HEAD COACH

RYUN WILLIAMS

The Colorado State women’s basketball has seen great success under the guidance and direction of Head Coach Ryun Williams, who enters his 14th season with the Rams and his 31st overall as a collegiate head coach in 2025-26.

Under Williams’ guidance, the Colorado State women’s basketball team has compiled a 254-149 (.630) overall record, including nine seasons with 20-plus victories and five conference championships – most of any coach in program history. He is the only coach in CSU history to surpass 200 career victories.

While at Colorado State, Williams’ players have collected four Mountain West Player of the Year honors, 18 All-MW selections and eight All-MW Defensive selections. Behind Williams’ nack for landing instant-impact transfers and freshmen, CSU has won three of the last four Mountain West Newcomers of the Year and have racked up five All-MW Freshman team honorees.

On top of that, Williams has coached a pair of players in McKenna Hofschild (2020-24) and Emma Ronsiek (2024-25) that combined to collect three All-America Honorable Mention honors from the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA).

With his success comes seven postseason appearances in both the NCAA Tournament and the Women's National Invitational Tournament (WNIT), including a run of five seasons from 2014-18. In just his second season in charge, Williams brought the Rams back to postseason play (2014 WNIT) for the first time since 2004 after winning the Mountain West regular season.

The 2013-14 season was the step in a four-year run of regular season and/or tournament conference championships. Williams collected a pair of Mountain West Coach of the Year honors along the way (2014, 2016), and was also named the WBCA NCAA DI Regional Coach of the Year in 2014.

Williams’ second MW Coach of the Year award came after his team won a program record 28-straight games, shattering the previous record of 19 consecutive while holding a perfect 15-0 mark while in Moby Arena. It was just the second perfect home record in program history (1998-99).

Over the course of his 31-year head coaching career, Williams has compiled an impressive 566-340 (.625) career record, with stops at South Dakota (2008-12), Wayne State College (1998-2008) and Sheridan College (1995-98). Overall, Williams’ basketball teams have recorded 15 campaigns with 20-or-more victories, 11 postseason berths and five conference championships.

Before coming to Colorado State, Williams was most recently head coach at his alma mater, South Dakota from 2008-12. In four seasons, Williams led the Coyotes to a highly successful stretch during their transition to Division I competition and helped them become one of the nation’s premier defensive teams.

Prior to arriving at USD in 2008, Williams spent 10 seasons at Wayne State (Neb.), building that program into a perennial contender in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. Wayne State, which had won just 13 games combined over the previous two seasons, recorded 20 wins or more in three of Williams’ final four seasons and made appearances in the NCAA Division II North Central Region tournament in two of his last three seasons. While at Wayne State, Williams compiled a 182-106 record (.632) and became the winningest women’s basketball coach in school history.

Before taking over at Wayne State, Williams started his women’s basketball head coaching career at Sheridan College (Wyo.) from 1995-98. During his tenure, Williams received a Region IX Coach of the Year nod and was named the Wyoming Conference Coach of the Year twice. After his first season in 1995-96, he nearly tripled his win totals in the next season posting a 19-12 mark. In his final season, he finished with a 28-5 record – a 21-win difference from his first season to his last.

Williams also served as the volleyball head coach and men’s basketball assistant coach in 1993 at Sheridan. In his time as the head coach of the volleyball program he put together a 117-66 record. In 1995, Sheridan volleyball went 42-8, won the Region IX title and finished fifth at the junior college national tournament. Williams garnered Wyoming Conference and Region IX Coach of the Year honors in 1994 and 1995.

Sheridan is also where Williams began his collegiate playing career. He played basketball for two seasons at Sheridan, where he was an All-Region IX player as a sophomore, before transferring to South Dakota. Notably, Williams was an All-NCC selection and once led the nation in free throw percentage (91.2). As a high school senior at Campbell County High School, he was named Mr. Basketball for the state of Wyoming in 1988.

A native of Gillette, Wyo., Williams earned his associate’s degree from Sheridan in 1990, his bachelor’s degree from South Dakota in 1992 and his master’s degree from South Dakota in 1997. Williams and his wife, Lyndy, have two daughters, Natalie and Emily.