One might say that Natalie Benson and women's water polo grew up together.
When Benson (née Golda) was a sophomore at Rosary High School in Fullerton, California, in 1998 and her water polo team won its first championship, the California Interscholastic Federation sanctioned girls' high school water polo.
When Benson graduated from high school in 2000 and started her illustrious water polo career at UCLA, the US Women's National Team made its debut at the Sydney Olympics, earning silver.
When Benson was a freshman at UCLA and her team claimed the championship title in 2001, women's water polo entered its first year as a NCAA sport.
"Do you see this pattern?" Benson asks.
Benson, 41, went on to earn two Olympic medals with the US Women's National Team in 2004 and 2008.
Since then, the pattern has morphed into a movement and the women who grew up together with water polo are now leading and developing the sport's next generation. In 2017, Benson started the Fresno State University program. As the head coach of women's water polo there, Benson is one of 16 female Division 1 head coaches. That's almost half of the 34 D1 head coaching positions around the United States (see sidebar). Others include fellow Olympians Coralie Simmons at the University of California at Berkeley and Petra Pardi at Arizona State University.
"Now [the other women and I] look around while we're recruiting, and we jokingly say, 'It's a girls' party. Here we are. We're all women,'" Benson says. "It's really cool. It's something that hasn't happened before. It's really neat that schools have made it a priority to hire women into these spaces, and that women are starting to put themselves into these positions of 'Yes, I want to be the leader of the women, and I want to help them grow to their fullest potential.'"
As a high schooler, Benson walked into water polo ignorant of the past. "I didn't realize the struggle, the suffragette movement for the women to be involved with the game. I'm just going along with the flow, and I slowly start to realize what's going on," she says, meaning that there were very few female coaches in water polo. True, she'd played for wonderful male coaches including her high school coach who suggested she try out for the national team and, later, Adam Krikorian at UCLA, but "you could count the women coaches on one hand," she says.
One of the women who helped change the female coaching landscape was Carin Crawford. She coached women at San Diego State University from 1998—the year Benson was a sophomore in high school—to 2022.
But Crawford had only discovered water polo as a 20-year-old student at Santa Rosa Junior College in Northern California. With no club options for women, she played with the men, learned quickly, then led the UCSD's women's team and competed at various levels for the US Women's National Team from 1989 to 1992. After her playing career, she spent two years coaching the women at San Diego Mesa College, a community college. When she was 33, San Diego State took notice.
"SDSU was willing to take a chance on [me]," Crawford says. "I wasn't on an Olympic team. I wasn't on an NCAA team. It was club when I was playing, and that's not looked at as credible experience with which then to become a coach."
Around the same time, more women took head coach positions, including Amber Drury who coached at Michigan University (2001–2002) and Cal (2003–2004), but many times, Crawford remembers being the only woman at head coaches' meetings.
"Coaching has been a unique kind of hold-out profession for women because it's associated with masculine behaviors," says Crawford, 58. "So if you're strong and demanding and tough and relentless, all of those things are generally associated with what it means to be a coach, it's been difficult to break those stereotypes. Finally," Crawford says, "the pool is now truly robust with qualified women coaches. Water polo Olympians like Natalie [Benson] are entering the coaching profession whose experience and qualifications and credentials just can't be denied."
Young women around the U.S. took note, including Cassie Churnside, a former star at Stanford from 2009 to 2012. Churnside spent eight seasons as the assistant coach for the women's and men's teams at Harvard under Ted Minnis. In the summer of 2022, the head coaching job opened up at Michigan University. The 32-year-old got the call for the interview —and the job.
"This is my dream," says Churnside. "I wanted to be the Carin Crawford of San Diego State but here in Michigan."
In addition to crediting the women who pioneered similar paths, Churnside also cites Title IX as an important contributor to the movement. Established 50 years ago, Title IX prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutes that receive federal funding. "Title IX isn't necessarily to say, 'The men have that so we need that.' It has mostly pointed out the discrepancies. The reason the US [women] are so dominant in the Olympics is because we've put effort and time and money, which is really important, into women's sports."
For Benson, this sea change is intertwined with a recognition that water polo needs women in women's spaces. "You'd probably be surprised about how much of my job is taken up with not film, not practice planning, not schoolwork but conversations and feelings and emotions. That is probably 80% of my day. If you don't have a coach with those soft skills, the girls are going to struggle. I love the fact that I get to teach them the game, but that's not all I get to be here for: I get to be here for their life."
Churnside is motivated by that as well. "I wanted my own program because there is a huge movement for women to coach women and for us to be in places of leadership where we can help develop these women further than just in the pool. That was something that meant a lot to me."
While there has been much progress since Crawford stood mostly alone with the men, Churnside thinks women can go even further in coaching. Coralie Simmons at Cal, for example, is the only female head coach among the top four programs. No. 1 Stanford, No. 2 USC and No. 4 UCLA are still coached by men.
"All of us women head coaches are nipping at their heels," Churnside says. "We don't want just a top-four, we want a top-eight, a top-10. We want to be there."
"That's going to eventually happen."
SIDEBAR
Current Division 1 female head coaches (as of Dec. 5, 2022)
Natalie Benson
Fresno State University
2017–present
Maureen Cole
University of Hawaii at Manoa
2012–present
Cassie Churnside
University of Michigan
2022–present
Alyssa Diacono
Mount St. Mary's University (women's and men's)
2020–present
Beth Harberts
San Jose State University
2019–present
Gabby Juarez
Long Island University
2019–present (women's head coach)
2022–present (men's head coach)
Serela Kay
University of California, Santa Barbara
2014–present
Claire Linney
Santa Clara University
2021–present
Taylor McInerney
Indiana University
2019–present
Danielle Montenegro
Virginia Military Institute
2020–present
Dana Ochsner
San Diego State University
2022–present
Petra Pardi
Arizona State University
2022–present
Coralie Simmons
University of California, Berkeley
2017–present
Julie Snodgrass
Cal Baptist
2022–present
Kandace Waldthaler
University of California, Davis
2022–present
Shana Welch
California State University, Long Beach
2020–present
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