KU volleyball coach Ray Bechard waves to the crowd on Wednesday Dec. 9, 2015, as the team left form Horejsi Family Athletics center, and boarded a bus to the airport, as the Jayhawks head to San Diego for the Sweet 16, against Loyola Marymount on Friday.

Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self is acutely aware of his position in the hierarchy of the university’s longest-tenured athletic leaders. The recent retirement of 27-year volleyball coach Ray Bechard moves him up a spot, but as he is quick to note, he still hasn’t been at it quite as long as venerable track coach Stanley Redwine, who started at KU in 2001.

“And I’m not going to catch Stanley, I don’t think,” Self said on Monday with a smile.

Still, Self’s own position at the school for more than two decades gave him a front-row seat to Bechard’s long-term rebuild of the volleyball Jayhawks. Within months of Self’s arrival on campus in 2003, Bechard took KU to its first-ever NCAA Tournament.

By the mid-2010s, as Self perpetuated a standard of excellence that predated his stint at the blue-blood men’s basketball program, Bechard was taking the volleyball team to heights it had never before reached, including a Final Four in 2015 and Big 12 title in 2016.

“Don’t take for granted Sweet 16s and Elite Eights and Final Fours in volleyball,” Self said, “because it just doesn’t happen every year, and certainly it doesn’t happen in a place that isn’t known to be a volleyball school. So it’s fantastic what he’s done.”

When Bechard announced his retirement on Friday, Self called right away to congratulate him on the conclusion of his career.

“Kansas volleyball’s success is because of Ray Bechard,” Self said. “I mean, he’s a stud. And to do it as long as he’s done it in a matter which never called attention to himself, always gave the young ladies all the credit, team-first guy all the way around, I’m happy for him.”

For Self’s counterpart at the helm of KU women’s basketball, Brandon Schneider, Bechard’s influence stretched beyond one single program at the school. In a way, his work presented a model by which a different sport at KU could become nationally competitive just like Self’s or Redwine’s. Schneider said on his “Hawk Talk” radio show that in a KU head coaches’ meeting or all-staff meeting, “There’s some — I won’t say it’s pressure — but there’s an expectation that hey, we should accomplish big things here in every sport and that should be our mentality that we have.”

“Obviously world-class academics, we have tremendous facilities, we’ve got great community support and there’s no reason we shouldn’t strive to be nationally competitive in every sport,” Schneider continued, “and it’s coaches like Coach Bechard who really not only pave the way, but I think can if you sit down and talk to them for a while, you’re an idiot if you don’t pick their brain on kind of what is their plan and what has been their approach.”

That was one key aspect of what Schneider, who arrived right in time for the Final Four year, found particularly distinguished about Bechard’s tenure — his willingness to operate his program as a piece of the broader athletic department, rather than in a “silo mentality” like what could exist at other schools.

“I think we’re fortunate that that doesn’t happen in our athletic department, and it’s because of, I think, people like coach Bechard who really set the tone and set an example,” Schneider said, “obviously for me as a coach coming in back in 2015, just about how you should do things, how you should treat people not only at the university but in our community, and what it means to really represent Kansas and the Jayhawk brand at an extremely high level.”

Now, Bechard’s moving on from the legacy he established — although he said in his retirement announcement that it “won’t change (his) devotion to this athletic department and volleyball program.”

Self said he expects Bechard will have “the opposite of buyer’s remorse” and question whether he made the right choice.

“But that’s natural,” Self said. “I saw him the other day with all his grandkids running around. He looked like a pretty happy fella.”