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By DEREK REDD
Zac Bruney had the opportunity to do something very few coaches have the chance to do - build a college football program from scratch.
Usually, when coaches come to a new team, they're working with the materials gathered by the previous coach, whether that's good or bad. Yet Bruney worked from a blank canvas. In 2017, he was named the first head football coach in Wheeling University history.
Since then, Bruney and the Cardinals have been on a steady climb. In their first year as members of the Mountain East Conference in 2019, they went 1-10. Last season, they finished 7-4, and hope the climb isn't over.
The 41-year-old Bruney is no stranger to the Ohio Valley. He was a standout quarterback at Martins Ferry for his father Dave Bruney. From there, he starred at Division III Mount Union, winning a pair of national titles there, finishing 27-1 as a starter with an All-America nod and a spot as a finalist for the 2004 Gagliardi Award, given to the top football player in Division III.
He then entered coaching with stints as an assistant at Mount Union and Division II Ohio Dominican. After interviewing for other head coaching jobs, he was offered to start Wheeling's football program.
Coming back to the valley was attractive, in part because it gave him a job in an exclusive group. There are only so many head coaching jobs in football. He also knew he was headed back to a region that cared about the sport.
"To me, it always made sense to have football here," Bruney said. "Being from this area, football matters here. It's very important on both sides of the river. There's a blue-collar feel and a high level of work ethic. That was kind of attractive."
So Bruney set out to build the program from the first brick. He admits there were lessons he had to learn along the way. In the beginning, he realized he micromanaged the program too much, rather than trust his assistant coaches and players to handle their tasks. That has changed in the years since.
"I've learned over the past five or six years, as a head coach and a guy who's kind of in charge of a group of people, to have enough trust in the guys who work for you and with you to do their jobs the right way," he said. "Maybe those first couple of years when i was trying to get everything started the right way, I was was worried too much about being perfect in what we were doing and not just trusting guys enough to do their jobs the right way. I learned a valuable lesson that you can't have your hands on everything, but you can have your eyes on everything."
There must be that full-team buy-in to build success, Bruney said. He hearkens back to a motto he got from his dad - "every man, every day."
"If every man is working every single day in some capacity to improve themselves within a team structure, you're going to see success if you just grind out those good days," Bruney said.
There have been plenty of those good days recently. Last year's 7-4 record was the Cardinals' first winning season as a member of the MEC. Those successes aren't coming solely on the field. He's seeing players graduate. Team members are talking about taking an even bigger part in helping out around the community.
Bruney said it has been great to watch WU players and coaches come together to create not just a winning team, but a winning culture.
"It's gratifying to see our players have success," he said. "We've got guys graduating now. We're fulfilling what we came here to do. I'm proud of our players and proud of our coaches for the work they've put in. I think it might be surprising to people outside our own walls, but within our locker room, I don't think we're surprised."
Bruney feels the future of football at WU is bright, as long as his players maintain the work ethic that got them to this point. That strong work ethic isn't just something that leads to winning football.
Bruney would offer that advice to any young professional.
"You have to understand that all that you're saying and all that you're doing, you have to want to do it, and you have to understand that it's going to be very, very competitive," he said. "It's super, super competitive now. What separates you?"