Multiple national championships, hundreds of All-Americans and thousands of screaming fans all started with an ad in the student newspaper — this student newspaper.

Forty years ago, Greg Marsden was a graduate student at the U on a graduate assistantship. As part of that assistantship, Marsden taught five classes, including WSI, winter survival, handball and gymnastics.

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During Marsden’s second year at the school, Title IX was going to be enforced, meaning the university was going to have to provide women’s varsity sports.

“They came and asked me if I would be interested in starting a [gymnastics] team,” Marsden said. “They offered me a $1,500 stipend, a budget of $4,500 and five in-state tuition waivers.”

Marsden placed an ad in The Daily Utah Chronicle for tryouts, and soon the first Utah gymnastics team was formed. Forty years later, Marsden is still overseeing the program he’s turned into a dynasty.

“I thought I would do it for a year or two as I was finishing my graduate degree,” Marsden said. “The first year we put together a team of eight people and we ended up qualifying for championships — finished tenth in the nation.”

The next season Utah improved to ninth and at that point, Marsden was hooked. He felt the Utes could accomplish something special, and he was right.

The next few seasons, Utah steadily finished higher and higher on the national stage. The Utes finished sixth, then fourth and then second before going on a run of six straight championships in a row. As the Utes won, Marsden was determined to get people to notice.

“As we started having success, I was young and enthusiastic and I would call the media myself and try to get them up to our meets,” Marsden said.

After some endless nagging, longtime Utah sportscaster Bill Marcroft got fed up and told Marsden what needed to be done in order for the media to cover his team.

Marsden remembers Marcroft telling him, “Look, Coach, it’s not our job to promote your program. It’s our job to report on what people want to hear about. When you’re putting four or five thousand people in the stands, you won’t have to call us anymore — we’ll be up there.”

Marsden accepted the challenge.

He looked at the major spectator sports — basketball, football and baseball — and tried to find a common thread that made those sports appealing to attend.

“Greg started out wanting to win championships, and he won many, but then he wanted to make sure the program was covered by the media and that people in the community knew about it,” said Marsden’s wife and co-head head coach Megan Marsden. “He really mimicked much of what he does from the NBA, NFL and baseball. He really looked at the pro programs and what they did to make it an entertaining event.”

The goal was to turn a gymnastics competition into more than just a meet. Greg Marsden wanted to turn it into entertainment.

Utah utilized the jumbotron and then brought in cheerleaders and the band. When Greg Marsden felt he had created a well-designed event, he set out trying to get people to come watch it.

“We did everything from taking the girls out in the community and speaking at elementary schools, to just stuffing envelopes and speaking to anyone that would have us,” he said.

All their efforts succeeded. For decades fans have been coming in droves to watch the Red Rocks compete. Utah has regularly averaged over 10,000 fans per meet, and in four of the last five seasons, it has averaged over 14,000.

The fans have had plenty of reasons to come and cheer. The Utes have made the national championship meet in each of their 39 years of existence, they’ve made 18 Super Sixes, have had 338 All-Americans and have won 10 national championships. And they show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Even though he’s turned a start-up program into one of the most respected programs in the nation — in any sport — Marsden’s greatest accomplishment is seeing what his athletes have done after they have left school.

“I’m most proud when I look at our alumni and see what they’ve gone on to accomplish,” Marsden said. “Whether they’re stay-at-home moms, whether they’re doctors, whether they’re lawyers, whether they’re teachers. It’s seeing them go on and still wanting to be associated with Utah gymnastics and how they’ve been able to use the experiences they had here throughout their lives.”

This weekend, Utah will welcome many of them back, as Utah celebrates the 40th anniversary of the team. Every one of the athletes returning will have been mentored by Marsden.

“What is a little unique is that Greg is able to say that every one of these athletes are his,” Megan Marsden said. “There are few collegiate programs of any kind that would have the same coach that would span that many years of the entirety of the program, that for me is what makes it special — that all these girls are his and many of them are mine and so when we bring them back it is our gymnastics family.”

It will be a large family reunion as over 70 alums have RSVP’d to attend the weekend’s festivities and celebrate a program that started with an ad.

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@millerjryan