Ethan Anderson
LV Life Editor
The Athletic Department has named Robert Echeverria interim water polo coach for the 2025 season.
Echeverria, formerly assistant coach, brings 20 years of coaching experience, and he also played water polo from a young age.
He credits the sport for helping him through some of challenges he faced as a kid.
“I’ll be honest, where I grew up, gangs were huge,” Echeverria said. “And I would say water polo saved my life.”
Echeverria’s list of accomplishments and awards is lengthy, most notable of which are his club teams’ multiple appearances in the Junior Olympics National Championships, his leading of Los Angeles Valley College women’s team to a championship and has steered numerous high school teams to tournament titles.
His coaching career began at South Pasadena High School, where he spent nine years. He then began coaching for Rose Bowl Aquatics where his women’s team won Junior Olympics.
Echeverria’s college coaching career began at Los Angeles Valley College where he met ULV’s former head coach, Pat Beemer. Most recently, he was assistant coach at Whittier where he helped the men’s team achieve an 18-10 record, as well as ushering three All-Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference accolades and a SCIAC Newcomer of the Year.
“The culture between our previous coach, Beemer, and Rob is really similar,” graduate student center Nancy Trinh said. “The immediate difference is that we are held more accountable for missing practices and games.”
Echeverria earned his bachelor of arts in kinesiology at Cal State Los Angeles before becoming a graduate assistant for Beemer at ULV, where he studied special education studies.
“He was older than the typical graduate assistant,” assistant athletic director Anthony Avila said. “He had more experience and was able to lend a real second voice to Pat Beemer. He added a lot of insight to our men’s and women’s team.”
He has also coached at Damien High School as well as St. Lucy’s Priory High School, where he won a California Interscholastic Federation title in his second year as head coach.
While at Damien, he won CIF-Southern Section Division 3 Coach of the Year. Echeverria was named the San Gabriel Valley Coach of the Year in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2016 during his coaching stints at Westridge School and South Pasadena High School.
Echeverria was born and raised in New York up until age 7, when he moved to Highland Park and spent most of his childhood. He began playing water polo for various clubs, beginning with the city of Los Angeles, where he learned to love the sport.
“That program was developed for low income families and kids, I was one of those,” Echeverria said. “Kids like myself were introduced to a sport that is amazing.”
The city has since cut the program and Echeverria draws comparisons to Route 66 Aquatics, Beemer’s old club team that Echeverria has since taken over as the technical director.
“Water polo saved me and gave me a lot of opportunities,” Echeverria said. “I love the sport because of what it has done for me, my family, and the people I’ve coached.”
Throughout his 20 years of coaching, his style has developed in a way he saw fit.
“Starting out was rough. I put a lot of expectation and pressure (on players),” Echeverria said. “Then I realized winning sometimes takes time, it’s a process.”
Echeverria was a first generation college student whose parents are from El Salvador.
“Being the first in my family to go to school… watching my dad work two jobs, my mom sacrificing her (work) life for me. I use all of that experience growing up to translate it to my coaching,” Echeverria said. “I coach hard.”
Similar to Beemer, Echeverria brings people’s guard down with his generally positive vibes and well-timed humor.
“I would say coach Rob is a little funnier if I’m being completely honest. His delivery of jokes is always on point,” Trinh said. “If we are down in the dumps for one practice he knows how to pick it right back up with intensity or his humor.”
At the end of this season, the head water polo coach position will open back up for whoever may be interested in applying.
“We’re gonna see great benefits to having him here in our program,” junior utility Maddie Grove said. “A lot of us really like him as a coach, and it’d be great to have him here full-time, year round.”
Ethan Anderson can be reached at ethan.anderson@laverne.edu.
Ethan Anderson is a senior communications major with a concentration in public relations. He is the LV Life editor and a staff photographer for the Campus Times, and a staff writer and photographer for La Verne Magazine. He has previously been a staff writer for the Campus Times. As a lifelong student-athlete, he has picked up valuable skills that he seeks to apply in his career in public relations, and ultimately make an impact.
