Making history at Morgan State: Q&A with wrestling coach Kenny Monday

In October 2021, Morgan State University announced that its historic wrestling program, one that was cut in the late 1990s, would return after over two decades to become the only Division I historically black college and university (HBCU) in the NCAA. The administration then hired Olympic gold medalist Kenny Monday to lead the program, inspiring even more excitement in the revitalized team. 

Flash forward to 2023, the Bears have just nearly completed their first month of competition and will head to the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational this weekend to compete against some of the best teams in the country. 

krikya188.com caught up with Monday to talk about the team, the challenges he’s experienced in rebuilding the program and his goals for the future of Morgan State wrestling. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I want to talk about your team, some of your standout athletes and your competitive dual schedule this year, but before I get to all of that, I’d love to go back to when you took this job at Morgan State. What drew you to the program? 

I think just the historical opportunity [to bring] the program back after 25 years. In 1996, I was training for the Olympics, and it broke my heart to know that a program was dropping, so when I really thought about it, I just felt like, me being in that position [to be the head coach], I could have a bigger impact than anywhere else. 

You’ve coached at a ton of places. What have been some of the biggest challenges in bringing this program back and in starting this program in general? 

I think, first of all, just getting the administration and the school up to speed on what wrestling looks like it, what it entails — that was one of the challenges. Then, just the recruiting process, starting from scratch, going out and recruiting student athletes to Morgan State and believing in the journey and believing in the process of starting a program.

On September 30, 1988, 's wins gold and Bill Scherr wins bronze at Olympics

Kenny became the first Black wrestler to win Olympic gold

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At the time, I didn’t have had any assistants, I hadn't hired anyone yet, so I did pretty much everything by myself, recruiting process, getting kids in, getting out, visiting kids, that kind of thing, so that was probably one of the biggest challenges: the recruiting process and putting the team together. 

What kind of attributes, as you’re building your team, are you looking for in the ideal Morgan State wrestler? 

You want a kid that has balance in their life, they’re good student-athletes: they're good students as well as being athletes. You want a kid that wants a higher education and wants to get their degree. I have kids that are going after their master's [degree] as well, so kids that really want to be their best. 

I’m looking for kids that are passionate about winning, passionate about growing. Of course, not every kid is not going to want to be a world champion, but you do have kids that have those aspirations that think they want to be Olympic champions and World champions, and I want kids that see that and have dreams of taking this sport to the highest level. 

How do you build a culture within a room where you’ve got some transfers, some freshmen coming to your program from all different places in their wrestling career and their life? 

Ninety-five percent of my team are freshmen, so that’s a challenge, but I do have some graduate students. I have a kid, Jake Marsh, who came from Princeton. He was my son’s roommate, and he graduated from Princeton, and he had one more year of eligibility, so he was looking for an opportunity to continue to compete. He’s been a big help. We have another kid, Nate Kendricks, that came from a junior college, and some of those kids that are a little older can help the younger kids make that transition from high school to college. 

What has been the rewarding aspect of being a head coach and being able to set a vision of the program? 

Selling the dream. Wrestling has been incredible to me, [it’s] such a gift to me just to travel the world, and see new things and the experiences that I’ve had from my own career, just kind of bringing those experiences to this position. Just being able to talk to student-athletes that were really excited about wrestling, excited about Morgan State and really dialing in on their enthusiasm and their desire to be a part of this historical journey, that’s been rewarding.

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Of course, I’ve done camps and clinics around the country, so it’s been rewarding to be able to see those kids grow and now they are on the college level, some of these kids I’ve taught in camps through the years, they were in sixth grade and seventh grade, and now they’re college athletes, so it’s rewarding to see those kids mature. 

Now that you’ve been through a month of competition at Morgan State, what do you think has been the biggest area of improvement for your team? 

Our conditioning. I think the kids did a really, really good job in pre-season training. My message to the kids is we have to be in condition. We’re inexperienced, we’re a young team, so we can’t have that and then not be in shape as well. We have to be conditioned. So the priority was to have a strong conditioning base and then just try to get better every day, and take these experiences and not get discouraged because we’ll hit some tough spots, we’ll hit some teams like we have already, where its hard to win a match.

We got shutout a couple of times, I’ve never experienced that. I've been on the other end of that, where we’re shutting teams out when I was at Oklahoma State, so it’s just staying encouraged and not allowing those experiences to get you discouraged or beat you down. I think it’s just trying to keep a positive spin and understanding where we are as a team. I believe in the process because we definitely are going to take some lumps in there, some of those teams will be hard to win [against]. 

You’ve got a pretty competitive dual schedule. What kinds of jumps are you looking to make in these coming years? 

People ask me: why is your schedule so tough? I think that’s the way I want to build the program.

I want to give these kids the experience of wrestling against some of the top teams, not shying away from the competition. We’re going to take some losses, of course, but I am always looking for the best competition because I know that what’s made me who I am, going against the best competition, the toughest guy in the room. That’s how I want to build this.

Are there any other duals that you have coming up that you’re particularly excited about? 

I’m excited about all of them. Each and every dual I’m excited about because these kids will have the opportunity to compete. I will say, of course, having UNC on the schedule, my son Kennedy graduated from UNC and I’ve been there for five years as the RTC head coach, so being able to come back to Chapel Hill and compete and wrestle there is exciting for me.  

Also, we have Princeton on the schedule and are going into Jadwin Gym. Of course, I’ve been on the other side with my son Quincy being there and being an All-American at Princeton, and I know those coaches very well and spent the last five years with that program in the stands in Princeton colors pulling for the Tigers, so that will be fun.

I know all of those guys on the team and the coaching staff. My son Quincy is on staff there [at Princeton], he’s one of the assistant coaches, so that will be exciting for us.

What will it be like to coach against Quincy at Princeton? 

It will be tough, but it will be fun. We’ll be a house divided a little bit in that match. 

Before that, looking ahead to Cliff Keen this weekend, are there any athletes on your team who stand out to you that you think might surprise some people in Vegas? 

We’ve got Jake Marsh, he’s a senior, and he’s looking to make some noise at 165, and it’s a tough weight class of course. Kingsley Menifee, he’s a 184 pounder, I think he’s one of our better kids, he’s wrestling pretty well, so I think he’s going to make some noise. 

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We’ve got young kids in the lineup [too], and you just never know how they’re going to respond. It’s a tough tournament, the teams that are there — it’s probably one of the tougher tournaments that I’ve seen in a while. I think the only top teams that aren’t there are Penn State and Iowa, pretty much everyone else is in the tournament. 

Is there anything else that I didn’t ask you about Morgan State that you think people need to know? 

We had our first home match the other night, so that was a historic time. I was really proud of the kids the way they competed. The alumni base came out strong, we had some guys that came that were All-Americans at Morgan State. We had probably 20 of the former Morgan State wrestlers show up at the match, so that was exciting. The last coach, Coach Phillips, his daughter was at the match, so that was exciting. We had a lot of kids there too, it was a really good turnout, and really proud of our alumni and fan base, so that was special.