Florida Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — On the floor of the Metrodome in Minneapolis, the Florida men's basketball team celebrated its 75-62 victory over top-seeded Villanova in the 2006 NCAA Midwest Region championship game. One by one, as the UF pep band blasted the Gators' fight song, players, coaches and support staff climbed the ladder for the ceremonial snipping of the nets. Dave Werner, the team's head trainer, would get his turn, but first he had to soak in a very personal moment. 
 

The Gators were going to the Final Four in Indianapolis. Werner, born and raised in the Hoosier State, was overcome by the realization he was heading home to play for a national title and that family members, who once could only dream of even attending a Final Four, would be there to see it, experience it and cheer his squad on. 
 
It was a lot to take in, and it was about that instant that UF coach Billy Donovan saw his colleague and close friend – the one affectionately known as "Duke" – awash in the emotion and nostalgia. The two embraced.
 
"I'm so happy that you're able to experience this," Donovan said.
 
That scene played out 18 years ago. Florida basketball, of course, had even better and more gratifying moments on the horizon and Werner had a seat at the end of the UF bench for all of them. That seat (and his office), however, has changed. Werner, in his 30^th year with the University Athletic Association, the last 20 running the training room at the Hugh Hathcock Basketball Complex, has taped his last ankle after being named supervisor of men's basketball as part of Athletic Director Scott Stricklin's reorganization of UAA administrative staff following the departure in May of Deputy AD Lynda Tealer.
 
Werner, 55, has stepped into the men's basketball administrative oversight post, but in a redefined and hands-on role that will more closely resemble a chief of staff. His goal is to help everyone in the basketball program one day experience the kind of joy and exhilaration Werner felt during the best of Florida basketball's times, the culture of which he was very much a part of creating. "This is something I've never done before, but I don't know any other way to do it other than to be around and have my fingerprint on things," said Werner, who has moved from his closet-sized office at basketball to a spacious one on the second floor of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium like all other senior administrators, but plans to remain a regular fixture at the basketball facility. "Who knows? I could get fired in a year, but it won't be because I wasn't involved and wasn't around. I just don't know any other way than to be at practice and to be around these coaches and players."
 
Werner, whose administrative oversight also includes the health and strength/conditioning departments, joined the UAA in 1994 and his worth to the organization over the three decades has transcended keeping players in the game and getting injured ones back in action. Here's a small sample of endorsements: 
 
* Donovan: "During the time we were together, I would say he was the most under the radar in terms of a direct correlation to our success. He's as good as anyone I've ever been around as far as messaging players and carrying the coaching staff's messages in dealing with challenges and issues. I always felt he and I were totally and completely aligned on what went into winning."

* Former UF athletic director Jeremy Foley: "He's always had incredible insight and wisdom, always inspired trust and is not afraid to tell you something you don't want to hear. That's why I gravitated toward him, that's why Billy gravitated toward him and it's why everybody else gravitates toward him now. Duke will be energized by this opportunity and he will rock it."

* Former Gators point guard Taurean Green, now UF assistant coach and director of player development: "Great mentor, great human being. The thing everybody loves about Duke is that he always keeps it 100. He's going to shoot it straight whether you like it or not and still love you the same … and you're going to love him the same."

Werner's former office was home to countless hours of commiseration and heart-to-hearts with players, coaches and staffers seeking his council. His exit from the building, made quietly earlier this month with the team on break, was something of a seminal moment. Werner will be replaced by Jon Michelini, who spent six seasons as head trainer of the baseball team and the last five in the same role with the women's basketball team. 
 
"I can't tell you how many times I've gone into the training room just to sit and talk to Duke about all kinds of things," senior guard Will Richard said. "I've always thought of him as way more than a trainer, so not seeing him in there is going to be different." Yes, but like Werner said he'll be around and remain an extension of Coach Todd Golden and the UF staff. Werner was instrumental in bringing Golden to the Gators, having served on the basketball search committee in 2022. That search came after the first of two consecutive seasons missing the NCAA Tournament.
 
In '23-24, Golden's second season, the Gators won 24 games (the program's most in seven years), reached the Southeastern Conference Tournament title game (first time in 10 years) and made it back to NCAAs (first time since '21). 
 
"Todd is everything he said he was going to be during the interview, whether it's how he said he would coach these guys, his recruiting philosophy, style of play, all of it," Werner said. "I think that says a lot about him and his plan to move this program forward. He's right on schedule with that plan of getting this place back to being among the elite in the country. I have great trust in him."
 
And Werner knows trust. He's built a career on it. 
 
 
BASKETBALL IN THE BLOOD
 
Werner grew up in Versailles, Indiana (population around 1,800) and about five miles from the town of Milan, which in 1954 gave the state the famous "Milan Miracle" that inspired the motion picture "Hoosiers."
 

"The Duker" played center for Versailles (Class of '86, the same year "Hoosiers" hit theaters) and the following fall was a freshman and student trainer at Eastern Kentucky University. Werner majored in education at EKU, then got his master's degree in the same field at the University of Louisville. 
 
His first post-college job bounced him around a trio of Class A Baltimore Orioles franchises in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and then Sarasota. Werner liked Florida and eventually took a one-year internship with the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1993, a job that included a lot more than training room duties.
 
"When I wasn't setting up the [tackling] dummies or blocking sleds at 5:30 in the morning, I was jumping on the John Deere to mow the grass," Werner said. "I ended up just sleeping at the facility."
 
In 1994, two hours north of Tampa, UF was cleaning house on its baseball program. The Gators eventually hired Andy Lopez, by way of Pepperdine, as head coach. Filling the baseball head trainer position fell to Chris Patrick, who oversaw the entire athletic training department. 
 
Werner, with his baseball background, applied.  

"It was the most complicated damn resume I'd ever seen, with all this jumping around from the Bluefield Jayhawks, then back to grad school, then back to baseball," recalled Patrick, now 86, who retired from the UAA in 2018. "It was a helluva thing to try to figure out, but we got him here and it was the best hire I ever made at Florida."
 
Lopez, now retired in Arizona, showered equal praise Werner's way.
 
"I used to tell my players, they could yell at me, cuss at me, scream at me or scratch my car, but if you messed with the Duker it'll be the worst day of your life," said Lopez, 70, who led the Gators to the College World Series twice during his seven seasons. "Duke Werner was the gold standard. He had a pulse on the team that neither me nor any of my assistants could ever have."
 
With that pulse, Werner would advise Lopez when to go hard and when he needed to back off. Training rooms are sacred ground, and the people doing the taping and administering treatment are privy to a lot of illuminating information. What they do with that intel determines the level of trust among players and coaches. 
 
"With that, he had the perfect balance," Lopez said. "And he knew the difference between being injured and being in pain." 
 
Medicine vs. Sports Medicine. They're not the same. The former is self-explanatory. The latter is about nursing players back to the point where they're healthy enough and (more importantly) safe enough to play. 

From the beginning, Werner always knew and nailed the proportions.
 

"When you get someone new, you just give 'em the information about what they're getting into, tell 'em whatever personalities and idiosyncrasies they'll be dealing with, then you just kind of turn 'em loose and see if it fits," Patrick said. "Duke was young, he was energetic, had a baseball background and he was cheap. But he and [Lopez] really hit it off." 
 
When baseball changed coaches in 2002, Werner hit it off with Coach Pat McMahon for two more seasons, but the confluence of his lifetime affinity for basketball and a seismic shakeup inside Donovan's program brought a chance to move across campus to the game he loved. 
 
 
A PERFECT FIT
 
After getting crushed by 12^th-seeded Manhattan in first-round play of the 2004 NCAA Tournament – UF's fourth consecutive first-weekend tournament exit – Donovan did some house-cleaning, opting for changes on his coaching staff, in the weight room and training room. 
 
"When I went to Duke to see if he was interested in basketball, I'd barely gotten the question out of my mouth when he damn-near jumped across the desk at me," Patrick said. 
 
Yes, he was interested. 
 
"I didn't think twice about it," Werner said. 
 

He was in place at basketball that same summer four kids named Al Horford, Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer and Green arrived as freshmen. Ask any of them. They consider Werner one of the so-called "'04s," also. 
 
"You have to understand, this was such a crucial time, as far as how this was all going to fit together, with the new staff and these new players coming into a core of established older players," said Matt McCall, then a team manager who went on to become a future UF assistant and head coach at both Tennessee-Chattanooga and Massachusetts. "Nobody was better at connecting people than Duke."
 
As it turned out, that '04-05 season ended with another opening-weekend tournament loss, but not before the Gators made history by winning the program's first SEC Tournament championship. A new bar was set.
 
The identity of the '05-06 team immediately fell to the '04s, and Werner had built fabulous relationships with each of them. 
 
"People knew the names of Anthony Grant and Donnie Jones and Larry Shyatt, but Duke was as valuable as any of those guys," Donovan said. "He just really had the pulse. He was with those [players], hearing about them going out and socializing and those kinds of things, but when he thought he had to handle something he did it himself. Where he was great was when he'd come to me and say something like, 'Hey Billy, they're overconfident. They're not respecting the opponent.' We had to do something."
 
Those instances made for some interesting (sometimes extended and colorful) practices and film sessions, but that group – and that staff – figured out the right buttons to push. The Gators, famously, became just the second school since the UCLA dynasties of the '60s and '70s to win back-to-back NCAA titles in 2006 and '07.
 
Obviously, those are the greatest moments of Werner's career, right?
 
"No," Werner said. "The greatest moment of my career is Keyontae Johnson."
 
 
KEY OF LIFE 
 
Success in athletics is mostly defined by winning and losing. Unless it's life or death, to which Werner and anyone involved with Florida basketball on Dec. 12, 2020 will attest. 
 
It's one thing dealing with Brad Wilkerson's arm, Lee Humphrey's shoulder or Will Yeguete's knee. That's routine stuff for a trainer.
 
Johnson's cardiac arrest was not.
 
The 2021 Preseason SEC Player of the Year, Johnson collapsed on the floor four minutes into a game at Florida State in one of the most harrowing sights in the history of Florida athletics. Johnson remained in a medically induced coma for several days, with Werner literally at Johnson's side throughout, comforting family and keeping them updated. 
 
Want to know (really and truly) how much a trainer cares about his players? Ask a parent. 
 
"Duke melts my heart. The love I have for him is unexplainable," said Nika Johnson, Keyontae's mother. "Hearing his voice during that time just kind of broke me down. I could tell he was moving with a purpose. He will forever be a part of our lives."
 

My Duke! @dukewatc We love you & will never be able to express how grateful we are but we will ALWAYS try! pic.twitter.com/LkcGPFEODr

— Nika Johnson (@NikaJohnson11) January 29, 2023

Johnson was flown from Tallahassee to Gainesville and remained in the hospital for three weeks. Upon his release, Johnson remained a non-playing part of the '20-21 team and under the care of cardiologists at UF Health throughout the '21-22 season, as well. 
 
Those same doctors did not clear Johnson for a return to play basketball at Florida. When Johnson entered the transfer portal and sought to play elsewhere only three schools in the country medically signed off on the former first-team All-SEC forward. One of those schools was Kansas State. 
 
As fate (and ESPN) would have it, Florida was matched against Johnson and K-State in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge on Jan. 28, 2023. Johnson scored 13 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in the Wildcats' 64-50 home victory. His family was there to see it and to throw their arms around Werner afterward. 
 
"Keyontae was never cleared to play at Florida and that hurt, but we understood," said Nika, whose son this spring wrapped his rookie season on a two-way contract with the NBA Oklahoma City Thunder. "But seeing Duke that day, that was a full-circle moment for me. I know it was a full-circle moment for Duke, too. Honestly, he looked like a proud dad."
 
 
PERFECT PARTNERSHIP 
 
Until this month, Werner had been in a training room since his first week at EKU. That's 37 years. That's a lot of taped ankles, but also a professional lifetime of relationship-building and knowledge-gaining. 
 
Now it's time to put it all to work in a different way. 
 
Werner is excited about the challenge ahead, but so is Golden, who came from the University of San Francisco and leaned on Werner early for his experience and institutional knowledge. 
 
"From the get-go, neither of us were concerned about anything other than making sure we had a really good working relationship and learned what was important to each other," Golden said. "There's a feeling-out process when you get to a new place – for everybody – but Duke had a head start having been trainer for Billy's teams that had such great success, so there was some equity already there in terms of my belief in him."
 
Now they'll join forces on the same mission.  Donovan used to exhort his people to "bring value" to the program every day. Werner's been doing that at the UAA for 30 years and been a basketball constant the last 20. His role will be different in Year 21. The objective will be the same. 
 
"I learned from Billy that to be great at Florida everyone affiliated with the program has to be great at what they do. You can't have people in silos doing their own thing," Werner said. "My core belief is that it takes everyone to be successful. I've seen it."
 
Lived it, actually. The week after Werner had his Minneapolis day-dreaming moment, Donovan found him again, this time on the floor of the Hoosier Dome in Indy after dismantling UCLA 73-58 in the NCAA title game, handing UF its first basketball crown. Werner had tears in his eyes as orange and blue confetti rained down on the new national champions. 
 
Again, they hugged. This time longer. 
 
"I remember seeing that and thinking how it was such a microcosm of the relationship Billy and Duke had built in their time together," McCall said. "All these years later, you understand even more. Billy loved Duke. But you know what? Everybody loves Duke."