August 1, 2025 • 8 mins
Nathaneal Rankin was a nationally ranked wrestler and NCAA Division III qualifier in cross country while an athlete at the University of the Ozarks.
After his competitive career ended, Rankin served as an assistant coach and this summer, was named the new head coach at the Clarksville, Arkansas school.Check out what led Rankin to Ozarks in the first place, what it was like competing in two sports in college and how near misses now drive him as a coach.
After his competitive career ended, Rankin served as an assistant coach and this summer, was named the new head coach at the Clarksville, Arkansas school.Check out what led Rankin to Ozarks in the first place, what it was like competing in two sports in college and how near misses now drive him as a coach.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
New head coach at the University of the Ozarks down
in Clarksville, Arkansas, and Nathaniel Rankin. You have an interesting
backstory from Texas, but you were a two sport college
athlete and competed at the national championships in cross country.
Talk a little bit about trying to balance two sports
at a Division three level as an athlete.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
So for me, that was kind of one thing that
helped me find my home at the Ozarks was it
was a place that let me do both sports. I
had coaches that believed I could do both sports, and
then from there it was just being able to commit
myself to When I was in cross country season, I
was doing cross country. When I was in wrestling season,
I was focusing on wrestling and just trying to find
that balance as much as possible, and just having the
(00:37):
right people around me really made it possible for.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So obviously on that conditioning was never a problem for you.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
No, I always enjoyed one of her matches went to
the third period. That's usually what I was hoping for.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So, yeah, you were there, like, yeah, Leroy Gardner was
the original head coach starting to program, and what's it
like kind of being there on the ground floor of
a new program and a non traditional wrestling state.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
So it's been.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Cool looking back at it now, seeing how the programs
changed the past ten years and being a part of
it as an athlete and as an assistant coach, and
now I get to keep building it as a head coach.
Just seeing how the Ozarks has grown and it's a
special place and I get to share that love and
that beauty with other other young athletes.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
What about coming from Texas and having the opportunity wrestling
college there's no NCAA. Well, now there's a Division III school,
there's Shiners down there, but it was it was. It
was a kind of a ghost town for college dressing
for a long time. So I talked about the opportunity
to come from Texas and get to wrestling college.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah. So I was lucky that I knew Leroy from
Team Texas, so he had already coached me before, So
him bringing me out to Arkansas was really cool. I
originally said, I told him when he recruited me, I said,
there's no way I'm going to school in Arkansas. I
had a I had painted a different picture about the
state than what it actually is, and so when I
went out and visited it, visited the campus, it was beautiful.
(01:53):
The people actually cared about me. I didn't feel like
I was just going to be a number in the seat.
So being able to go out there and just like
be seen was really important to me. And then having
the opportunity to just be myself out there was really fun.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
When did the desire to coach start entering your your mind?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So that one I got really lucky. Vinnie set me
up really well. I graduated with a business degree minor
and interfaith studies and psychology. I had no desire to coach. Really,
that wasn't really where I thought I was going to go.
The assistant at the time, Doyle left and Vinnie was like, Hey,
I think you can be good at this. Do you
want to give it a shot? And so I told
(02:32):
him and say, hey, I'll give you two years. I'll
see if this coaching things for me, and I just
fell in love with it right away. The hardest part
was recruiting, and over the past two years that's something
I've worked on the most. I feel really comfortable in
that aspect now and just being able to connect with
the guys and be able to grow those relationships has
been really really fun, really big part of it. It's
(02:52):
really rewarding. So just the act of coaching has been
something I found has really turned into my calling.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, Leroy was coaching then when he left, Vinnie Barber,
who was assistant, took over.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And you know, people that know Vinnie know.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Him from from his his kind of wild days, and
you know what did you see from Vinnie as as
somebody who you know wrestled on him as an assistant
and worked with him as a head coach and his
his growth as a head coach And how much has
that helped you and your journey grow as a coach.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, I mean I wouldn't be where I am right
now without Vinnie. He's done a lot for me as
my coach and as my head coach when I was
an assistant. So he's helped me both times in a
lot of ways, just seeing he was very open about
a lot of things. So when I was an assistant,
I got to see the budget, I got to see
how recruiting was done. I got to see everything very
hands on. So being able to have that experience has
(03:40):
made it the transition to the head coaching role a
lot more smooth. There's definitely still been some learning curves,
some stuff that I didn't get to see, but I
feel really prepared for this next chapter.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
One thing in division three you got.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's a lot of hands on, a lot of how
the sausage has made you know other level, the higher
levels of wrestling don't have to handle what the small
schools do. So what is it about coaching you discovered
that you didn't know about beforehand?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I think, like, like you said, you do all of
it from It's not the being able to coach from
four to six, being able to lift with the guys
in the morning, that's ten to twenty percent of the
job you have. Eighty percent of the job is going
out finding the kids, being able to fundraise, being able
to plan the travel, make sure you have the right hotel.
Just all of the little x's and o's takes up
(04:28):
so much more than I think people realize. But being
able to have a good organization system and the right
support around you makes it a lot more possible.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
You know, wrestling can be heartless and soulless at times,
and you've had to experience the highs and the lows,
and how do you pull from your experience as a
multi sport athlete, and then you know what didn't happen
for you on the mat, how do you drive that
and drive you into coaching for the kids that you're
trying to get to the next.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Level that you didn't quite get to yourself.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, So, I mean I had some years where I
had success on the mat, and then I had some
years where I fell short. And I think the years
where I had success were mentally more rewarding for me,
and then the years where I fell short or the
years that I've grew the most as a coach, So
like how I manage our guy's weight, what I'm looking
like with the peaks in the valleys, with our training.
(05:18):
I took a lot more of that from the years
I did bad in in the cycles of training and
wrestling as an athlete.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
So being able.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
To take from both sides of that, it's really important.
And being able to look back at my career and
how I've seen athletes perform as an assistant and just
taken in that whole picture.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
But being in a You're I talked about, there's no
way I'm going to school in Arkansas. Now you have
to sell people that may have had the exact same
mindset going in again. A lot of energy around the
growth of high school wrestling in the state. Of course,
Little Rock is the Division I program that you know,
been a media darling in the last couple of years
with the rise of that program. So wrestling in Arkansas,
I mean, it's it's an easier pitch now as you're
(05:58):
trying to recruit kids.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
So what do you say to the kid like you
that said no way.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask a
kid to come on a visit. The biggest thing I
can do is I can sell the campus and our team.
We're a small little community. Our town only has ten
thousand people. Our campus is about eight hundred and fifty students.
But we're a family. Like I went to a big
school in high school. My high school was bigger than
my college. I'm from the big city Dallas, right outside
(06:25):
of Dallas thirty minutes and I like the small, little,
small little town. I like being able to go outside
and I see deer running around and stuff like that.
So if you like outdoors and you like being in nature,
we have an outdoors program where you can just rent
out rafts and stuff like that to go on the river.
So that's that's what I want to sell to the guys,
and like, if you like wrestling, you like school, and
(06:45):
you like being outside, we're gonna be a good fit
for you. If you want to go somewhere where you
can do a lot of partying and stuff like that.
I'll tell kids straight up, like, hey, I wish you
the best, but like we're not going to be the
right fit for you. So I just take a really
open approach about it. I tell the kids exactly what
it is, and then I want to get to meet you.
Get to meet the kids in person and have them
(07:06):
on campus. That's our biggest sell. If I can get
a kid to buy into the Ozarks and see our
team and how much we're a family, that's that's what's
going to sell a hit on our program because our
place is special and I have a lot of friends,
but all of my close friends are from the wrestling team.
It's all the guys I wrestled with, and those are
my brothers for life.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
And you just went through the leadership academy.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Right, I went through the leadership last year A set.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, so you know, from a young coaching perspective, how
much does a program like that help you now that
you're a head coach.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
So for me, it was really cool.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I had one year as assistant coach, assistant coach experience
before I went to the Leadership Academy, and it really
reassured everything that we did because all the coaches before
we went to the Leadership Academy. So seeing all of
our fundraising came from the Leadership Academy, all of our recruiting,
like writing the handwritten letters, like everything we do came
from the Leadership Academy, And kind of like hearing it
(07:59):
from a different voice and like having a different perspective
about it kind of just hit everything home and it
was really reaffirming of everything we did.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Nathanie Rank and looking forward to your to year one
full time. Go Eagles, Go Eagles.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Thank you,
New head coach at the University of the Ozarks down
in Clarksville, Arkansas, and Nathaniel Rankin. You have an interesting
backstory from Texas, but you were a two sport college
athlete and competed at the national championships in cross country.
Talk a little bit about trying to balance two sports
at a Division three level as an athlete.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
So for me, that was kind of one thing that
helped me find my home at the Ozarks was it
was a place that let me do both sports. I
had coaches that believed I could do both sports, and
then from there it was just being able to commit
myself to When I was in cross country season, I
was doing cross country. When I was in wrestling season,
I was focusing on wrestling and just trying to find
that balance as much as possible, and just having the
(00:37):
right people around me really made it possible for.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So obviously on that conditioning was never a problem for you.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
No, I always enjoyed one of her matches went to
the third period. That's usually what I was hoping for.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So, yeah, you were there, like, yeah, Leroy Gardner was
the original head coach starting to program, and what's it
like kind of being there on the ground floor of
a new program and a non traditional wrestling state.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
So it's been.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Cool looking back at it now, seeing how the programs
changed the past ten years and being a part of
it as an athlete and as an assistant coach, and
now I get to keep building it as a head coach.
Just seeing how the Ozarks has grown and it's a
special place and I get to share that love and
that beauty with other other young athletes.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
What about coming from Texas and having the opportunity wrestling
college there's no NCAA. Well, now there's a Division III school,
there's Shiners down there, but it was it was. It
was a kind of a ghost town for college dressing
for a long time. So I talked about the opportunity
to come from Texas and get to wrestling college.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah. So I was lucky that I knew Leroy from
Team Texas, so he had already coached me before, So
him bringing me out to Arkansas was really cool. I
originally said, I told him when he recruited me, I said,
there's no way I'm going to school in Arkansas. I
had a I had painted a different picture about the
state than what it actually is, and so when I
went out and visited it, visited the campus, it was beautiful.
(01:53):
The people actually cared about me. I didn't feel like
I was just going to be a number in the seat.
So being able to go out there and just like
be seen was really important to me. And then having
the opportunity to just be myself out there was really fun.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
When did the desire to coach start entering your your mind?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
So that one I got really lucky. Vinnie set me
up really well. I graduated with a business degree minor
and interfaith studies and psychology. I had no desire to coach. Really,
that wasn't really where I thought I was going to go.
The assistant at the time, Doyle left and Vinnie was like, Hey,
I think you can be good at this. Do you
want to give it a shot? And so I told
(02:32):
him and say, hey, I'll give you two years. I'll
see if this coaching things for me, and I just
fell in love with it right away. The hardest part
was recruiting, and over the past two years that's something
I've worked on the most. I feel really comfortable in
that aspect now and just being able to connect with
the guys and be able to grow those relationships has
been really really fun, really big part of it. It's
(02:52):
really rewarding. So just the act of coaching has been
something I found has really turned into my calling.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, Leroy was coaching then when he left, Vinnie Barber,
who was assistant, took over.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And you know, people that know Vinnie know.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Him from from his his kind of wild days, and
you know what did you see from Vinnie as as
somebody who you know wrestled on him as an assistant
and worked with him as a head coach and his
his growth as a head coach And how much has
that helped you and your journey grow as a coach.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, I mean I wouldn't be where I am right
now without Vinnie. He's done a lot for me as
my coach and as my head coach when I was
an assistant. So he's helped me both times in a
lot of ways, just seeing he was very open about
a lot of things. So when I was an assistant,
I got to see the budget, I got to see
how recruiting was done. I got to see everything very
hands on. So being able to have that experience has
(03:40):
made it the transition to the head coaching role a
lot more smooth. There's definitely still been some learning curves,
some stuff that I didn't get to see, but I
feel really prepared for this next chapter.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
One thing in division three you got.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
It's a lot of hands on, a lot of how
the sausage has made you know other level, the higher
levels of wrestling don't have to handle what the small
schools do. So what is it about coaching you discovered
that you didn't know about beforehand?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I think, like, like you said, you do all of
it from It's not the being able to coach from
four to six, being able to lift with the guys
in the morning, that's ten to twenty percent of the
job you have. Eighty percent of the job is going
out finding the kids, being able to fundraise, being able
to plan the travel, make sure you have the right hotel.
Just all of the little x's and o's takes up
(04:28):
so much more than I think people realize. But being
able to have a good organization system and the right
support around you makes it a lot more possible.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
You know, wrestling can be heartless and soulless at times,
and you've had to experience the highs and the lows,
and how do you pull from your experience as a
multi sport athlete, and then you know what didn't happen
for you on the mat, how do you drive that
and drive you into coaching for the kids that you're
trying to get to the next.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Level that you didn't quite get to yourself.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, So, I mean I had some years where I
had success on the mat, and then I had some
years where I fell short. And I think the years
where I had success were mentally more rewarding for me,
and then the years where I fell short or the
years that I've grew the most as a coach, So
like how I manage our guy's weight, what I'm looking
like with the peaks in the valleys, with our training.
(05:18):
I took a lot more of that from the years
I did bad in in the cycles of training and
wrestling as an athlete.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
So being able.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
To take from both sides of that, it's really important.
And being able to look back at my career and
how I've seen athletes perform as an assistant and just
taken in that whole picture.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
But being in a You're I talked about, there's no
way I'm going to school in Arkansas. Now you have
to sell people that may have had the exact same
mindset going in again. A lot of energy around the
growth of high school wrestling in the state. Of course,
Little Rock is the Division I program that you know,
been a media darling in the last couple of years
with the rise of that program. So wrestling in Arkansas,
I mean, it's it's an easier pitch now as you're
(05:58):
trying to recruit kids.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
So what do you say to the kid like you
that said no way.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ask a
kid to come on a visit. The biggest thing I
can do is I can sell the campus and our team.
We're a small little community. Our town only has ten
thousand people. Our campus is about eight hundred and fifty students.
But we're a family. Like I went to a big
school in high school. My high school was bigger than
my college. I'm from the big city Dallas, right outside
(06:25):
of Dallas thirty minutes and I like the small, little,
small little town. I like being able to go outside
and I see deer running around and stuff like that.
So if you like outdoors and you like being in nature,
we have an outdoors program where you can just rent
out rafts and stuff like that to go on the river.
So that's that's what I want to sell to the guys,
and like, if you like wrestling, you like school, and
(06:45):
you like being outside, we're gonna be a good fit
for you. If you want to go somewhere where you
can do a lot of partying and stuff like that.
I'll tell kids straight up, like, hey, I wish you
the best, but like we're not going to be the
right fit for you. So I just take a really
open approach about it. I tell the kids exactly what
it is, and then I want to get to meet you.
Get to meet the kids in person and have them
(07:06):
on campus. That's our biggest sell. If I can get
a kid to buy into the Ozarks and see our
team and how much we're a family, that's that's what's
going to sell a hit on our program because our
place is special and I have a lot of friends,
but all of my close friends are from the wrestling team.
It's all the guys I wrestled with, and those are
my brothers for life.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
And you just went through the leadership academy.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Right, I went through the leadership last year A set.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, so you know, from a young coaching perspective, how
much does a program like that help you now that
you're a head coach.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
So for me, it was really cool.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I had one year as assistant coach, assistant coach experience
before I went to the Leadership Academy, and it really
reassured everything that we did because all the coaches before
we went to the Leadership Academy. So seeing all of
our fundraising came from the Leadership Academy, all of our recruiting,
like writing the handwritten letters, like everything we do came
from the Leadership Academy, And kind of like hearing it
(07:59):
from a different voice and like having a different perspective
about it kind of just hit everything home and it
was really reaffirming of everything we did.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Nathanie Rank and looking forward to your to year one
full time. Go Eagles, Go Eagles.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Thank you,
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