Amy Gardner

Amy began her water polo career playing club water polo in Menlo Park when she was nine years old. Since that time she has been wholeheartedly committed to the sport and has played at many various levels of competition. Amy played her high school career at Menlo School where she led her team to great success. After playing one year on the Junior Varsity team, she played three years on the Varsity Squad, starting every game. She earned CCS Honorable Mention her sophomore year, CCS 2nd Team her junior year, and CCS 1st Team her senior year. Her team placed 2nd at CCS during both her sophomore and senior seasons.

Amy has trained with both the Stanford Water Polo Club and the Golden Bear Water Polo Club. In 2003 her Stanford team won Senior Nationals, and in 2004 her Golden Bear team placed 3rd at Junior Nationals. Amy is a former member of the Varsity water polo team at UC Berkeley. She red-shirted her freshman year, then proceeded to make the traveling team her sophomore year. Following her sophomore year she was awarded the Sally Mayne Fund Scholarship for athletic and academic achievement.

Through her years as an athlete Amy was fortunate enough to train under very prominent coaches in the water polo community.  Her high school program at Menlo was run by Kyle Utsumi who has been the Women's Junior National Team coach since 2004. Before that Utsumi was also the Women's Youth National team coach. He has earned many accolades, and proved to be an excellent role model for Amy.

While at Cal Amy was coached first by Amber Drury-Pinto, and then by current coach Richard Corso.  Drury-Pinto was the Women's Junior National Team coach for the two years prior to Utsumi and offered her players a taste of the style of international water polo. Corso also has international experience.  Among other things, Corso coached the 1996 Men's Olympic Team, as well as the Canadian National Team in the early 1990's. Corso knew that Amy had aspirations to be a coach, and so when she retired as an athlete, he encouraged her to stay on as a Team Manager where she could not only contribute to the team, but learn from him as well.

During the high school season of 2004 Amy coached the Alameda High School Girls’ water polo teams, leading the Varsity squad to place 2nd in their league, the ACCAL. Amy has also coached at BAC, heading up the 14U boys team during the summer of 2005, the 14U Coed team during the fall of 2006, and helping with the 14U Coed team during the fall of 2007. During these seasons the members of her team made great improvements.

Amy will be continuing her coaching education in January of 2008 when she begins classes at USF in the Sport Management Program. The program will further prepare her for professional leadership and management roles within all levels of sport.

BAC is pleased to have Amy as the Club Water Polo Head Coach . A true student of the sport, the club expects Amy will again have an immediate and great impact on the success of the program.