By Aimee Berg

Dan Klatt, 44, has been coaching water polo nearly half his life.
 
It all started as a side gig when he was playing for UC Irvine.
 
"The more I did it, the more I enjoyed it," he said. Turns out, "My mind was made for it."
 
Over time, his style has become a compendium of the knowledge he gleaned from all the coaches he played for – from his father, Rick Klatt, back home in Fresno, to Ted Newland at Irvine, to John Vargas and Ratko Rudic leading up to and during the 2004 Olympics. It's from 12 years as Adam Krikorian's assistant coach for the US women's national team during its three Olympic gold-medal runs. It's even from close counsel with the 2016 and 2020 US Olympic men's volleyball coach, John Speraw, his house-mate when they were both young coaches at Irvine. Klatt further honed and parlayed all of that as head coach of the US women's junior national team and the UC Irvine women's squad. He added the Irvine's men team in 2022 to become one of the few people in California water polo to coach both college teams at once.
 
"Truthfully, I love to play," Klatt said, "but coaching is harder, for sure. As an individual athlete, you really only have to control yourself, your own actions, own habits, and own preparation. When you coach a team, it takes so many people doing that together to arrive at success. I've always found that to be more gratifying. I get a whole lot more enjoyment out of helping someone else reach their goals. That has always spoken to me more than anything I ever felt as an athlete."
 
Klatt was the same way in the pool. "I was more of a blue-collar player, so it was never really about me."
 
A Great Chance for a Humble Player
 
In the 2004 Olympics, Klatt was a defender, a thankless position. He had to guard the biggest, strongest, and sometimes meanest player in the pool closest to the goal. Many times, he was getting excluded more than anyone else. It was a selfless job on a young squad that had only three Olympic veterans on its roster.
 
In Athens, the US caught a brutal draw. They faced all three of the eventual medalists in Group A in round-robin. Group B was much softer and – in a rare year with no crossover game – the US finished seventh.
 
"If you're not a medal-winning team, it doesn't really matter," Klatt said. "Maybe we could have done better than seventh. I don't know. We'll never know. That was a hard one."
 
"I think I was getting a lot better as a player after the Olympics" he said, but in his family "you work." Hard labor ran in his clan. His paternal great-grandparents were wheat farmers who got blown out of Kansas during the Dust Bowl, moved West, lived in a dug-out hillside in New Mexico and grew pinto beans, did carpentry – anything to survive.
 
Shortly after Athens, Dan walked into his office at Irvine and has been coaching the women there ever since.
 
The position was a remarkable opportunity for a 25-year-old with zero college coaching experience.
 
"UCI took a chance on a young talent that had some success coaching high school," Klatt said. "They let me grow into the position."
 
Since then, the female Anteaters have had 18 winning seasons, dominated the Big West, and ranked as high as No. 3 nationally (in 2020) under Klatt's guidance. This spring, Irvine won its ninth women's conference title and ninth Big West tournament championship.
 
In hindsight, Klatt said, "It's funny. I resisted coaching in the beginning just because it's what my dad did." He just wanted to chart his own course. "I had all these other ideas," he said.
 
When Adam Krikorian heard that quote, he laughed – hard.  "It's in his DNA. He's a miniature Rick Klatt!"
 
As a kid, "I think Dan saw the impact and unique power his dad had as a coach and teacher," Krikorian said. And as Krikorian's wife reminds him all the time: "Your son is watching you."
 
"Dan was watching Rick Klatt," he said. "A lot."
 
Growing Up Klatt
 
If Dan inherited a coaching chromosome, then he also had a gene for fast swimming and he was surrounded by excellence almost since birth.
 
In 1973, five years before Dan was born, his father, Rick, broke a world record in the 4 x 200 free relay, swimming the third leg at the inaugural world championships in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. When Rick coached in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, it hosted the 1981 US senior nationals and 2-year-old Dan witnessed Mary T. Meagher set a world record in the 200m butterfly, a mark that held for 18 years. When Rick moved to Fresno and coached Clovis Swim Club, Dan, age 9, was the 'basket boy' for Janet Evans at the 1987 nationals there, which meant he held Evans' warm-up gear when the 15-year-old broke her first world record a year before winning three Olympic gold medals in Seoul.
 
Dan, excelled at racing, too, and in addition to water polo, he competed for Irvine's swim team where one of his teammates was Dave Durden (the 2020 US Olympic swimming head coach).
 
When Klatt was about to graduate, he started coaching water polo at Foothill High School in Santa Ana.
 
He loved it, Irvine snapped him up, and five years after taking over the women's team, another Klatt made the roster: his half-sister, Kelsey, 12 years his junior. Like Dan, she had speed; she competed in three events at the 2008 US Olympic swim trials. Like Dan, she was supposed to be a two-sport athlete at Irvine, but the university cut the swim team before she arrived so Kelsey played polo for her big brother, starting in 2009.
 
Since Rick Klatt had taught both of his kids, Kelsey immediately recognized Dan's coaching style and other father-son similarities beyond a shared passion for water polo, like "the effort they put into little details and the attention they give players to help them learn something new or make them a little better," she said. "People want to play hard for them because they care so much about their players and the sport.
 
"Honestly, what surprised me, was Dan's water polo IQ," she said. "I learned so much so quickly from him." By the time Kelsey graduated, she had scored 104 goals, made 89 steals, won 80% of her sprints, and was selected co-captain.
 
National Impact
 
Krikorian was aware of Klatt's genius and called him to assist the women's national team in 2010.
 
"To this day, it was one of the greatest decisions I ever made," Krikorian said. Their tactics and values aligned perfectly. "We both firmly believed in the power of speed, commitment to defense, and selfless play. And, maybe more importantly, we believed in the same values: this idea of trust, the importance of building trust within teams, hard work, and humility."
 
More than anything, Krikorian said, Klatt was instrumental on the defensive side. But he was also a confidante.
 
"It was really easy to relate to him," said two-time Olympic champion Courtney Mathewson. He was closer to me in age than Adam and Chris [Oeding, the other assistant coach]. He knew what it took to get to the Olympics himself; he knew how hard the journey could be."
 
After winning gold 2012, Mathewson hit a low point in the fall of 2015 and didn't think she would make it to the Rio Olympics.
 
"He saved me from leaving the team," she said.
 
Mathewson had two shoulder surgeries after London and was struggling with expectations. "I started to question: Is this where I want to spend my time? Is it worth it? You could tell in the way I was training, my attitude," she said. "Dan immediately recognized the different type of player I was becoming.
 
"Almost at my breaking point, we had a heart-to-heart. He gave me the courage to tackle the issues I was having. From that point, I did a 180. I know several players relied on Dan for his insight, his support, and his encouragement because he has the ability to really see a person and see what's going on."
 
In Rio, however, darkness quickly hit the US squad. One morning, less than a week before its first game, the team was told to meet ASAP in the athlete village.
 
Mathewson immediately knew something was wrong. Krikorian has his hoodie up around his head, and his sunglasses on. His brother Blake had died suddenly back in the States.
 
"Dan was the first person to come see me," Krikorian said. "I'll never forget the look on his face. It was one of deep care and love. I felt like there was this fear as well. I've never talked to Dan about this" but he knew Dan had also suddenly lost one of his six stepbrothers – 10-year-old Skyler – in 2001, when Klatt was in Croatia with national team.
 
Krikorian knew he had to fly home at the most crucial time. "It was a fairly clear decision – made much more clear with Dan on staff as well as Chris Oeding," he said. "I knew the team was in great hands. I knew I could trust not only Dan's knowledge of the game and preparation necessary, but that his emotional intelligence and equanimity would shine in a moment of adversity. And that's what happened."
 
The temporary transition was "super-seamless," Mathewson said. The team won gold No. 2.
 
Klatt continued coaching through the delayed Tokyo Games and gold No. 3, but given his new double-duty coaching men at Irvine and the desire to spend more time closer to his wife, Natalie, and young twin sons, Luke and Skyler, he resigned from the national team.
 
Klatt's 6-foot-5 presence is already missed but Krikorian said, "I can still hear his voice in my head. I know what he'd say in certain situations."
 
Plus, Klatt has more to accomplish. The Irvine women have yet to win an NCAA title. The men haven't won any since 1989, during Ted Newland's 39-year reign. Besides, his father, Rick, is still coaching both swimming and water polo in Fresno at age 72.
 
Could Dan see himself coaching that long?
 
"Right now, I really enjoy the players, the energy on campus, being part of a larger sports department," he said, but "I think it's really-really important for us to continue to create and push for opportunity for female leaders within our sport. It's always been my plan to try to find someone interested in taking over the Irvine program, a female coach who can lead and connect with the players. I do foresee that at some point. I don't know when, and I've got to be willing to give something up to help it happen.
 
"When I feel like that's the case," he said, "I want to happily step away with joy and excitement in my heart."

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of SkipShot magazine.