“I’m content, man” Denney said last Wednesday after beating LCCC and improving to 4-0 in his first season as Blue Storm women’s basketball head coach at Southwestern Illinois College. “I really like where I’m at right now. Trying to live in the present and not think about the past. It’s day-by-day.”

These are good days for Denney, after some brutally down and dark days.

Can you, without hesitation, call out the worst year of your life? Can you even pick one, at all?

Jonathan Denney can.

“2020 was really, really bad for me,” he said. “It was rough run.”

Denney was at the pinnacle of his coaching career in the final days of 2019.

His Civic Memorial Eagles, a girls basketball program that had never won more than 17 games before he took over in 2006, had cranked out a couple 31-win seasons and were now seven years into a run of being a state-ranked program in Class 3A.

CM was sitting No. 3 in 3A in The Associated Press poll when the Eagles took a 14-0 record to the State Farm Classic after Christmas three years ago. They came back in January with a 16-2 record and without their coach.

Events, details still undisclosed, led to Denney resigning on Jan. 4, 2020 before the Eagles played in a shootout at Breese Central. Earlier on that first Saturday of 2020, Denney responded to a reporter’s text, writing that he “will be off the grid and most likely unavailable for comment from here on out.”

Denney remained off-grid publicly until earlier this month when he was a guest on the ‘Eat Slay Live’ podcast with hosts Ross Laux and Todd Laux. 
Ross, a former CM basketball star and Eagles boys basketball coach, and Todd, a local gym owner and fitness conditioner for CM girls basketball, are both longtime friends of Denney.

That relationship provided the comfortable outlet that Denney chose to go back on the grid and talk about his abrupt exit as CM coach.

“There were mistakes made by everybody involved, including me,” Denney told the brothers Laux on ESL. “I’d love to go back and take back a couple things that were said. But then, I think there was a big overreaction for that time of the season and I’m not sure it was handled the best by everybody. I don’t have anything negative to say, because at the point of departure, I was ready to resign.”

Sensing a collapse in his support from at least two legs in a three-legged stool of players, parents and administrators, Denney agreed to step away. Two years and 11 months later, regrets remain.

“I just feel like it could have been handled better, with the timing of it,” Denney said on the podcast of his midseason resignation. “There could have been a solution that wasn’t so dramatic. It’s unfortunate. It was like a nasty divorce.”

It was a quick rebound for Denney, who has found happiness in a second basketball marriage with his Southern Illinois Hawks basketball club and SWIC.

Denney still refers to his tenure at CM as “13 seasons”, but it was the half-season from his 14th year that left an emotional scar after posting a 300-120 career record.

“I don’t lie, it took a piece of my heart,” Denney said on ‘Eat Slay Live.’ “It was tough. … That was one job I could have seen myself riding off into the sunset. Just walking away when it was time to walk away and I was too old and ready to give it to somebody else. I coached there for 20 years, boys and girls, so it was a little tough. I’m not going to say I’m not bitter, because there is a part of me that is.”

Soothing that sting will take more than three years. Denney abandoned his dream of coaching boys basketball to take over the Eagles girls program. A 1991 CM graduate who scored 1,210 career points that still rank No. 8 all-time for CM boys, Denney was just looking for a head coaching line to add to his resume.

He was not expected to rescue a CM girls program low on interest and success, but Denney was its savior.

The Eagles won immediately under Denney, but it took him five seasons to build the foundation for what CM girls basketball is today. He shunned a schedule botox-ed by a healthy injection of small schools and opted to hunt bigger games.

After a first five seasons that yielded a 23-27 record in the Mississippi Valley Conference, Denney’s sixth season brought CM’s first MVC championship and triggered an 62-8 league record yielding six Valley titles in his final seven full seasons. 

But Denney looks back now and sees the full-framed picture that has the Eagles sustaining the success he started. Mike Arbuthnot, Denney’s friend and CM successor, is 49-9 since taking over as Eagles coach and crossed a bridge Denney could not by taking CM to the Class 3A state tournament last season.

“That’s what I always go back to,” Denney said of the Eagles remaining a state-level power. “I went there, I played there, I coached there for 20 years. It’s kind of who I am. It’s just unfortunate the way things ended. … It’s getting better. Time does heal all wounds. I just think this one is going to take a while.”

Denney told Todd and Ross Laux that he sought a termination agreement that would have allowed him to finish that final season with the Eagles. But CM administrators would permit no such allowance.

“I feel like the couple negative things that happened at the end maybe overshadow the thousand good things,” he said on the podcast. “That’s the unfortunate part about it. I would have gladly walked away after the season. I wish I could have finished that season, because that team was good, arguably, the best team I had in my 13 years.”

Even before that final season, Denney viewed 2020, with seniors Anna Hall and Kourtland Tyus leading, as his best shot at getting CM to state after super-sectional defeats in 2014 and 2017. 

“I did love that team,” Denney reiterated in the gym lobby outside Jay Harrington Court last week after SWIC’s 92-56 rout of LCCC. “I’m sorry for what happened. Never got to tell them that, until I’m laying in the hospital and they all come see me. Just felt bad how it went down. But the accident changed who I am, because now I’m on a different path, a different journey. Maybe it’s a journey I should have taken 25 years ago.”

Accident seems an insufficient label for the trauma that came next. One month after the resignation that killed his career as CM coach came a work injury that nearly killed Jonathan Denney.

Denney was a basketball coach. It was his passion. But his occupation was a career for 27 years with Wood River Township Highway department. “Loved every second working with those guys,” Denney said on Eat Slay Live. “Some of my best friends are still there.”

At that job on the winter day of Feb. 5, 2020, Denney suffered a gruesome injury that nearly took his life. It did take his right hand.

“I’m thankful every day when I wake up,” Denney said. “Because it could have been over.”

Denney said without the heroic work by first responders, 2/5/20 would have been the date on his death certificate.

“If they wouldn’t have responded the way they did,” he said, “got me out as quick as they did – still seemed like forever – I could have died there.”

Doctors tried to save the hand, but that attempt was futile. Infection reached a level that again threatened Denney’s life and the hand had to be amputated. After nearly four weeks in the hospital, Denney was home for four days before returning to Barnes for 10 more days in a St. Louis hospital bed.

By that time, covid had piled on to insult and injury, robbing Denney of the sanctuary he always found in basketball.

“There was probably a two- or three-month span there where I didn’t ever want to be around basketball again, in the spring of 2020,” Denney said.

Two of his greatest Eagles brought him back. Kourtland Tyus and Allie Troeckler – Troeckler is CM’s all-time leading scorer and one of CM’s two Associated Press all-staters under Denney, and Tyus was a 1,000-point scorer — reached out and asked their high school coach to provide them personal training, with their college careers on hold during the covid shutdown.

The Troeckler’s driveway served as the gym and, a still recovering Denney said, “I trained them from a lawn chair.”

CM players Olivia Durbin and Aubree Wallace followed the Troeckler-Tyus lead and went to Denney for basketball training. The summer months saw the Southern Illinois Hawks get back on the court and basketball business again was booming for Denney. He was now training dozens of kids in the metro east and the Hawks were becoming an elite club.

“It’s been a blessing because I found my love,” Denney said of the growth and success of his Hawks organization. 

The emotional scars from his CM divorce remained, but Denney faced more distressing adjustments to life without his right hand. Learning to write left-handed was among the challenges.

“Luckily, my wife’s a first-grade teacher and she had those booklets — small ‘a’, big ‘A’ – and I got on that pretty quick,” Denney said. “I’m left-handed now. It didn’t take long. Still a little shaky at times, but it’s just kind of the process of who I am. I kind of live by my own creeds that I used to talk about with the CM kids, about toughness and battling through adversity.”

The right-handed shot and dribble-drive that made so many memories as a player is forever lost, but Denney is grateful for his physical abilities that remain.

“Luckily, I kept my elbow,” he said, “and that’s helped out a lot because I can still get out there and catch and do some stuff.”

Denney was happy in his roles as a club director and coach with the Hawks, along with his growing side-hustle as a personal trainer/coach for dozens of girls basketball players.

“A lot of kids from Clinton County all the way up to Jersey County,” he said of his training clientele. “It’s been fun. It’s basketball all the time now, so I kind of feel like I’m living my dream.”

The return as a head coach with SWIC has completed a winning basketball trifecta for Denney. He had been approached to take this position at SWIC years ago when he had things rolling at CM, but the finances cut short any consideration of a move.

The circumstances left from 2020 re-opened the door at SWIC, where Denney was a player before moving on to Webster University. He was the Blue Storm’s assistant coach last year before taking the women’s program over this season.

“I’m going to do what I love,” Denney said, “at this point in my life.”

SWIC women’s basketball won six games last season. The Storm are 5-0 hitting their Thanksgiving break.

“We’re doing it day-by-day,” Denney said. “Brought in eight new recruits and a transfer and brought three girls back from last year’s team. Once we get all 12 kids and we all get on the same page, I think we can do a lot of good things. We’re off just a tick right now.”

It took years of player development with the Junior Eagles program to build a power at CM. Player recruitment can bring a quick flip at the JUCO level.

“The way this team has come together, I think we can have a nice year,” said Denney, giving credit to assistant coach Natasha Hodge. “Now, flipping it to where I want it to be? It might take another good recruiting class to back up the eight I brought in this year.”

And tilling the fertile basketball soil of the Metro East is a priority.

“I’m starting with the Southwestern Conference, the Metro East, the outlying areas, the Breese’s and Civic’s,” Denney said. “Yeah, I want Metro East kids because there’s a lot of good players. The key is convincing them to stay here.”

The stress and rigors of recruiting, relying on 18-year-old kids for your livelihood, drives some coaches from the job he has. But Denney loves the college game, and all that comes with it.

“I do,” he said. “I love the recruiting process. I love being around them day in, day out, checking on their school work, seeing how they’re doing.”

SWIC also included a job in the school’s fitness center to entice Denney to make the drive from Bethalto to Belleville.

“Gives me an opportunity to be around the kids all the time,” Denney said. “When I was working at the highway department, I’d see the girls after school. Now I see them in their environment, practicing every day and working out. These kids work really hard. They’ve bought in, they’re really getting after it and I think it’s paying dividends.”

He wants the payout to be a basketball scholarship at a four-year school for the women he convinces to start their path with a JUCO experience.

“I want them to be great, on and off the court,” Denney said. “And I don’t want this to be their final destination. I want to get them to the next level, if that’s what they want to do.”

What Denney will not find in JUCO gym is the game-night atmosphere he enjoyed when his Eagles played rivalry games with the likes of Highland or Jersey, or the fans drawn to a shootout or the postseason.

“What we were able to develop at CM, with our coaching staff and all the kids that bought in over the years, that was special,” said Denney, whose Storm drew a crowd of about 50 fans to watch LCCC. “It’s fun now, being on the other side. Going to those high school games and seeing the atmosphere and seeing the crowds – like a CM-Highland game – it’s good to know I was a part of that, a little bit. 

“It’s funny because last year, I watched more high school basketball games than I had probably seen in my 13 years at CM as a girls coach. There’s probably not a kid around, in a 200-mile radius, that I don’t know about. Just working it the best I can.”

That’s the only way Denney works it, the best he can.

When asked if he would entertain any job offers to return as a high school girls basketball coach, Denney laughs.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It depends if I can flip this to where I want it to get. This might be my new CM.”

With the mention of CM, he was prompted to look a few years out, when Arbuthnot chooses to retire as Eagles coach. Denney laughs before the entirely hypothetical question can be asked.

If CM offered the job back, would you take it?

“No, because I’m going to have SWIC playing at such a high level,” Denney said. “Why would I leave?”

Why indeed? 

Jonathan Denney’s life had spiraled to a depth he never imagined. His support system at home uplifted him to this point of contentment and pride in his profession. Smiling, a winning college coach doing an interview before joining his wife Karrie for a late mid-week dinner.

And for that, and life after 2020, he gives thanks. Thursday and every other day.

“My family — my wife, my kids, my parents, my aunts and uncles, and all my close friends — they’re behind me and I can feel their support,” Denney said. “My wife, she knows what I love to do and she’s like, go get it! You’ve got a fresh start, a new beginning. Go get it!”