It’s funny how some pieces just happen to fall in the right place at the right time.
That is exactly how the Colorado Mesa University athletic department felt after they hired Michael “Mickey” Wender as the new head coach of the CMU men’s and women’s swim & dive team as well as the triathlon team.
Wender has over 30 years of collegiate coaching experience with his most recent sting being at Division I program Army West Point where he was the coach for the Black Knights for 13 seasons. When Wender was coaching on the coast of the Hudson River, he won over 200 meets and coached 41 women and 68 men to All-Patriot League honors, including 45 first team and 72 second-team selections.
It would appear that CMU is bringing in a drill sergeant to captain the ship of the swim & dive programs–however, Wender himself, along with his swimmers will testify that while he is intense, his energy is exerted towards caring for the student-athletes and making sure they come first.
“I am intense, passionate, driven, but to me, it’s all about the people,” Wender said. “It’s all about helping young people develop to their full potential in and out of the pool.”
Wender believes in a coaching method that makes sure the athletes are cared for but also challenged to perform their very best in the pool and on the block. His record speaks for himself as he has accumulated over 400 victories in his coaching career.
“If it was all about just going back and forth in a swimming pool and riding a bike around in a circle, I never would’ve done this for so long,” Wender said. “To me, it’s about the process and it’s about self-discovery, and it’s about building teams and creating relationships.
The Setauket, N.Y. native graduated from the University of Vermont in 1989 where he swam for four years before getting his master’s degree from Cal State-Northridge, also where he began his coaching career. He later would coach at the University of Washington from 1998-2006. In 2008, Wender served as the head coach for American Somoa at the 2008 Olympic Games in Bejing, China.
So why Grand Junction? Why CMU? Well first and foremost, Wender is a family man. He and his wife have four kids and they spent the last 13 years living on a military base. It was time for a change in scenery and what better place for a former Iron Man and Eco-Challenge competitor to set up shop than in the Grand Valley?
“We were looking for something special, something unique,” Wender said. “A place where we can put down some roots in a community that we could be a part of the lives of our children and build something. This is an amazing part of the planet to live. This institution is building and growing on its way to really leave its mark.”
Good for Wender, CMU has already established itself as a successful program after both the men’s and women’s teams won RMAC Championships last season while the dive program captured a couple of individual national championships in the last two seasons.
The triathlon team is one of the newer varsity sports at CMU but now has a coach who has competed and coached at the highest level of multisport racing.
“One of the things I love about this place: there is a blue-collar work ethic that I feel here that suits me personally,” Wender said. “There is a sense of ‘We’re gonna do this and it doesn’t matter what it takes.’ The athletes are scrappy.”
Wender, as mentioned prior, has competed in numerous Iron Man races as well at the Eco-Challenge which, for those who don’t know, is a race that consists of multiple days of devasting and immensely challenging obstacles that were aired on TV back in the ’90s and early 2000s. It is returning in 2019 and is still considered “The World’s Toughest Race.”
However, Wender’s racing days are past him as he spends his energy on coaching and raising his family.
The swim & dive season starts up in October as the Mavericks will be hosting the Intermountain Shootout on Oct.4-5. CMU also recently competed in Fort Collins at the Horsetooth Open Water Swim.
