Family First: Jeremy Denha changed coaching jobs to return to his alma mater

Utica Ford boys basketball coach Jeremy Denha shouts some words of encouragement to his team during a game last season.

Photo by Brandon Karas

By Steve Stein

Every high school coach will tell you that he or she has two families. There’s the team’s family, and the coach’s actual family.

Jeremy Denha made a difficult decision a year ago. He stepped down as the boys basketball coach at West Bloomfield after 10 highlight-filled seasons to take the same role at Utica Ford.

Ford is Denha’s alma mater. The 6-foot-6 Denha was a basketball star at Ford. He led the Falcons to a district championship and earned All-State honorable mention honors as a senior before graduating in 1998 and moving on to play college basketball at St. Clair Community College (where he was an All-American as a sophomore) and Wayne State University.

While returning to Ford was a major reason for Denha’s decision to change coaching jobs, the switch was more about family. Denha’s family. He said he needed more time to be a husband and father. He and his wife Diana have four young children. The family lives in Sterling Heights.

“It felt like from November to March, during the basketball season, Diana was a single parent. God bless her. She did a great job,” Denha said. “I was missing so much. I felt like I was being selfish and neglecting my family, and my family was so far away from West Bloomfield that they couldn’t connect with my program.

“Diana and I have been married for 14 years. Until last year, I coached in Oakland County and lived in Macomb County the entire time we’ve been married. It’s a 40-minute commute from West Bloomfield to our home. It’s a one-or two-minute drive or an eight-minute run from our home to Ford.”

Denha, 42, still teaches at West Bloomfield. He’s going into his 17th year as a physical education and health teacher there. When his workday is over now, he said, he has time to pick up his kids at school or take them to Catechism or soccer practice.

Jeremy and Diana Denha’s children are twins Abigail and Jaclyn, 9, Jessica, 7, and Isaiah, 3. The twins will be going into fourth grade and Jessica will be going into second grade this fall at Havel Elementary School in Sterling Heights.

Because of the pull of his family, Denha said, last season was probably going to be his last as West Bloomfield’s coach. “My days as a coach were numbered there,” he said.

Instead of finishing out his time on the bench last season at West Bloomfield, he went to Ford. He was contacted by Ford for the third time in three years to take over the Falcons’ program. This time he said ‘yes.’

The third time turned out to be a charm. Well, sort of. Denha became Ford’s fifth coach in four seasons and the team finished 2-19.

That was a bit of a shock for Denha considering his West Bloomfield resume, which included a memorable trip to the Class A Final Four in 2017 and three league championships. Three of his West Bloomfield players later played Division I college basketball.

He went 108-103 in 10 seasons at West Bloomfield after going 33-31 in three seasons at Berkley, all the time against tough competition.

“I didn’t get to do any summer work with the guys at Ford before last season, so they didn’t get to know my offensive and defensive philosophies,” he said. “I just threw things at the wall to see if they would stick.

“The guys had decent talent, but not a lot of basketball instincts. God bless them, though. They worked hard, they were never late to practice, and they competed. We were in a lot of games.”

Scoring points was an issue for Ford last season.

“If we got down by 10 points at West Bloomfield, we were sure we could come back,” Denha said. “Last year at Ford, being down 10 points was a death sentence for us.”

Eight seniors graduated from last year’s Ford team. Denha is looking to have a young team this season, but there’s hope in the form of some talented sophomores and junior point guard Dakarai Rogers, who started every game last season.

“I rebuilt the West Bloomfield program. I know we can do it at Ford,” Denha said. “I do have to catch up to the times, though. Our first win last season was against Utica. I learned Utica is now our big rival. It was teams like Sterling Heights Stevenson and Mount Clemens Chippewa Valley who were our big rivals when I was playing at Ford.”

Denha played for Ford coaching legend Jim Barker. The court at Ford carries Barker’s name.

“I have so many emotions coaching at Ford, and coaching on the court named for Coach Barker,” Denha said. “That man (Barker) is a great man. He means so much to me. I want to bring the program back to the way he had it.

“His program wasn’t just about wins. It also was about family. As far as that was concerned, I feel we took a step in the right direction last season.