Seventh-year assistant track and field sprints coach Jeremy Deterville is the 2014 recipient of the Joe Merten Coaching Award, which will be awarded at the 2014 Blugold Hall of Fame Banquet on Saturday, October 4.
The cash award is available to any part-time assistant coach, graduate assistant or community coach in any of the 22 sports in the Blugold sports module. The award is named to honor Blugold basketball Hall of Famer Joe Merten who died in 2008. According to the family’s criteria for the award, the recipient “shall demonstrate a deep commitment to the student athletes and embody a passion for lifelong learning and the ‘love of the game.’”
Head coach Chip Schneider, who nominated Deterville, said that Jeremy has been an irreplaceable fixture with the team, transforming “a lackluster men’s 400 group into a division III powerhouse.”
During his time at Eau Claire, Deterville has coached sprinters and relays to six national championship titles, four national runner-up titles and multiple All-American titles. The highlight of the 2014 campaign occurred as Deterville helped coach Thurgood Dennis to indoor national titles in both the 60m and 200m sprints. During the 2013 season, he had five individual athletes qualify and become All-Americans with seven school records broken in the sprint events. His men’s 4x400 relay team captured its second straight Drake Relays championship with the third fastest time in Division III history.
Deterville also works fulltime at Sacred Heart Hospital as a lab technician. He and his wife Collette have a two-year-old son, “so the time he spends with the track team is valuable,” said Schneider. “Jeremy truly has a ‘love for the sport’, which is why he is able to balance so many important parts of his life.”
Deterville is a UW-La Crosse grad who was a seven-time national champion (all relays) and 10-time track and field All-American. His specialty was the 400 and the 4x400 relay.
