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Women's Gymnastics
- Title:
- Assistant Coach
- Email:
- unc-gymnastics@unc.edu
Marie Case Denick will begin her eighth season at North Carolina in 2024-25, and her fourth alongside head coach Danna Durante. In Summer 2024, she was elevated to Associate Head Coach.
Denick was named the 2022 East Atlantic Gymnastics League Assistant Coach of the Year in her first season with Durante. In 2024, she successfully helped lead the Tar Heels into their first season in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Denick served as the interim head coach for the Carolina gymnastics program in 2020-21. After one year as an assistant coach and two as the associate head coach and recruiting coordinator, Denick’s impact has been evident.
Despite the shortened 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic, Denick helped Khazia Hislop receive her third All-America recognition of her career and her first on vault. In both 2018 and 2019, Hislop earned second team All-America honors and the EAGL championship title on floor exercise. Denick also coached back-to-back EAGL champions on vault with Hislop winning the event in 2019 and Madison Nettles in 2018. In 2018, Carolina also finished the season ranked sixth in the nation in floor exercise, largely due to Denick.
In 2024 – UNC's first season in the ACC – Denick served as the primary bars coach where she led Lali Dekanoidze and Isabelle Schaefer to a 1-2 finish on the uneven bars at the ACC Championships. Both gymnasts ranked in the top-6 on bars in the Southeast Region and earned individual berths to the NCAA Regional Championships.
Off the mats, Denick serves as the team's academic liaison and motivates her student-athletes to find just as much success in the classroom. In the spring semester of 2020, the team earned a cumulative grade-point average of 3.616 and regularly boasts one of the highest GPAs on campus.
Denick comes to Carolina from Bowling Green State University in Ohio where she served as an assistant coach the last two seasons. Her primary duties at BGSU included coaching the vault and floor exercise and coordinating the team's academics and community service. The Falcons finished second in the MAC last year, the team's highest finish in the conference since 1987. One of Denick's athletes won the floor exercise and another was the MAC's Freshman of the Year. In addition, the team improved its grade point average to 3.65 and recorded more than 1,000 hours of community service.
In Denick's first year at BGSU, the Falcons set a school record team score for a single meet and one of her athletes won the all-around at the MAC Championship.
The Erie, Pa., native began her coaching career as a volunteer assistant at her alma mater, Kent State, in 2015. She was the MAC Gymnast of the Year in 2012, 2013 and 2014, the MAC Freshman of the Year in 2011 and the conference's all-around champion as a junior and senior. She qualified for the NCAA Championships in the all-around in 2014 and was the National Association of Collegiate Gymnastics Coaches Regional Gymnast of the Year.
