Sports

New UHSAA executive director Ryan Bishop shares his ideas, vision regarding future of the organization

Nairavoice · Aug 19, 2026 · 15 min read

A couple of days before Rob Cuff made his retirement announcement official with the UHSAA board of trustees last spring, he reached out to a few friends and colleagues individually. One of them was Ryan Bishop, one of Cuff’s former UHSAA assistant directors and then the principal at Wasatch High School.

Like most people, Bishop was pretty stunned, as Cuff had worked in the office for 25 years.

At the time, applying for the opening was the last thing on his mind.

“I had no intention of leaving Wasatch High School right at the beginning. We were going through a major change in the district, the new school, and we were really up to our eyeballs, so to speak, in all those things. My 10 years at Wasatch was amazing, I was full go at Wasatch High School and Wasatch District.”

A couple days later, though, he wondered if the timing was right to return to the UHSAA.

His youngest son had just graduated, he’d just finished up his 30th year as a teacher in Utah, and the more he thought about being a part of the UHSAA camaraderie again, a change seemed like a good move.

The abrupt change fits with Bishop’s employment history. He said he’s never had a five-year plan about his next job. He just dives head first into doing the best job wherever he’s at.

When he left Davis High School in 2014 to join the UHSAA, the opportunity just presented itself when Kevin Dustin departed the UHSAA to be the athletic director at Salt Lake Community College.

At the time, Bishop said, “While all this seems kind of abrupt and fast, one day I’m coaching and the next I’m leaving to take an administrative job, but to me it’s really something I’ve worked toward for five or six years. You can’t control when your opportunities come up.”

After three years at the UHSAA, another one of those opportunities just popped up.

Bishop ran into an old friend who was as the Wasatch School District and he told Bishop if he wanted to get back into administration, they were hiring an assistant principal at Wasatch.

“I felt like there was something left out there for me, to go kind of be an instructional leader and do those types of things,” said Bishop.

“It was hard to walk away from Davis, it was hard to walk away from here, it was hard to walk away from Wasatch. But I’ve been really grateful for each one of those opportunities.”

In a nutshell, he sums up his career as being at the right place at the right time.

Now, as he’s two months on the job as the seventh executive director in the history of the UHSAA, Bishop sat down with the Deseret News this week to discuss his vision for future of the UHSAA, the governing body for athletics and activities for 162 high schools in Utah.

Ryan Bishop, the new president of the UHSAA, poses for a photo at the UHSAA office on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. | Lukas Katilius, Deseret News

Deseret News: With your previous three years at the UHSAA, and then 10 years as an administrator at Wasatch, you’ve likely had hundreds of people share their opinions and ideas about improving various aspects of high school sports through the years. How can an all the mental notes you’ve made with those opinions and suggestions help in your new role?

Ryan Bishop: I think the board of trustees feels really good about our staff here right now. They made that known to me when they gave me the opportunity.

And so, I think you’ve got to take the body of work of all of us that are now here, and you have to draw on those things. I’ve had all these varied experiences, and now you’ve got a staff that’s all been here together for nine, 10, 11 years and more, and so, we’ve got to draw on it about what is next, and what are the ideas and how do we navigate this thing going forward? I absolutely hope and intend that we take all those experiences and blend them together.

I had two great opportunities to meet with executive directors across the nation. In both circumstances — one was at our summer meeting, and one was at an executive directors meeting in Indianapolis — a lot of the things that we’re feeling and seeing and going through, other states are as well. And there’s this like underlying deal that state associations are kind of on the cusp of some possible change in things with everything that’s happening in college athletics, right? And state legislators are getting involved. I’m not talking about here, I’m talking about across the nation, so, certainly, we’re going to draw on everyone’s experience to see how to navigate, including mine.

DN: Big picture, what’s next as the UHSAA moves forward with it first new executive director in 17 years?

RB: There are two things that come to my mind right off the bat. And the first thing is we’ve got to tell the story of the Utah High School Activities Association. And telling the story of the Activities Association is that we are an organization made up of coaches associations, our athletic directors executive committee, our executive committee, which is our 22 region reps, and then, of course, our board of trustees, which is elected officials from across the state: superintendents, board members and principals.

So, we’ve got to tell that story, so that when we have an opportunity to meet with the State School Board, and the Legislature, and the superintendents association, and the principals association, and all those entities that have all the feedback all the time from parents and participants, so we’ve got to be able to let people know that there is a process here. There is a system.

And I’m not saying that we haven’t done that in the past, but I think it’s very important for people to understand that this isn’t two or three guys, or gals, sitting in the office down here on 72nd South making these decisions. A lot goes into it, just like the State School Board or just like our state legislators. So I really want to be able to tell that story.

The second thing is we’ve got to get out and listen to our people. We’ve got to listen and learn. Certainly you can do that in a board meeting, and you can do that in our executive committee meeting, but our staff, we’ve doubled down, and we’re going to make sure that we’re going to try to attend every region meeting in the state this year. We’re going to really try to work with our coaches associations, and where we have active coaches associations, we’re going to try to walk them through the process.

Just this morning, I was dealing with one of our staff members with the lacrosse coaches. They have a proposed change. How is legislation passed within the Activities Association? Let’s make sure we walk them through that so that they understand, and we’re doing what we say we’re going to do.

That would be the two big priorities, telling our story, and then making sure that we’re listening and learning and traveling the state. Because if we’re doing those two things, then we can gather the feedback, and we can decide.

DN: It’s been suggested that with your personality compared to the previous executive director, you might be more open to taking chances and risks about new ideas within the UHSAA.

RB: I think I would say yes, with a couple caveats.

First of all, is that risk something that we can tie back that’s going to positively affect students and student-athletes? What I want us to remember is, we get adult-focused sometimes in all these things, but we have to stay student-centered in what we do.

So it’s tricky, right, when you’re talking about risk? Is it risk that’s going to drive participation, keep fair and equitable play, make sure that you’re applying things consistently across the state, that can benefit kids? And benefiting kids isn’t always just doing what everybody wants. You know, benefiting kids is again making sure that things are consistent and steady across 162 schools with just a huge demographic difference in the state of Utah. We’re super unique that way.

And then I think the other caveat is, yeah, I’m willing to step out there a little bit, but I’m also wanting to hear where people want us to step out. What does our executive committee, what does our board, what’s our strategic plan in that? I don’t think you can just, willy-nilly, start cherry-picking things of, “Gosh, I’m willing to die on this hill today, and tomorrow, I’m going to die on that hill.” Let’s have a systematic plan of where we need to take a few risks to grow and change the association.

DN: In your first staff meeting, what was the message to the existing UHSAA staff — which was mostly unchanged — about your vision for the future of the UHSAA?

RB: First, they were even probably more accepting of me than I would have hoped. It makes me just a touch emotional to think about it. I could have been the new guy coming in and them be like, “Hey, we’re here, and we’ve worked with the schools, and we know our stewardship in our job,” but they’ve been very accepting of me.

I’ve kind of been a broken record, but what I’ve told them is that we’re going to be responsive to our schools. Sometimes we’re going to agree, sometimes we might have to agree to disagree, but we’re going to be responsive to them. We’re going to listen, we’re going to learn. We would not have this office, and we would not have jobs in education-based activities, if it wasn’t for those 162 member schools. So, we’re going to be responsive to them.

We have to be responsive in upholding the constitution and bylaws and the policy and all those things, but we’re going to do our best to take care of our schools. And luckily, we have a great staff that understands that, and I don’t think it was anything novel when they heard me say that, but I hope it was a good reminder for all of us that that’s why this office exists, because of those schools.

DN: The board of trustees recently voted to revert to 16-team playoff brackets for all classifications, doing away with the 24-team brackets for the larger classifications. How did that come about?

RB: So I have mixed emotions on that one. There’s pockets of the state of where it affects it, and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback. Just the other night, I was at a football game, and I had a girls soccer coach who I really respect in the state come up and talk to me about it. And they’re like, “We work our whole year to have a chance, and then we don’t because of this.”

So I think it’s a tricky balance. But in the end, I think our principals’ experience was that they had more negative with those … maybe they’ve already been through a tough season and they found themselves in one of those seeding deals.

The principals just didn’t make that in one or two meetings. They’ve been talking about it a lot. But then on the same hand, as I step back, we’re a participation association as well. So, we want to make sure that we’re giving people the opportunity to do that. And so there’s a tricky balance in keeping that. And so that’s what I mean when I say listen, you got to take all those things in, and then you got to work with your committees to make sure that you’re making that decision that’s best for everyone.

One thing I would say about it is we’re going into a realignment year. And so hopefully with the board, we can find our classification numbers balanced a little better. If we do that, now principals will get a real chance to weigh in and say, “OK, we’re cutting four, five, six, seven, eight schools out. Do we want to keep that and keep these 16 teams, or do we want to go back and have (24 teams) again?”

Ryan Bishop, the new president of the UHSAA, poses for a photo at the UHSAA office on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. | Lukas Katilius, Deseret News

DN: It’s realignment time for the UHSAA Executive Committee and board of trustees, which will be finalized in November for the next two school years. You mentioned the preference to be more balanced in classifications; explain how the new Z-score will help with that?

RB: So Nate Marshall, one of our board members, and Jeff Cluff, and then Rob (Cuff), they brought me into the process in the last few months, and they’ve basically written a program that’s an index of three things: student enrollment, which we’ve always pulled from Oct. 1 numbers; socioeconomic, the status of a school, which we’ve pulled from the last few years; and then the new part is this Z-score, or this success factor score.

And so, what the board has to decide is how to weigh those things. It looks like that about 75 to 80% will still be on school enrollment, and those other two things will be weighted. That will create a score, and then you’ll go through and make classifications based on that.

Those were all things all put into place in this year’s format and procedures, and they’ve had a first consideration, and I think the board will pass that on Thursday as a second consideration, and then the final format and procedures for this year’s realignment.

I think the advantage, it gives us the ability to start somewhere of factoring in different things other than just enrollment, or other than just free and reduced lunch numbers, so to speak. If you’re talking about fair and equitable play, I think success has to play into it a little bit.

DN: Some believe six classifications is too many for the state of Utah. Is a possible reduction on the table for this realignment?

RB: It’s not on the table this realignment, because we’re already down the road with our format and procedures. But it’s certainly something that we need to look at for the next realignment. And we are in a really good spot to do so.

I remember as a coach, you get realigned and then it’s four years, and you lived with it for four years. It didn’t cycle through kids that were coming through your program or school or whatever, but now it does.

And even though it puts a lot on the board to do that, I think it’s really positive, because then you can take these things incrementally. How do you add in some success? How do you look at classifications? How do you handle this different football realignment than every other sport, which we’ve gone to now?

The other day in our executive committee meeting, we made a little bit of an analogy, and we showed a pit stop of an F1 race in the ’50s, and it took about a minute and a half. Then we showed a pit stop of an F1 race now, and it was under 10 seconds or something. The world’s changing, right? High school activities are changing, of course what we’re seeing on the college level is changing. And so, we need to stay up with that and make changes frequently if that’s what it takes. And so I really like a two-year alignment so we can address some of those things. And that might be a thing that’s on people’s minds, but it’s not the only thing. And so what are those things do we need to look at every two years?

DN: As an administrator at Wasatch the past decade, you experienced firsthand the strain spring sports can be on high school administrators with 10 sports, and on the UHSAA as well. What type of discussions have there been on moving anything?

RB: I think we need to revisit that conversation. So much of this conversation comes down to a few things: transportation for districts, facilities for districts, supervision for districts, officials for us, with Jeff Cluff in our office overseeing all the officials.

And so, what is some natural fits to move? What would schools support to move? Where can we find officials if we move those things? And I’m not saying that I have any one or two right off the top of my head that I would say, “Oh, we’re taking this from the spring and we’re going to move this to the winter, the fall,” or whatever. But we do need to look at it, and we need to take all those factors into account and see that if it lines up.

But what I do know is we’re putting a lot on our schools in the spring to supervise everything, and their facilities, and the scheduling. Athletic trainers and administrators and athletic directors and coaches. On a Tuesday night, you might have two or three games going till 8 or 9 or 10 at night in the spring. We definitely need to continue to look at it.

Ryan Bishop, the new president of the UHSAA, poses for a photo at the UHSAA office on Monday, Aug. 17, 2026. | Lukas Katilius, Deseret News

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