit because they've had parents that are always protecting them, so to speak. And I hate saying answering for them or, yeah. If and it's again, going back to understand your value and your worth.'cause you've got so much, you're so smart, you're so intelligent. You know how to handle situations and there's times where it's coach, this is what happened. And they're putting it on my desk and I'm like, but this, you found it. Why are you handling it? Yeah. One of my favorite questions I've ever got asked in an interview I was at an interview and one of the students asked, student athletes asked me, Hey, coach, how would you handle a situation when a player. When a player says in the locker room that, she's not getting enough playing time. And I'm like, you know what? That's a really good question. I said, how would you handle it? And she got stunned. And she said, what do you mean? I'm like, chances are you're gonna hear it first. So how are you going to handle that conversation? I said,'cause you're gonna bring it. If you bring it to me, I'm gonna make sure you're there too. Because I'm not gonna sit here and say, I heard it'cause I didn't. I heard it from you. So how are you gonna handle that situation? And it's teaching'em how to handle conflict. It's teaching'em how to stick up for themselves on something that they want.'cause they wanna win. And she's saying she's not playing and they don't agree with it. Let them know and let them know my, let them know why. It's a lot easier to hear from your coach that you're just not playing hard enough. You're not working hard enough when your teammates have already told you that, correct? Correct. Yeah. You're not showing up every day. Your attitude's not there your effort's not there. Yep. A mistake young coaches make too often worrying about results, worrying about win losses, scoreboard. It's not about that. Yeah. It's not, yeah we teach it all the time. Don't worry about the scoreboard. Do your work. And we become that hypocrisy of if you take care of the stuff off the court and again, it's, yeah, it's, are they going to class? Are they good citizens for the campus community? Are they showing up on time? Are they doing what they're supposed to be doing? If all that stuff is being done, everything else will take care of itself on the court. I agree.'cause there's no distractions. Absolutely. One word to describe your coaching style today. I always like to think trans transformative. I think I, am I making up a word? No, I know exactly what you're talking about. How would you define that in action? One of my favorite stories is one, one of my players here at Stack. I'm sitting there and I'm like, Sarah, what play do you wanna run? I know what play I wanted to run. I know exactly what play I wanted to run, and she was a freshman at the time, and I'm trying to get her to believe in herself, and that she actually knows the game better than she does. And she goes, I don't know. What do you wanna run? I'm like, I don't know. I have no clue. What do you think? Yeah. And so she like, she got she would be in my office, so she knows me. She goes, coach, come on. What play you wanna run? I'm like, Sarah, I just don't know. What do you think? And she goes, 6, 5, 4. I'm like, all right, let's go to 6 5 4. Ironically, that's the play I was literally thinking, but I didn't wanna give her that right satisfaction. And the whole time I remember going. It's the right call. I'm like, just Lord, please let the ball go in the basket, because that's how these kids judge it. It's based on whether the ball goes in the basket or not. So I'm like, Lord, it just anything. Just let this ball go in the basket. And she calls it, she runs it, she shoots it. We score. Team calls, time out, and I made her a half court. I'm like, see, you don't need me. It's great. Yeah. If you don't have one of those stories in your career, there's, you haven't been doing it long enough'cause Yeah. I can think of games where my 15th player came up to me out of timeout with three seconds ago and goes, coach, we need to run, we need to run 5 29 here. And I'm like. That's a pretty good idea. I like that. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's go run, fight. Why not? And we win the game. Let's absolutely talk about building ownership and creating ownership. It's, there has to be some chances taken to get the fruits of that labor. Absolutely. Coach, you are so awesome, man. I am, I'm having so much fun. You're gonna get calls from me outta the blue now, unfortunately, for you. And I'm just gonna wanna talk hoops with you. But thanks. No worries. I love talking hoops. If you're listening, come back. Coach Cleary and I are gonna talk recruiting. We're gonna get into the dirt, into the weeds with recruiting. So if you're a parent, you're a high school coach and you've got a kid that's going through this journey, you're gonna want to hear what we're gonna talk about next. But thanks for doing this, coach. Nah, I really appreciate the time. Coach. I thank you so much. Really enjoyed it. Went by fast. It really went by fast. Yeah, too fast. So thank you. You just heard part one of my conversation with Bill Cleary head, women's basketball coach at St. Thomas Aquinas College. If there's one message I hope you take away from this episode, it's this confidence isn't something that gets handed to you. It's built. It's earned, it grows when athletes learn to see their value, own their mistakes, and make the decision to bet on themselves, especially when things aren't going their way. Great. Coaching isn't about creating perfect players. It's about helping young people believe they're capable of more than they thought possible. That's the work, that's the responsibility, and when you get that part right, the wins have a way of taking care of themselves. If you're a basketball family navigating the recruiting journey, you can find my book, significant Recruiting and the basketball recruits journal@coachmattrogers.com. They're designed to help athletes stay organized, be intentional, and stay focused on what really matters throughout their process. And don't miss part two of this conversation with Coach Cleary. We're gonna get into recruiting the realities, the misconceptions, and what families need to understand to find the right fit. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.