Greg Marsden wanted nothing to do with his own retirement press conference.
For a year now, he has known that this season would be his last. He’d talked to athletic director Chris Hill, he had spoken with his wife and co-head coach Megan Marsden and told his assistant Tom Farden that he would be promoted. But then the secret-keeping started — his retirement was kept quiet from everybody, even his own gymnasts.
“I didn’t want it to be Greg Marsden farewell tour,” he said Tuesday. “I hope I have done a good job of keeping [the gymnasts] in the front and staying in the background and I didn’t want to do anything that would take away from their season and their accomplishments this year.”
Marsden, who is stepping down after 40 years at the helm of the storied gymnastics program, always wanted to keep the athletes in the front and center. Even as media and fans flocked to the Huntsman Center to marvel at what he had built, he preferred to stay in the background, and allow his gymnasts to get all the attention.
There were no athletes to hide behind on Tuesday, though. Even with the conference also acting as an announcement for Farden’s promotion to co-head coach (Megan Marsden is staying on in her current co-head coach role), most of, if not all the lights were on Greg Marsden.
Greg Marsden opened his remarks by saying that he didn’t think he was going to be able to get through them without being that “blubbering old man.”
“If you have ever been to a banquet where they hand the mic to an old man, it just goes on and on and on, and I really don’t want to be that old man,” Marsden said.
The problem is, Marsden was already that. He might not have had a mic, but for 40 years he invited thousands to a visual banquet at the Huntsman Center to watch some of the finest athletes the university had to offer, and it just went on and on and on.
Until now.
It’s been well chronicled what Marsden has accomplished, and instead of focusing on all the accolades and the accomplishments of yesteryear, the now-former Utah coach, wanted to focus on what his current team had accomplished.
With the 2015 Red Rocks in attendance he asked everyone to give them a round of applause for what they had accomplished, again trying to deflect the attention away from himself.
“It’s always been about them,” he said. “I got into coaching by chance, and I fell in love with it, because it was an opportunity to be the ultimate teacher. Everything else that’s come along the way has been so that I can continue to do that. You got to win, you got to put people in the stands, you got to keep your job.”
Marsden was motivated to build Utah into arguably the best gymnastics program the college ranks has ever seen, so he could continue to teach and continue to spend four hours a day in a gym with “amazing people.”
In the middle of the press conference, Marsden singled out three of those people. He had the three graduating members of the team — Nansy Damianova (concluded collegiate career last year, still at the U to graduate this semester) , Corrie Lothrop and Tory Wilson — and pleaded with people to give them jobs.
“If you are in a position in your company to hire, you won’t find more disciplined, hardworking, honest, goal-oriented people, and you won’t find any people that would better represent your organization,” Marsden said.
He then thanked everyone from the athletic department staff, his assistants, the fans and even the media, but the most heartwarming moment of the conference was when he thanked his two sons.
When addressing his two boys, Marsden went silent for a time trying to hold back emotion, and finally through tears said, “I want to thank them for understanding all the games that I missed of theirs, because I was somewhere else watching somebody else’s kids.”
So, why is Marsden ending his run, now?
“There really are a lot of reasons, and there wasn’t one overwhelming thing that I can point and say why,” he said. “I think everybody that works a job for a long time thinks about ‘am I going to know when it’s time to be done,’ and I always worried about that. It was kind of a culmination of things. I just felt it was time.”
Marsden’s life has been spent in the gym, and he openly admitted that he didn’t have any hobbies. He doesn’t fish, doesn’t golf — gymnastics has been his life. He likened what he is about to go through to what his seniors are also about to experience — a new journey in a successful life.
“If they can do it, I can do it,” he said.
But, even with the lack of activities to take up his time, don’t expect him to be sticking around the gym
“I think it’s critically important that you don’t see me at all in the gym,” Marsden said. “It would be easy for my shadow to get in the way of what they need to do. I know they are excited to move forward, I know much of the way we do things will continue, but I know they are excited about ideas that they have that can make things even better. What I don’t want them to ever feel is that I am second guessing them. This is their program now and they have to find their own way now, and I have to stay out of the way.”
So he intends to do just what he always wanted — stay in shadows, and have everyone else get the credit. But at least on this day, he couldn’t avoid the spotlight, even if he tried his hardest to do just that.
@millerryan