Despite hours of driving and speaking with supporters over the past day, Fresno State’s “Coaches Caravan” and athletics department pulled into the parking lot of Hilmar’s Great American Grill last Wednesday still full of energy for the last stop of their Rally the Valley tour.
Meeting them at the popular venue were dozens of supporters of Fresno State, including alumni, parents and fans, as well as a handful of local coaches and area athletes looking to learn the latest about the Bulldogs. Individuals in attendance included coaches, teachers and former and current student-athletes from Turlock, Pitman, Hilmar, Hughson and Oakdale high schools.
Hilmar marked the fourth and final stop of this year’s tour, the others being Kingsburg, Visalia and Firebaugh. Each featured Q&A sessions, photo ops, meet-and-greets with the coaches and members of their staff. The Fresno State athletics department also held raffles, accepted donations and offered ticket information for the upcoming football season.
Fresno State Director of Athletics Garrett Klassy was joined by four of his head coaches — Matt Entz (Football), Vance Walberg (Men's Basketball), Ryan McCarthy (Women's Basketball) and Leisa Rosen (Volleyball), who participated in a panel discussion and took questions from fans, better known as the Red Wave.
“We’re proud of this Red Wave,” said Klassy during the panel. “We're proud to be in the Valley, and we appreciate everything you guys do for us. It all helps showing up tonight. It means a ton to us, so I can't thank you enough.”
So, why Hilmar?
According to a staff member, the athletics department has a heat map tracking donations, and Stanislaus and Merced counties have some hot spots. As the Journal reported on May 13 in previewing the event, of the 22,759 students currently enrolled at Fresno State, 519 are from Merced County and 307 are from Stanislaus County. As far as student-athletes go, there are 12 from the two counties that currently compete for the Bulldogs, including Turlock High’s Griffen Sotomayor (Baseball) and Ella Spaulding (Track & Field) and Hilmar High’s Mia Nunes (Equestrian).
There was a reported RSVP count of roughly 130, which was the most of any city on the tour.
While the event was more of a fan fest, there was a fair share of talk about local talent and the program’s history of recruiting in the region.
McCarthy will enter his first season as head coach of the women’s basketball program, and described their arrival to Hilmar as a “full-circle moment” considering his recruiting history.
“I started my coaching career out in Idaho (Northwest Nazarene), and when I ended up taking over the program, I had to go out recruiting,” said McCarthy. “And the first recruit that I had ever signed was from Turlock.”
That was 2011 Turlock High graduate Kayle Schumann, who went on to score 265 points over four years with the Crusaders and now owns her own physical fitness center, BODYBEST•FIT, in Turlock.
“That was the first person to ever really believe in what my vision was, because recruiting is a two way street, right? You have to sell them your vision, and they have to believe in you as much as you believe in them,” McCarthy said. “She moved back home, and that led to me recruiting some young ladies out of Modesto Christian High School, which led to Merced and so on. And so I've been recruiting the valley. This has always been kind of a pipeline for all of my programs that I've had.”
The man of most intrigue among attendees was Entz, who is embarking on his first year as head coach of the popular Bulldogs football program.
Last season, Entz served as the assistant head coach at USC for defense and linebackers. He spent the previous five seasons at North Dakota State, where he compiled a 60-11 record and captured a pair of FCS national championships. He hopes to turn around a Fresno State program that went 6-7 a year ago and saw plenty of roster turnover.
“In this world of college athletics, especially college football, everyone's looking for finished products,” Entz said. “At Fresno State, we may not have access to finished products, guys that can step in day one and play for us. So we have to be willing to take the time and build our own players internally.
“I think there's a lot of benefits to that. One, it's less expensive than trying to go into the portal and try to find an offensive lineman that can come and play. If we can build them with our strength staff, our nutrition staff, with our academic staff, and just recruit, develop and retain. That is something that you'll continually hear me talk about. Let's recruit the right people. Let's develop them, and then let's make sure that we retain them so they get a great degree, and they're in a place that appreciates who they are.”
One of the most recent recruits heading to Fresno is Hughson wideout Malakai Sumter, who verbally committed just days before to the event. Before the Q&A session, Entz spoke to the Journal about Sumter, and described him as “extremely talented” and “a high-character kid, which is what we look for.”
The Bulldogs also welcomed members of the Turlock High football program to campus for an unofficial visit earlier in the spring.
As Entz alluded to, era of the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness has made recruiting in unscoured pockets of the region and retainment has become incredibly important. And it’s becoming clearer that money doesn’t always buy happiness.
Walberg has seen the challenges first-hand.
“One of the things that really hurt us this last year, we were so young. We were the eighth youngest school out of 365 in the NCAA… And we can't keep kids more than a year or two,” Walberg said.
A month before, the Bulldogs saw a trio of players enter the portal, prompting him to focus his recruiting on graduate juniors or seniors.
While some power-five programs across the country are seeing an influx of money being poured into their programs, many, especially in California are getting less support. Cuts to the state budget have impacted all 23 California State University campuses, and the Fresno Bee reported last week that the Fresno State president Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval said it can no longer financially support athletics to the levels they have in previous years. This all comes at a time in which FSU is getting set to join the revamped Pac-12 in the fall of 2026.
“The people in this room, you guys are already doing your part, and you guys are passionate members of the Red Wave,” Klassy said near the end of the panel session. “As we up the level of our game, going to the Pac-12, the reality is that, by any metric possible, we are going to have the smallest budget, the lowest amount of resources in that league. The bright side is that we have a lot of potential for growth and upside. We're not sitting here feeling sorry for ourselves. We aren’t here to cry. We've won a lot of championships with a chip on our shoulder and doing more with less, and we're going to continue to keep doing that.”
Klassy vowed that he and his caravan will return to the region next year.
“When we come back here next year, we need this room doubled and tripled. We need you all to invite two or three friends and make sure we keep painting the Valley red. We know that we're not going to have a billionaire like they have in Stillwater, Oklahoma or in Eugene, Oregon, supporting this program. But we have the benefit of having the masses. We have two to three million people in this Valley, and whether you went to Fresno State or not, you all have some tie to the Bulldogs and Fresno State.
“Quite frankly, we're not in the Pac-12 without the Red Wave… It's because of the Red Wave, and because of what we've accomplished here in the past, and we're always going to respect that history, but we want to keep building more memories and new history.”
