Noah Yanchulis will be the 8th and final member of the newly-combined Cal swimming & diving coaching staff next season, wrapping up what has been a big overhaul of the Golden Bears leadership over the last 12 months.
Yanchulis is currently on campus working with swimmers in preparation for this week’s TYR Pro Championships in Irvine as a member of the California Aquatics coaching staff, and is expected to join the varsity staff pending the completion of the hiring process.
Yanchulis comes to the program from Oklahoma Christian, where he has served as an assistant coach since the 2018-2019 season. His first year was as a graduate assistant, and he was quickly promoted after finishing a master’s degree in only one year.
He spent last season as an associate head coach with the program.
He was part of a race to Division II prominence for the Eagles under head coach Josh Davis, an Olympic gold medalist. Last year, the men’s team finished 10th at the NCAA Championships and the women finished 24th, while in 2021-2022, the men’s team produced 200-yard breaststroke NCAA D2 Champion JT Amrein.
As an athlete, he was a two-time Big East Conference most outstanding swimmer while competing collegiately at Seton Hall from 2014-2018. While there, he won 10 Big East titles, including three each in the 200-yard freestyle and 500-yard freestyle. He established himself as arguably the best swimmer in Seton Hall history.
He joins the staff of the two-time defending NCAA Division I Champion men’s team and the rebuilding women’s team at Cal.
The staff has been fully rebuilt under Dave Durden, the long-time men’s head coach who last season took over the women’s program as well. The moves have come in the wake of the suspension and ultimately termination of NCAA title winning women’s head coach Teri McKeever.
Combined with new NCAA rules allowing larger paid coaching staffs and the hiring away of associate head coach Matt Bowe to take over the program at Michigan, and other departures, the Cal coaching staff will be almost completely brand new as compared to the one that started the 2021-2022 season.
Besides Durden, the only returning swim coach from last year’s staff is David Marsh, who joined the Golden Bears as a paternity-leave-fill-in before their 2022 NCAA Championship run.
New Hires This Year:
- Noah Yanchulis, assistant coach (Oklahoma Christian)
- Kim Williams, assistant coach (Northwestern)
- Josh Huger, associate head coach (Tennessee)
Pei Lin will also return for her second year as Cal’s diving coach.
this has to be a joke right?
Noah is without a doubt going to do amazing things at Cal. He’s done a fantastic job with OC’s distance and mid-D groups and is arguably the best coach I’ve ever worked with. He’s responsible for most of OC’s recent success in Division II (going from 1 conference A-finalist to a national champion in 5 years), and I have no doubt he will carry that to Berkeley.
Well deserved, Noah! Good hire for a rising person in the sport. Just the beginning.
This guy’s probably grown the sport more than many realize. He’s uploaded the only watchable videos of races from multiple NCAA’s in great quality which have hundreds of thousands of views. Dude single handedly carried swimming on YouTube
Hopefully he is a better coach than swimmer. He really wasnt too good in college or highschool
So what? Lots of coaches have coached athletes that had far more success and on higher stages than they ever did. All you need is passion, knowledge of proper technique and the sport, and the ability to motivate and encourage. If you are saying this out of pure hope than great, but I get the sense you are trying to ridicule. And for what its worth, he may not have scored at NCAAs, but he still was a baller in the big east. He knows what it takes to win at the highest level for him, and he’ll translate that to Cal. Met him on a recruiting trip to Seton Hall, he and his roommate were hilarious. Best of luck… Read more »
He was a two-time Big East Swimmer of the Year.
That’s pretty good.
Cal are lucky to have Noah
Why all the downvotes? Seems like he’s got a good head on his shoulders. He also did 24 miles in 24 hours with OCU as part of their team fundraiser, so he’s dedicated to the sport.
maybe because he’s an underexperienced dude compared to many other coaches out there?
Compared to the other P5 assistants recently that have had zero coaching experience?
Congratulations Noah! Well deserved , going to be great!