DENNEY, Continued from page 20
answers. Denney said, “They gave me this look like, ‘Fix this coach.’” Starting the very night the team got the heart- breaking news, right on through the regents sealing its fate, Denney kept his troops together. “We tried to meet every day and just
talk about things,” he said. “It was a sig- nificant kind of thing, really.”
Denney admittedly walked a fine line between keeping things positive and offering false hope, but he wasn’t going to rest without exhausting every opportu- nity to maintain his program — whether it be at UNO or somewhere else. “Our whole thing when this first hap- pened, our prayer was, let there be some way that we could somehow continue this thing,” he said. “So, I kept telling them to expect a miracle. They’d kind of look at me like, What are you saying that for? I was kind of having fun with it, keeping things light. You know, we’ve hit some adversity, but we can still laugh, we can enjoy each other, we’re going to make the best out of this deal.” But it wasn’t only about staying upbeat. Even before the regents made it official and unanimously endorsed UNO’s deci- sion to cut wrestling and football, Denney sent out feelers to other universities to try and find a new home for his program. Creighton University, it turned out, might have been able to add the program if the timing had been different, but as it was CU was in a budget cutting mode. Just when it appeared all might be lost, Maryville University approached Denney. After much soul-searching and many exploratory visits, now he, Bonnie, a cou- ple assistant coaches and 10 former Maverick student-athletes, plus some new recruits, are taking what’s left of the UNO wrestling brand to inaugurate that small private school’s first entree into var- sity wrestling.
“This is a miraculous kind of story real-
ly,” said Denney. “That’s why we have to go there. Because of all the things that have happened to set this up, it’s almost like we’re divinely guided to go there. So, I guess, be careful what you ask for.” Thus, at a time when most couples their age prepare for retirement, the Denneys find themselves starting all over again, at a new school, in an unfamiliar city. Except, they have been made to feel so welcome and wanted there that they expect the transition to calling Maryville and St. Louis home will be easier than they ever imagined. Recently, the Denneys shared how the Maryville option came into focus and what it’s like to be moving onto this new,
32 USA Wrestler
“Since the new A.D. (Alberts) came, these last couple years we really felt we weren’t being embraced, let’s just put it that way. We just kind of pulled back into our own area,” said Denney. “But they (Maryville) did embrace us. It was kind of a great feeling.”
In terms of facilities, Maryville can’t match UNO, at least right now. When the deal was struck with Denney, Maryville didn’t even have a wrestling room. A meeting room is being converted into one. By contrast, UNO had a state-of-the- art wrestling room. Maryville is not so different from when
Denney hopes to coach until he is 72. Omaha World-Herald photo.
unexpected chapter in their lives. It all began with a phone call, which is ironic because once the news broke about UNO wrestling being cut, Denney’s office phone was so deluged with calls neither he nor the message system could keep up. He hardly ever caught a call. One day, he’d just finished meeting with his team, he said, “when I walked into my office and the phone was ringing and I thought, Well, at least I can get this one. So I picked it up and it was some- one saying, ‘I”m Jeff Miller from Maryville University in St. Louis. I’m representing Maryville President Mark Lombardi.’” Miller told Denney that as part of Maryville moving from Division III to Division II it sought to add wrestling and saw UNO’s orphaned program as a ready-made fit.
Denney was skeptical at first. “I said, ‘If this is one of my friends, this is a cruel joke.’ About four times during the conver- sation, I said, ‘Who really is this?’” The more Miller, a Maryville vice presi- dent, laid out his university’s interest, the more convinced Denney became this was no joke. Miller came right out and said Maryville wanted not only Denney but as many of his coaches and student-athletes as he could bring to come there and start a wrestling program. “I was like, ‘Really?’” The clincher, said Denney, was when Miller told him he was flying “up there” — to Omaha — to talk things over. The more Miller talked, the more Denney was convinced this was a one in a million chance come true to salvage a bad situation with something clear out of the blue. After the rejection at UNO, it felt nice to be appreciated again.
Mike started at UNO. The facilities were so bad his first several years there he purposely avoided showing them to recruits. Over time, things improved. Committing to wrestling is a big thing for Maryville. First, the school already had a full complement of sports. Next, as a D-III school it offered no athletic schol- arships and its coaches were part time. Now, in D-II, it’s granting partial scholar- ships to student-athletes and its coaches are closer to full-time.
“They’re making a real step and you can feel the energy on campus,” said Denney, who’s been impressed on multi- ple visits there by the buildings going up and the programs being added. “They’ve got a little money and they’re looking for every way they can to build their universi- ty. It adds to their campus, it adds expo- sure for their university.” Denney’s miracle was delivered in a most unexpected way. Still, Denney said he wasn’t prepared to accept Maryville’s offer unless Bonnie wholeheartedly agreed to the move. “First of all, I had to recruit her,” he said. “She’s the one who’s going to give up everything. She’s gotta leave every- thing — all of her friends, our church, our house of 35 years.”
And so she consented to the move with a philosophical attitude: “You have to say farewell to have that new beginning.” Denney liked the idea of playing the Pied Piper, but first he needed assurance enough of his guys were willing to follow him there to make it worthwhile. “I kept telling Jeff (Miller), ‘We’re willing to go, we’re willing to do this thing, we feel like we’re called to do that. But I’m not going to do it if it’s just my wife and I. I’m not doing it just for us.’ I mean, really, we could just ride off into the sunset. We could make it. There’s a lot of things I could do, and we got offered some things to do, but none that I felt called to do. “It’s not like I was looking to build up my resume.”
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