Coach Speak: Cliff Cisar
9/10/2020
PRESENTED BY
Omaha is home. At the age of 31, I’ve spent around 24 years connected to this campus. My brothers, father, mother, uncle, two grandparents and wife all attended UNO. Growing up as a kid in Omaha, I attended numerous events on this campus, from science to sporting. The opportunities to take part in something here have always been virtually endless. Every time I left with a new memory of a place that was pioneering and accepting.
Every school I attended growing up had high amounts of diversity. UNO was always and has always been no different. That’s why I chose to attend. The ability to succeed in a forward-thinking university, with professors who challenged us and guided us, all while accepting people from every social, racial and economic background was exactly where I wanted to be.
Omaha is more than just a university. It’s a community. During undergrad, I began to find my way into coaching while finishing up my degree in exercise science. The campus looks tenfold different than it did when I graduated in 2012. It’s updating almost constantly to push the envelope and give students a chance to succeed and network in areas even greater than when I was attending eight years ago.
I still have unbelievable relationships with classmates from my years here, the faculty who shaped my focus and pointed me in the direction to get to where I wanted to go and the people who work in every corner of this campus. I met my amazing wife here and that was worth four years of tuition in itself! It’s almost impossible after a short amount of time here to walk across our campus and not run into someone you know. And that’s a very special and unique feeling at a university with 15,000+ students.
Being the first cross country coach in the Division I era for Omaha will always hold a special place in my heart. Everything that we have achieved thus far on the course and the track all had to be firsts. There was no roadmap, no tradition…nothing. Every person who has set foot on this team had the opportunity to leave a mark, and that mark will be etched in stone for the rest of time as this place continues to build, evolve and ultimately get even better. And I thank each and every one of our student-athletes for that.
I am so very fortunate to be a Maverick in a remarkable city that I can, and always will, call home.
