How do you rise? How do you make yourself something out of nothing? Does it take days? Weeks? Years? Or does it take a lifetime?

For the Ryerson Rams, it took the vision of one man. A leader with a dream of turning an athletic program around.

It was a school defined more by its losses than by its wins. Now, it's something more, something greater.

This is the Rise of the Rams.

Ivan Joseph is Ryerson University's athletic director. A former track and field star and a national championship-winning soccer coach in the U.S., he's now the man behind the madness at Ryerson's rising athletic program.

He's no stranger to hard work or long hours. Growing up on a farm outside Toronto, he's used to waking up at the crack of dawn. It's why he shows up to Ryerson at 6:30 in the morning, ready to work.

The first time Ryerson offered Joseph the job, he said no. He ended up turning it down three times. But a phone call from the university's president, Sheldon Levy, changed his mind.

I might have tried to sell him on that were going to do wonderful things and he might have said "I'll take a chance and believe the guy."

One of the things he said to me is that he said "Our academic reputation of our university is shooting out the roof, yet nobody knows about it and partly, in turn, is that our athletics reputation hasn't kept up." He says "Athletics plays an important part in advancing the university's reputation and then plays an important part at maintaining what's called the esprit de corps, or the spirit of a campus, and I want you to help us build that.

To tell the story of the rise of the Ryerson Rams, you have to look at where these teams once were. Where winning was unheard of and dreams of the championship were nothing more than a joke.

You looked at the facilities of Ryerson, you looked at what was happening here, the gym looked like a high school gym, the teams, every single team but one had a losing record.

The other teams during my time at Ryerson, to put it diplomatically, were generally terrible. Women's basketball couldn't quite get over the hump. Men's hockey just couldn't get anything going. If you go through HockeyDB, you'd see a lot of guys who show up here and then disappear, sort of like a breeze in the wind.

My first two weeks I was here, "Athletics, who cares?", that was the title of the first article when I came here.

Dubois cared and tried to pass a referendum in 2004 that would increase athletic fees. But Ryerson students were unconvinced and the vote failed to pass.

Well you know what, we were inexperienced when we went into that referendum and that really, really showed.

Three years after that failed referendum, the Rams continued their losing ways and Dubois was fired.

Often when you get let go, it's it's a personality issue. People didn't see my vision and that's their choice. They they were the ones making the decision and I have to live by that.

We had to make changes and we had to up our game in every, every respect.

That's where Joseph came in. He and Levy tried to pass another referendum in 2009. This time it worked and though it wasn't in the original plan the two were presented with a golden opportunity: the chance to move into the former home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the historic Maple Leaf Gardens. After undergoing a massive renovation and rebranding it as the Mattamy Athletic Centre, Ryerson now had a home. It didn't take long for some of the best young athletes in the country to notice.

The opportunity to play at Maple Leaf Gardens, as a Leafs fan my whole life, I thought would be a great opportunity.

Once we got the Mattamy Athletic Centre, I think it did change how fans viewed coming to our games. This is where sports happens in Toronto now.

With a new facility in place, Joseph's next step was hiring championship-caliber coaches to build successful teams. When the future of the women's hockey team at St. Mary's University was in question, Joseph and Associate Athletic Director Stephanie White set their sights on Lisa Haley.

I came to Ryerson when some tough financial times struck at St. Mary's and some program changes were made. Women's hockey was taken off the docket and so I was looking for a new opportunity.

This is a really good young coach that's taken highly recommended. I think she's going to be a future Olympic-level coach and there's a problem going on with St Mary's and I want to get her while this window is open.

I think here at Ryerson, with this fantastic facility and the investment of all types of resources into varsity athletics, this is the kind of place that I believe you could build a winning program.

Trust me guys, you are ready for what's about to happen. You've put a lot of work in to get to this stage of the game and you are now ready for what's about to happen next. When you get out on the ice, you're going to trust your instincts, alright? You've worked hard, you know what to do in every situation. It may not be perfect every single time but you know exactly what to do and I want you to rely on your instincts.

Ryerson's latest addition to its varsity ranks is the women's hockey team. It's also one of the university's fastest growing sports programs. It all started nearly a decade ago with The Stingers, a club team founded by Stephanie Veltmann.

I think at first it was maybe a little bit selfish. I wanted to play hockey and I wanted to do it at Ryerson but the more I looked into it, I realized that there was a lot of opportunity in the city. There's a lot of talent here and you know, I looked into what was available for me to play in the city and as most women will know, there aren't very many options for women's hockey here. I thought there was opportunity here.

It takes a trial period before a club team becomes a varsity program but once Ryerson took The Stingers under their wing, it opened up a whole new level of resources. Joseph hired Haley but that move alone didn't yet make them into legitimate contenders. That first year they only won one game. They finished the year losing 23 in a row.

That first season really was less about the present players and winning hockey games. It was more about getting the overall vision for the for the first five years of the program.

I mean honestly, we had a game that we played against Laurier in Laurier and we lost 11-0 and that was obviously by far the worst game I had ever been a part of and I'm sure everybody else had been a part of. But after that game, no one got down and thought "What's the point of this?"

We were going to have a tough challenge. The Ontario conference already is a really competitive conference and so that was a moment, but in terms of the Laurier game, we still reference that game this year.

Coming to a team that was new, although I knew it was new, I didn't realize just how badly we would get beat in in the beginning. We lost by like... they had scored in the double digits and I just thought "I don't think I've ever played you know on a team where we've lost so badly."

We both knew that Lisa is an unbelievable coach and that she was going to turn the team around and that it was just a matter of time.

Slowly things began to change. Double-digit blowouts turned into marginal losses. This season, it all clicked.

Hello and welcome to tonight's game, I'm Jeremy Pearl. Tonight's matchup on the Rams network: the Ryerson Rams taking on crosstown rival York Lions.

A win for the Rams, they're in the playoffs for the first time. If they lose, their season's over.

Emma Rutherford coming in, scores! Emma Rutherford has given the Rams a 1-0 lead. That could be the goal that puts them in the playoffs.

They've done it. The Rams are playoff bound for the first time in their history.

The women's hockey team, it's a great example of what has changed here at Ryerson. In my first year, they didn't exist. There there wasn't a women's hockey team here at Ryerson and all of a sudden this year, here they are in the playoffs on home ice. It's just fantastic. That might be the biggest success story of of Ryerson, period.

We're not done by a long shot yet. We still have some recruiting to do, we still have some, I think offensive skill to add to our team, but we're headed in the right direction. I think we wanted to be in a playoff spot within four years and we're there and now the next timeline is getting a banner to hang on those rafters.

Intense, relentless, demanding, quest for perfection in everything we do– that's that's kind of who I am.

I believe he was my second hire and you know, there was another coach we tried to get ahead of Roy, to be honest with you. Roy was right there on the line but you know, Roy was almost the biggest mistake I made by not getting him.

I always kind of thought this was a place that was underrated, it was a real opportunity to build something. It had a real kind of a history of not a lot of success.

I liked him because he represented our values, he came from an underrepresented group, he was from the city of Toronto, he was grassroots basketball. I wanted to change this program and he sold a vision.

You could definitely feel the change once Roy started coaching the team. Especially from a preparation perspective, the way we practiced, the intensity was always extremely high. Never taking days off, no matter if we were lifting, in practice, even shoot-arounds are intense.

On the court, Roy Rana brought a new style of play, one that could compete with the best in the country. This season, Rana took the Rams all the way to the provincial championship but losses to Carleton and Ottawa sent them back to Toronto with nothing to show for. The season wasn't over for Rana or the Rams though. The country's top teams would compete this year on Ryerson's home court. As hosts, Ryerson was given an automatic berth in the national championship: the CIS Final 8.

I've been in a lot of fish bowls, I've been a lot of crazy situations where there's way more hype than there is even with the CIS right now and they've just got to be prepared for it and I think they are. They know what's coming and I think we've done a pretty good job of balancing it.

I want it so badly and I think we're due, that's really the thing. I don't see why we cannot win, so I definitely think they they should be winning it but I don't want to jinx them.

We see this nationals, this very first one, as our coming out party. We want to showcase not just our basketball team but all our teams. We want to showcase our university at the national stage and tell people we've arrived.

They've been waiting all season for this: game one of nationals, quarterfinal game. Ryerson Rams, Windsor Lancers, winner goes on to the national semi-final.

The Rams knock off the Windsor Lancers. With that win, they move on to the national semi-final, where they'll take on OUA rival Ottawa Gee-Gees.

With a win over Windsor, Ryerson moved on to the semi-finals, where they would take on the Ottawa Gee-Gees. It's a team they've lost to their last seven encounters.

Well the thing about Ryerson is that, you know, when you you play roulette and it's red, it's red, it's red, it's red, it's red, you know, at some point it's going to hit black, right?

The Ottawa Gee-Gees, The Ryerson Rams: national semi-final. The stage has been set: winner moves on to the national championship to face the dreaded Carleton Ravens.

I don't think we're on the rise, I think we're there. It's just, you know, we haven't been able to get over that hump and beat them but you know, games like yesterday, they turn on a call, they turn on the dunk, they turn on a missed shot, I mean that's that's basketball when it's played by two teams at the highest level.

The Ryerson Rams beat the Victoria Vikes in the bronze medal game the following day. It was the highest any Ryerson varsity team ever placed at a national championship.

It's not really an OUA banner that we're going after. It's really a national championship banner that we're going after and that's not going to take only four or five years to achieve. At one time, six of our eight teams were naturally ranked. The academic performance of our teams is an all-time high, so I think, you know, the strategic plan has been a big, big success but the work has just begun, as we like to say. We're at the next phase and we're trying to identify what those parts are and what those goals and objectives will be that will see us achieve our goal, which is ultimately to be the best athletic department in the country.