A former two-time NCAA champion wrestler, four-time All-American and longtime Division I assistant coach was announced as the new University of Northern Colorado head coach Tuesday afternoon.
Teyon Ware comes to Greeley after spending the past three seasons as an assistant at the University of Oklahoma, his alma mater, where he won two NCAA titles at 141 pounds in 2003 and 2005. He was an All-American from 2003-06 for the Sooners with a sixth-place finish in 2004 and second in 2006.
The 41-year-old Ware was announced as the new UNC coach via email and social media early Tuesday afternoon. A video conference call was held with Ware later in the day. His first name is pronounced Tea-on, which rhymes with Keyon or Deon.
Ware replaces Troy Nickerson, who spent 11 years as the UNC head coach before leaving for Army West Point last month. UNC assistant Earl Hall served as interim coach since Nickerson’s departure. Ware said he’ll be looking for an assistant to help with athletes at the heavier weights in the lineup.
Ware was interested in the UNC job, in part, to take on his first head coaching role.
“When Troy was leaving, we thought, ‘Why not here?’ ” Ware said during the video meeting. “We lived in Laramie (Wyoming) and drove through here. We sat and thought about it and said, ‘Let’s give it a shot.’ ”
Ware was previously an assistant at Wyoming for eight seasons, during which the Cowboys sent 33 wrestlers to NCAAs and multiple Big 12 Conference championships. He also previously coached at Binghamton University in upstate New York and with top-level club programs such as the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club, a nonprofit in State College, Pennsylvania.
“Teyon has competed and coached at the highest levels of college wrestling, and his ability to develop student-athletes into elite competitors speaks for itself,” UNC athletic director Darren Dunn said in a news release. “His leadership, character, and vision for the future of UNC Wrestling make him the right person to guide our program forward.”
Ware is a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
He had a 132-0 record and won four state high school titles at Edmond North High in Edmond, Oklahoma, where he was also a second-team all-state football player. Ware won the national Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award for wrestling in 2002. The Schultz award is a prestigious award named for the late wrestler, an Olympic and World champion, who was murdered in 1996.
Ware met with the UNC team earlier in the day Tuesday. The squad has 26 athletes returning as of now, according to UNC athletic communications.
Stevo Poulin and Vinny Zerban, two NCAA tournament qualifiers and All-Americans this year, both transferred to Iowa State not long after Nickerson took the Army job.
One of the remaining athletes is 133-pounder Dominick Serrano, a former four-time state champion at Windsor who also qualified for NCAAs this year. Serrano considered his options following Nickerson’s departure but has remained with the Bears to this point.
Ware said he did not yet know if any athletes from Oklahoma will come with him to UNC. This remains to be determined.
Ware said his teams on the mat will be a united group, close — a family, the coach said.
“We’re here to represent this brand,” Ware said. “We as a staff, we all, at the end of the day, that’s what we teach the guys. We represent the brand on the mat or off the mat.”
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