"He's not standing still," says Ute sports information director Liz Abel. To combat the Utes' isolation from the big TV markets, which give his rivals an advantage, Marsden started a multimedia Web site. After every meet, he personally posts video clips and photos of his team's performances, sometimes staying up as late as 4 a.m. to complete the task.

"He's killing us," a rival coach told Abel. "How is he doing it?"

"He's doing it himself," Abel replied.

During one week in February, Marsden's Web site and another Ute gymnastics link took a combined 58,000 hits, by far the most of any sport at the school.

Marsden's story is all the more remarkable because it is all one happy accident. The Utes were starting a gymnastics team; it wasn't supposed to be a big deal, just something to satisfy Title IX requirements. They picked Marsden, a graduate student and former collegiate diver, to be the head coach simply because he happened to be teaching a gymnastics class at the time. Other than that, he had no experience with the sport. He was paid $1,500 to coach the team, while he also taught five classes, attended school and served as a resident assistant to pay for his room.

"I thought I would coach a year and move on," he says.

That first year, the Utes held their matches in the P.E. building, pushing equipment out of the way and setting up 200 folding chairs for fans. Now they perform in the Huntsman Center, where they have averaged 10,000 fans for 15 years for home matches. They have led the nation in attendance in 22 of the last 25 years.

It's a remarkable story of persistence and hard work and ultimately success. For his part, Marsden is weary of certain parts of the job — travel and time away from home, mostly — but not the part that puts him in the gym for several hours a day trying to help athletes achieve their potential.

"I love the process," he says. "I like building a team. I like the interaction."

When Marsden retires, they should name a building after him, but the coach blanches at such a suggestion.

"I want to do my thing and then go away," he says. "I've seen a lot of coaches inflate or misjudge their importance. You have an opportunity to do this while you can be effective, then you go away."

Fortunately for the Utes, he doesn't plan to leave anytime soon.

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E-mail: drob@desnews.com