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Entering his 20th year at Northern Colorado in 2006-07, head coach Jack Maughan is guiding the Bears' wrestling program back to Division I status. Northern Colorado has a storied Division I history dating back to the early 1970s before the Bears turned to Division II grappling. With the Bears competing as an independent school, Maughan, the current longest tenured coach at UNC, has been instrumental in forming a new wrestling conference with neighboring rivals Wyoming and Air Force along with former North Central Conference rivals North Dakota State and South Dakota State. Other schools under consideration for the new wrestling conference are Fresno State, Northern Iowa, Eastern Illinois and Utah Valley State. Details for the conference are hoped to be finalized during 2005-06. During Maughan's tenure, the Bears have produced three NCAA champions, five runners-up and 46 All-America performers. As a team, UNC has finished among the nation's top-10 eight times, including third- and fourth-place finishes in 1991 and 1992, respectively, and an eighth-place finish in 1997 and 1998. The Bears notched a fifth place finish in 1996 and a seventh place finish in 2002. Maughan's dual-meet record is 106-131-1 entering the 2005-06 campaign. When Maughan arrived at Northern Colorado in 1987, he inherited a tradition-rich program which had fallen on hard times. The Bears hadn't had a winning dual-meet season since 1980 and they had finished at or near the bottom of the rugged North Central Conference five of the past six years.
Maughan began to rebuild the program by recruiting some of the best high school wrestlers that Colorado and the west region had to offer. Within five years, UNC boasted a pair of two-time national champions in Mike Pantoya of Thornton, Mike Leberknight of Rapids City, S.D. and the school's first-ever four-time All-America performer in Scott Gates of Englewood, as well as the best back-to-back national finishes (third and fourth) in school history. To give his athletes and the UNC fans a firsthand look at the nation's finest wrestlers, Maughan brought the 1992 NCAA Division II Championships to Greeley, and when the Bears placed fourth and produced a national champion, Maughan's peers selected him the Division II National Coach of the Year. Maughan was instrumental in the NCAA bringing its Division II Wrestling Championships back to Greeley in 1996, and UNC responded by breaking the tournament paid attendance record. UNC hosted the NCAA Championships again in 2001. In the Bears' final year as a Division II school in 2002, Maughan and the Bears finished third in the North Central Conference championships and seventh in the nation at the NCAA Division II National Championships, held in Wheeling, W.Va. In 2003-04, he earned his 100th dual victory as head coach with a 26-11 victory over Utah Valley State (Feb. 26) at home. Success is no stranger to Maughan, who grew up in a wrestling family. Competing for his father and head coach, Arthur "Bucky" Maughan, Jack was a two-time All-America performer at North Dakota State, finishing sixth at 126 pounds as a sophomore and sixth at 134 pounds as a junior. He was a three-time conference runner-up and twice an NDSU team captain. His brother, Bret, was also a two-time All-American for the Bison and is currently an assistant coach there.
During the 2004-05 season pupil was finally able to topple the teacher as Maughan finally earned a victory over his father, Bucky, in dual competition. The Bears tallied a 19-15 victory over North Dakota State on Feb. 19 at Butler-Hancock Sports Pavilion in Greeley. Jack had been 0-17-1 against his father prior to the match. After one season as an assistant coach for his father at NDSU, Jack, at the age of 24, became the youngest head coach in UNC wrestling history. Maughan is active in the governance of collegiate wrestling is a past president of the National Wrestling Coaches Association and the Division II Wrestling Coaches Association. Maughan received his bachelor's degree from NDSU in 1986 and his master's in physical education and athletic administration from Northern Colorado in 1989. Maughan also serves as the Northern Colorado women's golf coach and led the team to a 3rd-place finish at the 2003 NCAA Division II Women's Golf Championships. On the links, he coached teams to three conference championships and earned two conference Coach of the Year honors. Maughan and his wife, Brenda, are the parents of Henry Buck, born Jan. 25, 2005. The family resides in Windsor, Colo.
Head Coaching Resume
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Northern Colorado Wrestling
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