DILLON — After graduating from Montana Western in 2018, Ryan Sullivan very much wanted to stay in Dillon but realized that it might be best for him to venture elsewhere for a while.
After coaching stops in Cut Bank and Casper, Wyo., the Sidney native — who played basketball for two seasons at Western under Steve Keller and then transitioned to football — ultimately settled at Sheridan (Wyo.) High School for five years where he helped turn a program that had been struggling into a state champion.
He'll be looking to follow a similar trajectory at his next job as he was tabbed as Western's next head women's basketball coach in April, succeeding Britt Cooper who led her former team for two seasons.
"I got to leave and grow up, and I think I'm ready to come back to the place that allowed me to grow in a lot of ways," Sullivan said.
Getting the position was a full circle for Sullivan who is now set to return to his home state and alma mater.
"I'm fired up to do this job," he said. "We're gonna pour into it and pour into it and see what happens, and hopefully we can be competitive this year and build something — lay the foundation that we want to leave so that we're competitive for years to come."
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Several of Sullivan's family members have enjoyed success at the college level. His older sister Jordan is currently an assistant on the Utah women's basketball team, his cousin Derek Selvig is the head men's basketball coach at Dickinson State — which will be joining the Frontier Conference this upcoming season — and his uncle Robin Selvig led the Montana Lady Griz for nearly four decades en route to becoming one of the winning NCAA Division I women's head basketball coaches in history.
It's an impressive family resume, but Sullivan noted that's one of the reasons he chose to spend some years in Wyoming, where he had to carve his own path as he built a program and expectation of winning in Sheridan.
And he pointed out that who is sister or uncle or cousin is won't have any bearing on wins or losses.
"If we go to Tech this year and I tell (head women's basketball coach) Jeff Graham that I've got a lot of good coaches in my family, that's not gonna buy us anything, it doesn't mean anything," said Sullivan. "Very proud of them, they'd do anything for me. But I also know that to lean on that doesn't get you a lot."
Sullivan built a winning culture at Sheridan High School and now he'll be looking to do the same with the Bulldogs. He said Western's 2025-26 schedule should be finalized soon.
"We have to be willing to compete and kind of build the pillars of our program and what we want it to be about," said Sullivan. "And I'm going to find out if I'm actually about those things or not."
