Dan Ficke is home. Like any coach, he lives in the gym. But for him, home means something more.
“Denver’s home,” Ficke said with a smile. “I grew up here. I grew up 15 minutes from campus. And I grew up in MSU Denver’s heyday: when coach Dunlap and Coach Clark had this program regularly at the top of the RMAC, competing for national titles. So I know the history of this program.”
Ficke takes over as the Roadrunners new head coach and he’s back in the city where he learned to love hoops, as a Regis Jesuit raider in the mid 2000’s.
“For me it was a no brainer, I wanted to come back home and I wanted to lead this program back to the national stage. Our number 1 thing is we want to represent this university with tremendous pride. We want to represent this program and honor the tradition that we have here with tremendous pride.”
And when it comes to the team’s style?, “When people come into this gym, we want them to leave saying that’s the hardest playing team we’ve ever seen.”
Ficke is hands on and he’ll shoot it straight with you, “I wasn’t a very good player. I was a walk-on. I was a garbage-time man, so I had to play with a certain level of intensity every time I stepped on the floor or I would have gotten my butt kicked! So I try to coach with that intensity because our guys are way more talented than I was. If they could play as hard as I tried to, then we’ll have a chance every night of the week.”
It’s everyone’s dream to go back home and Coach Ficke is no different.
“Every day I’m living my dream and I try to tell our guys that too: it’s hard to have a bad day when you get to live your dream every single day. And hopefully when I coach and when I talk about our program, that comes off to people, the excitement and energy that I feel and the respect I have for what we’re doing here.”