#Dendy4Bowerman: Marquis Dendy's Jump Into History, Drive to Leave a Lasting Legacy
Tuesday, August 4, 2015 | Track and Field
By Zach Dirlam
UAA Communications
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Marquis Dendy, currently the world's top combination jumper, loves decorating his bedroom almost as much as the sensational jumps he's routinely posting on some of track and field's biggest stages.
If bedrooms and what we choose to keep in them are reflections of our identities, greatest memories, and what's most meaningful to us, it's what isn't in Dendy's that conveys exactly who he is.
None of his seven NCAA Championship trophies are on display. Neither are any of his championship rings. The 13 All-America certificates he amassed in his four years as a Florida Gator? All at his family's home, back in Middletown, Del.
“Momma's got all that,” said Nic Petersen, Florida's assistant coach for jumps. “I don't think he necessarily needs reminders of those things.”
Instead, posters of vintage rap albums, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Bob Marley, and even paintings—“I like art: M.C. Escher, things like that,” said Dendy—adorn the walls, creating an inspirational, Zen-like atmosphere. They will later this week, anyway. Dendy hasn't been able to move into his new apartment yet.
For the last three weeks he's been confined to European hotel rooms, when he hasn't been busy making a name for himself in the IAAF Diamond League—he soared to his first professional victory with the top mark in London Olympic Stadium history (27 feet, 6 inches)—and preparing for this month's World Championships.
Breaking records is nothing new for the high-flying Dendy.
As a sophomore, he shattered the Gators' 20-year-old indoor long jump record to win his first national title, emphatically announcing his presence to the world. Earlier this year, he supplanted Christian Taylor and Will Claye—the triple jump gold and silver medalists at the 2012 Summer Olympics—as the greatest triple jumper in program history. Among all collegians, his longest indoor and outdoor triple jumps rank third all time.
And that doesn't even begin to illustrate how dominant Dendy has been since May 2014. We'll get to that shortly.
The astonishing, transcendent jumper he's transformed into today can be traced back to two cardinal moments.
First came a demanding message from Florida head coach Mike Holloway.
Immediately after Dendy finished lackluster long jump and triple jump competitions at the 2013 Frank Sevigne Husker Invitational, the normally reserved Holloway pulled Dendy and Coach Petersen aside. The discussion wasn't quiet. It wasn't meant to be. Holloway refused to let Dendy's immense talent produce another average result. Ever.
“I think what I said to him that day was, 'I'm not going to let you fail anymore. I'm not going to let you underachieve anymore.' A lot more sternly than that,” laughed Holloway, now in his 24th season with the Gators. “But I told Coach Petersen the same thing. They took it to heart.”
Indeed they did.
Three weeks later, Dendy won his second SEC long jump title. Next, he won the long jump and took fourth in the triple jump at the NCAA Division I Indoor Championships.
After a successful outdoor season featuring a pair of All-SEC accolades and an All-American laurel in the triple jump, Dendy's second career-altering moment came. This challenge would be much different than the other.
At the 2013 IAAF World Championships, Dendy, bright-eyed and confident as ever, suffered a serious shoulder injury in the long jump. Deflated, he returned home, where major surgery sidelined him for six months. The road back to being a world-class jumper was not an easy one either.
Throughout much of what amounted to a disappointing 2014 indoor season, he was, in his own words, a little out of touch with reality, and a bit stubborn. Surgery would not hold him back, Dendy convinced himself.
“In a humbling way, it was physically impossible. That's what I got upset about, because I didn't realize that sooner,” said Dendy.
“The injury humanized him. He understood, to get back from that, he had to work his butt off,” said Petersen. “Since that, he woke up and was never going to be beaten ever again. That was the moment where I watched Marquis become the Marqius Dendy we are all familiar with today.
“He decided, from then on, whether it was a drill, whether it was practice, he was going to be the best at everything.”
Best doesn't quite do justice to the extraordinary feats Dendy has accomplished since last May. Historic is far more accurate.
Dendy became just the second athlete in Division I history to sweep the long and triple jump titles at three consecutive NCAA Championships. Only four athletes have ever swept the horizontal jumps at both SEC Championships in the same season; Dendy became one of them in 2015.
His only loss in the triple jump this year came at the USATF Outdoor Championships. Claye and two-time American champion Omar Craddock, another former Gator, were the only ones who topped him. At the same event, three days prior, Dendy won the long jump with a monstrous 8.68-meter (28 feet, 5.75 inches) leap, the world's top all-conditions mark in 2015. No one had jumped that far at the American national championships since 1994, when Mike Powell—holder of the long jump world record—soared the exact same distance.
So what drives the only man that, at the ripe age of 22, is ranked fourth or higher in the world in both horizontal jumps?
It isn't medals. It isn't records. Actually, it's something he may not even be alive to see.
“I want it to just be understood, as far as dual jumpers go, Marquis Dendy is at the top of the list. What drives me is to just always be on top, being the top person, and being better than what history has laid down for us,” said Dendy. “I want my name to be a household name. Anyone can have a medal, a picture, or something like that. Your name lives forever.
“Being able to have my name carry on… still being relevant even when I'm dusty, buried and gone. That's what I want.”
There's much more to Dendy—the 2015 United States Track & Field and Cross Country Association National Men's Indoor and Outdoor Field Athlete of the Year—than elite-level athleticism. His personality, both during and out of competition, is outgoing, captivating, and boisterous without being brash.
And don't even get Petersen started about all the pranks Dendy has pulled on him and his teammates through the years. There are far too many humorous instances to recount.
Paired with his wide smile and genuine sensibility, his charisma, and unflappable confidence, Dendy is one of the easiest people to root for.
Always a fan favorite, he feeds off energetic crowds. Everything he does is for the people. To him, the jumps are a performance, his runway the stage. Petersen is convinced the prankster in Dendy comes out during these acts, too.
“Some of those national meets where he's got two fouls… I think there's a part of him that enjoys that, likes that suspense, and enjoys that pressure,” said Petersen, noting Dendy often carries the immense weight that comes with being a prohibitive favorite. “It's almost like it's a prank on everyone else.”
Once again, as one of three finalists for The Bowerman, track and field's equivalent of college football's Heisman Trophy, Dendy is calling on the people to carry him to another victory.
Fans can vote here, and help him become the first Gator to win the illustrious award.
“Being able to do the things I've done for a year and a half, and then bring (The Bowerman) here definitely would solidify the fact I've done everything I could possibly do for my school,” he said, humbly. “This Gator pride means a lot, for me.”
Hard as it is to fathom, this is merely the beginning of the legend Dendy hopes to carve out.
Can he be an undisputed great? Decades from now, will a collegiate jumper draw inspiration from a bedroom poster of Marquis Dendy soaring through the air?
“As long as we stay focused, as long as we stay humble, I think he's going to be one of the best ever,” said Holloway.
Petersen and Dendy respond to those questions with a tagline the two of them came up with: hopes and dreams.
“We have high hopes and big dreams. But it also means he wants to be so good and so dominant that he crushes everybody else's hopes and dreams,” said Petersen. “Going back to being the greatest and a household name, that's where that comes from when we say, 'hopes and dreams.' That's the attitude that (Claye, Craddock, Dendy and Taylor) have instilled in this culture, and Coach Holloway has instilled from up top in our entire team.
“We don't just want to be good.”
Dendy, like Holloway and the rest of the Gators, has no interest in being good.
Only greatness will suffice.
