Coach Matt is the Founder and CEO of Significant Coaching & Recruiting where he serves as a…
College Recruiting Adviser and Motivational Speaker mentoring student-athletes and families on how to maximize their college recruiting journeys.
Author penning the 5-Star reviewed book Significant Recruiting: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes, a step-by-step guide to maximizing student-athlete’s exposure to college coaches at colleges and universities through the United States.
University Athletics Consultant training college coaches and athletic directors on recruiting, team-building, and program development.
Podcast Host interviewing High School, College and Professional Coaches and Athletes in his weekly podcast Significant Coaching with Matt Rogers
Blogger writing weekly essays entitled The Blog of Significance to help guide coaches, parents, and student-athletes through their academic and athletic journeys.
Coach Matt’s Story
Coach Matt played 4 years of high school basketball at Lena-Winslow High School where he was recruited by Hall of Fame Coach, Bob Landis, to join the Kohawks Basketball team at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA. After 2 injury plagued seasons, Coach Matt retired his game shoes and began his journey to be a Coach. Coach Matt is forever thankful for the guidance and mentoring that Hall of Fame Coach and 2020 National High School Coach of the Year, Jerry Petitgoue from Cuba City, WI provided to help him find his confidence to pursue coaching jobs at the high school and college levels.
Coach Matt got his first opportunity to coach as the Assistant Men’s Basketball Coach at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, IA under legendary Hall of Fame Coach, Ray Shovlain where he helped the Fighting Bees to the 1998 NAIA National Tournament.
He then served the better part of a year as the Community Development Coordinator and Summer Camp Coach at NCAA Division I Saint Louis University (SLU) under the tutelage and generosity of legendary coach, Charlie Spoonhour.
It was while working at SLU that he met his long-time friend and mentor, Rich Fanning, the then Head Boys’ Basketball Coach at Whitfield School in St. Louis, MO. Together they led the Warriors to a 30-3 record in the 1999-2000 season culminating in the 2000 Missouri Class 2A State Championship. Coach Matt would take over the reins of the program the following year serving concurrently as the Director of Middle School Athletics and Head Boys’ Basketball Coach leading the team to a 21-7 conference championship season. 6 players from those teams would move on to play at the NCAA Division 1 and Division II levels and 3 of those young men would sign contracts to play professionally.
While at Whitfield, Coach Matt was recruited by the alumni of nearby Maryville University of St. Louis to apply for the recently vacated men’s basketball position. With the Alumni-backing, he was named Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Maryville in the spring of 2001 becoming the youngest Head College Men’s Basketball Coach in the country in his first season.
Coach Matt went on to quickly re-build the Maryville program into a consistent conference and national contender for 9 seasons. Within 3 seasons, he turned the worse team in the conference into the best. He led the Saints to 2 NCAA National Tournament appearances (2003-2004 & 2005-2006 seasons) while being honored with Conference Coach of the Year recognition in both of those seasons. Coach Matt would also serve as Interim Director of Athletics at Maryville for the better part of 2 years and Associate Director of Athletics for 6 years helping transition the Saints Athletics Department from NCAA Division III (St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) to NCAA Division II (Great Lakes Valley Conference).
With the birth of his daughter in 2009, Coach Matt pursued opportunities to transition to coaching college women, so his daughter could grow up around strong, confident female leaders. That search led him to the University of La Verne in 2010. He spent three years as the Head Women’s Basketball Coach at the University of La Verne where he led the team to breaking the NCAA Women’s Record for the most 3-pointers made in one game (26) while the team led the country in 3-point shooting and was 2nd in the country in scoring.
After the birth of his son in 2013, Coach Matt pursued opportunities where he could be a stay-at-home dad during the day while continuing to make an impact on the lives of young student-athletes in the evening. This led him to being recruited by the staff at NCSA (the National Collegiate Scouting Association – at the time) to become their Head National Scout. He eventually would become the Senior Recruiting Specialist, Director of Regional Recruiting and Director of Team Solutions for the better part of 9 years. In that time, he successfully guided over 4000 student-athletes in 34 different sport to being placed on college rosters at all 5 division levels.
Most recently, Rogers has been instrumental as a High School Boys’ Basketball Coach assisting or leading Douglas Country High School, Castle View High School and D’Evelyn High School to multiple Colorado State Tournaments over the past 7 years.
In 2023, Coach Matt made the decision to turn his 25+ years of college recruiting experience into a book to efficiently guide families through the college recruiting experience.
In September of 2023, he published his first book, Significant Coaching: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes. The book is a step-by-step guide to maximizing high school athletes’ exposure to college coaches at colleges and universities around the country that fit them best. The book includes stories and anecdotes from Coach Matt’s playing, coaching and scouting experiences, as well in-depth analysis and advice from Coach Matt’s college coaching brethren at the end of each chapter. The book guides families through each step of their recruiting journey from Step 1: Commitment-Accept the Challenge through Step 12: Commitment-Close the Deal. The book (e-book or paperback) continues to be a 5-Star reviewed book on Amazon.com.
Coach Matt also continues to serve as a consultant to college and universities around the country providing support and direction on how to improve recruiting strategies, hiring practices, policy and procedure development, as well as providing executive coaching for administrators and coaches.
He also continues to train high school, college, and professional basketball players throughout the U.S.
Coach Matt lives in the Denver, Colorado area with his wife of 26 years, Karen, and their two children Kaia and Kade. He loves to play golf, hike, workout, and watch movies with his family in his free time.
He looks forward to talking to you about how to make your individual journey a significant one!
The History Behind His Mission of Significance
In the Fall of 1998 while working at Saint Louis University, Coach Matt had the good fortune of sitting in on a presentation from a guest speaker. The first words out of the speaker’s mouth were: “I want you all to remove the word SUCCESS from your vocabulary and replace it with the word SIGNIFICANT.”
Coach Matt describes that sentence as a life-changing moment in his career as an educator.
The speaker went on to explain her reasoning. According to her, success was a simple concept. Any student could complete a paper for a homework assignment (success!), but very few people put the kind of effort into writing a paper that results in truly understanding the topic, inspiring the reader in some way, or changing the way the reader thinks about that topic (significance!).
As an aspiring basketball coach at the time, Coach Matt immediately translated that philosophy to his sport.
Anyone can walk into a gym, throw a ball up in the air and make a basket—success! But if you put that same person in a gym with a defender in front of them and 2,000 fans in the stands, would they even be able to get a shot off? Coach Matt decided that day that he wanted to teach his players how to master their craft and how to always be asking, “How can I remove mere chance or luck from the equation?”
Significance became an idea that drove him to share the idea of significance as a pillar in their growth and education of every young person he coaches and mentors. He knew the concept of significant living could and should translate to their academics, sports, relationships, future jobs, etc. Significance isn’t always just putting more effort into a task or following directions perfectly. Significance can mean taking on a task and learning how to do it more efficiently. It can mean taking a problem and thinking out of the box as to the possible solutions for that problem, or thinking about and seeing the problem from a unique perspective.
Significant Coaching and Significant Recruiting share the same focus. By teaching his students to become the CEO of their journeys so that they always feel in control of their outcome before it happens. He works with his student-athletes to learn and master the ideas of game planning, executive function and committing to executing their process to the very end.
RECOGNIZED AS The #1 Recruiting Coach
For college prospects both domestically and internationally
This past Spring Coach Rogers helped and assisted me with my transfer from Carthage and was an integral part in helping me get offers from four colleges finally signing with Manchester University in Indiana. ”
We would highly recommend him to assist in your students sport's career path. Todd and Gayleen Fuller, Parents of Student-Athlete, Class of 2024”
