By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
When Ron Slaymaker stepped down as Topeka High girls basketball coach in March after leading the Trojans to the Centennial League championship and the Class 6A state quarterfinals, assistant coach Pat Denney had every intention of following Slaymaker's lead.
Pat Denney, Topeka High
But the more he thought about it, Denney eventually decided that he wasn't quite ready to step away from a Trojan program that has made dramatic progress over the past two seasons.
And on Thursday night the USD 501 school board approved Denney to take over as Topeka High's head coach, adding another chapter to his long coaching legacy at the school.
"When Slay resigned I was gone,'' Denney told TopSports.news. "But it seemed like the farther I got away from the season, and then when I started thinking about it, I was like, 'I'm going to miss summer workouts once we start heading into May and to June and I'm going to miss the opportunity to get in there and get some work in.'
"Eventually those same old feelings just started coming back and I started missing it.''
Denney also considered the possibility of working with current Trojan boys coach Robbie Sanders, who served as an assistant under Denney, but after conversations with Topeka High principal and district athletic director Dustin Dick, he made the decision to try to continue the progress the High girls made under the legendary Slaymaker.
The Trojans posted a nine-win improvement in a 14-8 2024-2025 season and followed that up with a 17-9 campaign this past winter, capped by the league and sub-state titles.
"We were very proud,'' Denney said. "We had a lot of success, we had a lot of good players on the floor and I know Slay took a lot of pride in the job that he did here and what he instilled over two years. And obviously being a part of that was awesome and we both have a lot of pride in how that went down.
''You always ask yourself, 'Could we have done more?' But I think overall we were pretty happy with the results.''
Denney has coached at Topeka High for more than two decades as either an assistant or head coach, including 12 seasons as the Trojans' head boys coach before stepping down in 2019.
With his new position Denney will have served as head coach and assistant in both of High's basketball programs.
Denney guided the Trojans to a 35-9 record over his final two boys seasons, including a third-place finish in the Class 6A state tournament in 2018 and back-to-back Centennial League championships. Topeka High went 18-3 in 2018-19, sharing the league title with Washburn Rural, and Denney posted a 145-117 overall record at High.
Denney also served as head boys coach at Holton and Shawnee Mission North.
"I feel like I've got something left to offer, I really do,'' he said. "And whether that would have been with the girls here or with Robbie, at this point I felt like I still had something left and obviously I still have the feelings to get excited about the season and about the summer and we'll see where it grows from here.''
