SAN DIEGO – Hope Mayer, a San Diego native and familiar face in local water polo circles, has been named an assistant coach with the San Diego State water polo program, Aztec head coach Carin Crawford made the announcement on Wednesday.
Mayer's position is funded through a grant by the Women's Sports Foundation (WSF) and its Tara VanDerveer Fund for the Advancement of Women in Coaching. Grants are awarded to institutions to support collegiate female coaches on the rise, assisting with living expenses, professional development, and mentorship. San Diego State is one of 10 universities and colleges to receive the grants, which are designated for female coaching fellows in a wide variety of women's sports.
Mayer has been coaching in the San Diego area since 2018, beginning with a two-plus year stint as a head coach at the Sunset Water Polo Club. There she built its coed 12U and 14U Boys program from six to 60 participants in less than a year. In 2019, she took her squad to the Junior Olympics and earned a fifth-place finish in the Platinum Division, in addition, that team was the second-place finisher at the 2019 Shaver Lake Tournament.
Starting her water polo career at Clairemont High School in San Diego, Mayer, a 2020 graduate of UC Santa Barbara, continues to give back to the sport. During the 2020 and 2021 seasons, she enjoyed successful stints as the head coach of the 14U/12U Girls and Boys teams, as well as an assistant coach of the 18U Boys at the Ohana Water Polo Club, a developmental program based in San Diego's East County. She was the boys varsity assistant coach and its JV head coach at Valhalla High School last season, as well as assistant coach for the boys varsity team at Point Loma High School and its JV/Novice head coach, this past Fall season. Since July, Mayer has coached the 12U Girls at San Diego Shores Water Polo and helped guide the team to a bronze medal in the Platinum Division at the 2021 Junior Olympics.
WSF began awarding grants from the VanDerveer Fund in 2019 to address the lack of women in coaching positions at all levels of sport. Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, the percentage of women in head coaching roles for NCAA women's sports has steadily declined from 90% in 1970–71 to 41% in 2020. Only 28% of all NCAA assistant coaches in 2020 were women and, only 6% of all NCAA assistant coaches were BIPOC women. Aspiring women coaches are able to jumpstart their careers and contribute to growing representation of women in the coaching space through the opportunities they receive from the Tara VanDerveer Fund. Hired by educational institutions that receive the grant, fellows receive mentorship from established collegiate coaches, hands-on-training and professional development resources. Since its inception, the Fund has provided a total of $600,000 to 26 colleges and universities across the country, supporting 27 coaching fellows across 11 different sports.
-SDSU-