If you ask any of Cassie Churnside’s colleagues what they expected of her career trajectory, they would all say the same thing: coaching a men’s water polo team.
“She definitely has the energy to coach a men’s team,” Michigan women’s water polo assistant coach Sami Hill told The Michigan Daily. “She’s very loud, she’s straight to the point and gets her point across well.”
But when the head coach position for the Michigan women’s water polo team opened two years ago, Churnside jumped on the opportunity. While hesitant at first about the transition back to women’s water polo after coaching on the men’s side, she looks at her decision with no regret.
And she shouldn’t. In her short tenure, the Wolverines have a fresh identity both in the pool and in their everyday lives — an identity that Churnside and her all-female staff have fostered.
Creating bonds and mutual respect between players and staff is crucial in rebuilding a program. Churnside was handed a program unsure of its identity — but because she is so confident in her own character, she makes her players and staff feel that way about themselves, too.
Churnside’s personality and coaching style are changing the culture of Michigan water polo out of the pool — and in the water, the Wolverines are reaping the benefits.
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Growing up in California, the water polo hub of the United States, Churnside discovered early on that she didn’t like to sweat. So, she took up swimming, and water polo shortly thereafter.
Churnside specialized in only water polo in high school, mainly due to the relationships she developed with her teammates. She has an extremely welcoming personality, but she can also be blunt and honest, making her the perfect teammate in the water and a reliable friend. Those traits only grew when she attended Stanford and captained the Cardinal to a national championship her senior year.
Even when her collegiate career ended, Churnside couldn’t give up her life at the pool. So, she decided to move to Spain and play professional water polo for a year. When she returned to the States, she started coaching local teams on the side for cash and worked a brief stint at a desk job. Finding herself on eight different pool decks, however, she realized something: maybe she actually wanted to be a coach.
So, Churnside decided to cold-call Ted Minnis, the head coach at Harvard, and ask for a job. Her bold choice worked, and soon enough, she found herself on a plane to Boston to become an assistant coach for both the men’s and women’s Crimson teams.
Working under Minnis’ mentorship for eight years is where Churnside’s coaching personality truly developed. For the second half of her coaching tenure with Harvard, the Crimson hired an additional assistant coach, Jackie Puccino, which allowed Churnside to focus solely on the men’s team. And although she was originally apprehensive about commanding the male team, the players embraced her coaching style and personality, fully buying into her system. Her ‘tomboy’ intense personality was exactly what they needed to succeed, and under her guidance, they won back-to-back conference championships.
“She somehow had a way of interacting with the men’s team where they feared her so much, respected her and got along with her like she was their sister,” Puccino told The Daily. “For all of these guys, being able to interact with a female in a position of power taught them how to respect and get used to seeing that women can be in these positions of power.”
Churnside taught the men how to be strong in the water and gentlemanly outside of it. She felt that providing these men with a strong female authority was crucial in their development, teaching them about sexism and misogyny in the world of water polo. They even started noticing it themselves when referees would show attitude toward Churnside and not her male counterparts.
Although Churnside loved coaching men much more than she expected, she recognized the reality of her situation — the world wasn’t ready for a female head coach of a men’s water polo team. After all, it’s barely ready for a female head coach of a women’s team. Churnside was ready to head her own team, and she knew that would mean switching back to coaching women.
And then, the head coach position opened at Michigan.
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Churnside interviewed at a few schools in California, but as soon as she stepped on Michigan’s campus, she instantly knew it would be the next stop in her coaching career. With little knowledge of the Big Ten or Wolverine culture, Churnside came to Ann Arbor ready to learn — both on and off the pool deck.
Churnside claims it was obvious she hadn’t coached women in a while when she arrived at Michigan. However, she had her own experience as a player and Minnis’ mentorship to rely on, quickly learning what it takes to command a women’s team.
“When I watch her coach now I’m so proud of her,” Minnis told The Daily. “I think she’s learned how to use that communication she learned on the men’s side and get it to the women’s side where she is able to say things that these women can respond to in a way that I wouldn’t be able to.”
Churnside felt that it was crucial for her to hire an all-female staff to empower women working in and playing water polo. So after her first season at the helm, she hired assistant coaches Sami Hill and Catie Wallace, as well as volunteer coach Ashley Grossman.
Hill, a UCLA graduate and a 2016 Olympic gold medalist, specializes in goalie development. Self-described as the ‘yang’ to Churnside’s ‘yin,’ Hill and Churnside’s personalities and coaching styles — Churnside more intense and Hill more relaxed — balance each other out. Wallace is a UC Berkeley graduate and former high school coach, leading her teams to multiple Illinois State Championships and Junior Olympics appearances. Grossman has a storied history with Churnside. As players, they overlapped for one year at Stanford, where Churnside served as both a mentor and a friend.
An all-female staff is unheard of in most sports at the collegiate level, whether male or female. But the quartet of Churnside, Hill, Wallace and Grossman has developed a mutual love and respect between players and staff that has bonded the team more than ever.
“It’s really fun to show up and have an all-female staff,” Hill told The Daily. “We’ve all played collegiate water polo, so just having that experience to draw on when we’re teaching young athletes is awesome. We’ve been in their shoes, we know what it’s like competing at a high level and also going to school.”
Because she has been in their shoes, she understands the athlete’s perspective. Churnside has also taken Minnis’ mentorship to heart, utilizing many of his successful systems and adapting them to Michigan. In just two years, she has developed a fast-paced Wolverines team that is unrecognizable from years prior.
For most people, Michigan isn’t on the map when it comes to water polo. After all, all of its coaches and many of the players hail from California. But this year alone, the Wolverines have won games over Santa Barbara, Irvine and Fullerton, all of which hail from the ‘water polo state.’ Ranking ninth of 28 in the conference, Churnside has made the Wolverines a well-known presence in collegiate water polo.
The bluntness of her own personality is now reflected in her players, as Churnside has developed a culture in which her players view her as a friend and a mentor, unafraid to ask questions and provide her with their own ideas to make plays more successful.
“Cassie is 100% a player’s coach through and through,” Grossman told The Daily. “ … She leads with not only her brain but with her heart. Her coaching style is extremely dynamic in that it is not all about her and how she feels it needs to be done; it’s about taking input.”
In fact, she’s such a player’s coach that at practice, her coaches often become players. While an aerial view of the pool is good to see an entire system play out, some situations are best analyzed up close. So, Grossman or Wallace will act as members of the roster for practice.
Often, the violence underwater — kicking, scratching, pulling — goes unnoticed. Grossman and Wallace have been both the agitators and the victims throughout their playing careers, so when scrimmaging or running drills, they can draw on first-hand experience and emulate physical opponents — pulling at players’ suits and helping them navigate their escape.
The dirty play in men’s and women’s water polo differs for a few reasons, including the swimsuits themselves. That’s one reason a female staff, with their own playing experience, is so helpful for a women’s team.
Under Churnside’s brief tutelage, the positive culture of the Michigan women’s water polo team has already been revitalized. She has fostered an environment where everyone gets dinner together after games — not because they have to, but because they all just want to spend more time together.
“They bought into this culture of ‘we need more kickass women leading kickass women,’ ” Churnside told The Daily. “They could be those kickass women rather than thinking to only be an assistant, they want to be the CEO now, the captain, the leader.”
It has now been two years since Churnside stepped into her head coach role, veering onto an unexpected path. As a men’s coach, Churnside was able to be brutally honest and push her players to their maximum potential. And while she was worried about pushing her female players in the same way, she has made them want to succeed under her tutelage.
Churnside’s personality and leadership style have built trust and love within the program. As each and every Wolverine steps on the pool deck, that culture shines through.
It’s the culture that Cassie Churnside built.