Q&A with Dave Denny

By Shawn Love
Dave Denny is an accomplished track & field coach, with more more than 32 years of coaching experience. His former athletes have been American, record holders, and most recently Olympic Finalist. Dave is currently retired, and living in the Kansas City area.

MO Runner: In 2007 you retired after coming off a state championship in cross country at Lee’s Summit West. Did you find it difficult to step away, or was this great timing for you?

Dave Denny: My intention was to retire from teaching only, but that was not an option. In Lee’s Summit, if you retire from teaching then you cannot be a head coach. I thought that the big upset (winning girls State when we were not expected to) was a good time to step away. Establishing a very successful program at Lee’s Summit West in such a short time [4 years] was very rewarding. I felt like both the track & field program and the cross country programs were in excellent shape and someone else could enjoy some success, also.

Nevertheless, I have found it very difficult to “walk away” from distance coaching; the relationships with the young athletes were so rewarding and I miss that. My passion had always been to develop young distance runners since the early 70s and I had so much fun being in control of my own program for 32 years. I was so blessed to go through a great program at Raytown South [3 years in cross country, 1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams] being coached by one of the greatest coaches in MO history, Bob Craddock. Then going through the program at CMSU when Jim Pilkington and Bob Busby really took the program to a high level. Even though I was not a real talented distance runner, I had a good work ethic and got to observe athletes like Ron Tabb, Rick Clear, Charlie Gray, Ed Crumm, Mark Curp, my brother Gary and many others as they became very successful in our sport. For my coaching development I always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, so I feel very fortunate!

What have you been doing since that retirement?
I substitute teach 2–3 days per week and helped a friend, Bruce DuFresne, coach cross country at Shawnee Mission South last fall. Right now I am keeping my options open and would consider getting back into a full- time distance coaching job if the right one came along. My wife has 3 more years before she can retire, so I will be in the KC area until then.

You’ve coached many notable athletes in your 32 years. I’d like to touch on just three of those athletes: Joe Falcon, Matt Tegenkamp, and Amy Wiseman. Joe turned out to be a phenomenal talent. What was the first time you said to yourself, “This guy is going to be something special”?

All three of those athletes were a “dream” to work with. Great talent, great work ethic, and super people, and it was fun to motivate them to reach the next level. In the early 80s when I was 27 I began working with Joe and I was very soon aware that he was a special athlete. We had a 9:38 3200 runner, Jonathan Vest, who had worked his whole career at Belton to develop his talent and was a super young man to work with. He broke the school record and even the conference record. Well, Joe came along when Jonathan was a senior and it almost was not even fair that after all that Jonathan had gone through, that Joe was an instant success. Joe initially did not like the longer distances (5K and 2 mile), but when Al Klein, the very successful coach at Ray-Pec had a 1-hour run on the Ray-Pec track and Joe had very little problem staying with Jonathan as they ran about 10 miles, it did not take long to figure out that he had some special abilities. In a few months he was 7th at the state cross country meet. Joe did not run cross country as a freshman and then played tennis [varsity letterman] in the spring. His mother, Pat, talked him into running cross country to stay in shape for tennis and as they say, “The rest is history.”

I prided myself on helping the young athletes, even the less talented ones, to set goals and to work toward those goals. Motivating the young athletes and not letting them get too satisfied was the key. The “Big Three” often got copies of the T&F news top performances in their events. They worked very hard to get on those lists and in my opinion it kept them “grounded.”
I think that I am most proud that Joe, Amy, and Matt all were Footlocker (or Kinney’s) Finalists and all three also competed in the World Cross Country Championships as juniors. To have three athletes experience those great competitions as 17–19 year olds was so much fun for them and for me as a coach. I learned so much from coaching Joe when I was still young; I made some mistakes, but always felt that I learned from those mistakes and by his senior year had advanced as a coach. When Amy and Matt came along, I was much more prepared to help them succeed.

Did you have a “working” relationship with Coach McDonnell, once Joe left for Arkansas?
John McDonnell was a phenomenal coach and was very helpful to me. When I helped Joe decide where to attend college, I did much research on the successful programs and took notice of Coach McDonnell’s outstanding early success with Niall O’Shaughnessy, Frank O’Mara and many other distance runners at Arkansas. I wanted Joe to realize that the next step at the collegiate level is a very, very difficult challenge and that he needed the best coach that he could get to help him along and John in my view was that person. Coach McDonnell kept me very “in touch” with what was going on with Joe and we talked on the phone numerous times. At one time, I think that many people thought that he just recruited a few older Irish, English or Canadian athletes and that is why he was successful. I saw him take the good American high schoolers and turn them into great distance runners.

I learned much from Coach McDonnell and because I kept in close communication with Joe, I was able to get his perspective on Coach Mc (Joe had the greatest respect for John) and then heard Coach Mc’s version of how he saw Joe develop. That was very helpful. It was a little bit uncomfortable for me when Joe asked me to coach him after college. John admitted to me later that he had made a mistake getting “in between” Joe and his soon-to-be wife. I think that he regretted doing that. Joe worked with me and of course what high school coach would not enjoy working with a 3:49 miler, but because Joe was in Springfield and I was in the KC area, it was a less than ideal situation. Joe tended to “over-train,” especially in speed work, and really needed his coach to see him every day; I traveled to Springfield often and he came to the KC area, but not often enough. His Achille’s tendon problems prematurely ended his career and that is such a shame because, in my opinion, he would have run near WR times in the 5K if he would have stayed healthy!!!

What’s your best Joe Falcon story?
First of all, I think that many of the Joe Falcon stories are very exaggerated because Joe came across very confident, some people took him the wrong way! Here are a couple from his early Arkansas years:

Two stories: the first one from John McDonnell. When Joe got to college as a freshman, John could see that Joe had come very prepared with a great summer of training. Joe did not plan on going to college and just being an average college runner! When he got on campus he immediately started working out with the talented, older athletes on the University of Arkansas team and tried to “hammer” the workout everyday right up in the front with whoever was leading the workout. What Joe did not realize is that everyday it was a different athlete, like Paul Donovan, David Swain, Randy Reina, etc. He practically ran himself into exhaustion and injury, but John put a stop to it pretty quickly. When John called an athlete into his office for a little individual meeting, he did not “beat around the bush”; he told Joe that even the Olympic champions could not go out and run like that everyday and stay healthy and be worth anything at the end of the season. John was very good at recognizing when an athlete was tired, sick, etc. and would take them out of the workout, if necessary.

The second one is soon after the first: Joe wins his first collegiate meet in Oklahoma and was pretty pumped up and when he went to Oklahoma State for his second meet, Joe told me that he would have won it also, but one of his own teammates ran him into a tree. I always assumed that if he actually did get forced into a tree that it was an accident, but nevertheless, it was a great story because there probably was some times where the older European athletes tried to put the young American athlete into his proper place! Joe ended up making All American as a true freshman (24th place) and it was John’s first cross country national title! John told me afterward that he screamed at Joe with about 1,000 meters to go that they needed him to pass 15 people to win the national title and that he did indeed pass at least 15 to ensure that they won (he was 5th man).