For 96 years, Maryville University was an all women's school, and for 100 years it was owned by the Religious of the Sacred Heart.

Even now, 40 years later, nuns sit on the school's board of trustees.

Recently Jeff Miller, Maryville's vice president for enrollment, was running through a list of accomplishments with the board when one of the sisters had questions for him: How is the wrestling program doing, and are we taking care of them?

"That's when I knew the wrestling program had become part of the fabric of our campus," Miller said.

Nine months after the program at UNO was discontinued and seven months after coach Mike Denney and many of the Maverick wrestlers resurfaced at the school in suburban St. Louis to launch a new program, Maryville wrestling is making its mark.

The Saints are ranked No. 16 in NCAA Division II. They'll compete in the National Duals tournament later this month.

And, while a sixth-place finish at the Midwest Classic in December had school officials bursting with pride, that's not the way Denney is wired.

After he led UNO to seven national championships, including the past three and six of the previous eight — his will to succeed has him in building mode at Maryville.

And the pace is at light speed.

"We're trying to get things going," Denney said. "I've got to work on being patient . but we're not going to lower our expectations. I've told our guys I want us to do well for this university because they've embraced us.

"I really feel like we got cheap-shotted (at UNO), but they're the ones who picked us up and said, 'come on over.' They want us to do well, and we want to do well for them."

UNO pulled the plug on its wrestling program the night it clinched the national championship last March as the school made its move for Division I.

Denney tries not to dwell on it.

"The good part for me is that every morning the Good Lord gives me enough energy to go until I'm exhausted," he said. "It keeps me from thinking about what happened up there."

Of the 18 wrestlers on the Maryville roster, 11 have direct ties to UNO or Nebraska. All three assistant coaches came from UNO — Mario Morgan and Aaron Denson won national titles last March as seniors.

They're not housed in the athletic department building yet — Miller said a fund-raising campaign for a renovation of the existing building will be formally announced in the spring.

In the meantime, Maryville converted a conference room — adjacent to a coffee shop and the library — into the wrestling room. Also in the same building, maybe 200 yards from the athletic department, is a small wrestling locker room.

The mats are familiar — Denney said his new program was able to win bids for five of the seven mats when his old program auctioned them off via eBay.

On the walls of the wrestling room — or the dojo, as Denney, a martial arts enthusiast, calls it — is the program's wall of fame, with plaques for accomplishments such as lettering, being named academic All-American or qualifying for the national tournament.

They're all blank.

"We want our guys to have something to aspire to," Denney said.

They had all that stuff in the old UNO wrestling room. Denney said he put it all in storage in Omaha.

All around Maryville is a combination of old and new. A program is pushing for the future in a new location while not totally forgetting about its past somewhere else.

Maryville held the Kaufman-Brand Open a few weeks ago, just like the old days. Many of the old advertising banners were there from the Omaha area. So were many of the tournament workers.

But, of course, it was at Maryville.

They didn't bring in 700 wrestlers like in the glory years at Sapp Fieldhouse. There's room for only six mats at Moloney Arena, so 250 came to compete. And many more came to watch.

"It was huge," Miller said. "The stands were packed. With the sport new to Maryville, there was a lot of curiosity. A lot of students came, and a lot of faculty and staff who haven't really come to sporting events came to find out what it was all about."

Denney said he plans to move the tournament to a massive nearby high school in the future to build it back to its former stature.

Miller said the wrestling program, despite its relative isolation from the rest of the athletic department, is fitting in.

"They're definitely becoming one with the campus," said Miller, whose idea it was to bring much of the UNO team to Maryville. "Even the librarians love the wrestling team. And if the librarians love you, you must be doing something right.

"Coach Denney came in and laid some groundwork, like required study hall (in the library). And when people saw some of the things he did, they realized that this is about the whole student-athlete and not just winning."

Contact the writer:

402-444-1027, rob.white@owh.com

twitter.com/RWhiteOWH

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