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Two-time Olympian Kirk Everist was named head coach of the Cal men’s water polo program this week. 

Everist graduated from Cal in 1990, earning All-American status from 1986-88 and NCAA Player of the Year in 1988. He has spent the last 11 years as an assistant coach at Miramonte High in Orinda, where the team has won eight CIF North Coast Section titles in that time. 

Everist replaces Peter Asch, who resigned last month after four seasons with the team. 

“We regard Kirk Everist as one of the most promising young water polo coaches in America,” said Gladstone. “Since his days at Cal, Kirk has set and achieved the highest standards as a player and coach. It is our belief that he is the ideal person to return our water polo program to a championship level.” 

After leading the Bears to national championships in 1987 and 1988, Everist went on to play for the U.S. national team for nine years and was a member of the U.S. Olympic Teams at the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Games. 

Six of Cal’s current players are from the Miramonte High program. In addition to his work at Miramonte, Everist has served as water polo commissioner at San Francisco’s famed Olympic Club the past three years, a period that has produced a gold medal and two silver medals in FINA World Masters competition. Also since 2000, he has held the post of co-head coach for the Lamorinda water polo team in Moraga, leading that club to the 2001 U.S. Water Polo 20-and-Under national championship and the 2002 Northern California Zone Junior Olympic title.  

“Kirk has been an Olympian and an All-American, but I believe he is now a better coach than he was a player,” said four-time NCAA Coach of the Year Pete Cutino, his former Cal mentor. “He is a very intense person who has always been a student of the game. He is everything we would want in a coach.”