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subject faithfully attending to his duties. You could always count on him. He modeled his strong Christian beliefs. Under Denney, UNO perennially contended for the national title and became THE elite program at the Division II level. He led UNO in organizing and hosting the nation’s largest single- day college wrestling tournament, the Kaufman-Brand Open, and a handful of national championship tournaments. He was particularly fond of the Kaufman-Brand. “I loved that tournament. It was a happening. Wrestlers came from all over for that. It was a who’s-who of wrestling. I mean, you saw World, Olympic and national champions. Multiple mats. Fourteen hundred matches.” With everything that’s happened, he hasn’t had much time to look back at his UNO career. Ask him what he’s proudest of and he doesn’t immediately talk about all the winning. Instead, it’s the people he impacted and the difference his teams made. His guys visiting hospitals or serving meals at homeless shelters. The youth tournament UNO held. The high school wrestling league it organized. The clinics he and his coaches gave. “We were a positive force in the wrestling community. I think


it’s going to hurt wrestling in the area. We provided opportuni- ties.”


Then there was the annual retreat-boot camp where his wrestlers bonded. The extra mile he and his coaches and ath- letes went to help on campus or in the community. The Academic All-Americans UNO produced. All the coaches the program produced. Then, Denney gets around to the winning or more specifically to winning year in and year out. “I think one of the most difficult things to do in anything is be consistent. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. I think that consistency, year in and out, in everything you do is the biggest test.” In its last season UNO wrestling went wire to wire No. 1.


“Staying up there is the toughest thing,” said Denney. “People don’t realize how difficult what they did really is,” said Benning, who knows a thing or two about winning. Benning thinks it’s unfortunate that local media coverage of UNO wrestling declined at the very time the program enjoyed its greatest success. “They kind of got cheated in regards to their value and what they accomplished.”


“Whether it was on our terms or not, we went out on top. No one can ever take away what we accomplished,” said Ron Higdon.


Highs and lows come with the territory in athletics. Win or lose, Mike and Bonnie Denney were surrogate parents to their “boys,” cultivating family bonds that went beyond the usual coach-player relationship. Parents to three children of their own, the couple form an unbreakable team. “When you do anything that takes this amount of time, you


gotta have a partnership,” said Denney, who said he often asks Bonnie to accompany him on recruiting trips and invites her to get to know student-athletes. “She’s a recruiting asset. She’s kind of a second mother to them. They get to know her.” Bonnie said she learned long ago that “if I wasn’t going to join him in this I was going to lose him – wouldn’t have a husband.” Therefore, she said, “it’s a shared mission.” There’s been hard times. She survived a multiple sclerosis


scare. They endured the deaths of UNO wrestlers Ryan Kaufman, R.J. Nebe and Jesse Greise. Next to all that, losing a program pales in comparison. “We kept this in perspective because we’ve been there when


the parents of former wrestlers had to pull life support,” said Denney. “To be in a hospital room and to see a former wrestler


20 USA Wrestler


Denney coached 2010 World Team member Les Sigman to four NCAA Division II titles. Omaha World-Herald photo.


take his last breath, to be there with the parents and the wives, this (wrestling getting cut) is not in that same category.” That didn’t make it hurt any less. The coach and his boys did- n’t go down without a fight, either. Denney, his assistants, his wrestlers and his boosters held rallies and lobbied university officials to reconsider, but they could not sway NU regents to reverse their decision.


What cut deepest for Denney is that no one in a position of power took wrestling’s side. No decision-maker spoke up for the program.


“There wasn’t anybody that thought we were valuable enough to fight for us,” he said. “There wasn’t anybody that cared. At Maryville, they care, they value us.” Two men Denney counted as friends, Christensen and Don


Leahy, who hired Denney at UNO and whom Denney regarded as a father figure, were not in his corner when he needed them. It stings, but Denney’s refrained from name-calling or recrimina- tion.


Following the lead of their coach, UNO wrestlers took the high road, too.


“One of the things that made us really proud of our group is how they handled all this,” he said. “They really, I thought, did a nice job of showing dignity and class and poise.” Just like he taught them. “We always talk about teaching and building …that we’re teachers and builders. Immediately when this went down, I thought, How can we use this? Well, it starts with the family-the team pulling together, supporting each other, picking each other up, and then modeling and displaying character under adversity. It’s easy to do it when everything’s going good. But things are going to happen in life. “Obviously, we got hit. We got blindsided. We had no idea this was going to happen, no indication. It was a cheap shot.” On the mat or in life, he demanded his guys show grit when


tested. “I created a family with high expectations for how you acted.


You demonstrated character under adversity. You had to be tough. You had to demonstrate moxie. You had to bounce back. If you got knocked down, you had to get up.” His boys didn’t let him down. But as hard as they were hit with their team and dream taken away, they were crushed. Naturally, in the aftermath, they looked to their coach for


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