Teri McKeever


Teri McKeever is an American college and Olympic swimming coach. She has been the head coach of the California Golden Bears women's swimming team at the University of California, Berkeley for the last twenty seasons. Her Cal Bears teams have won three NCAA national championships. McKeever has twice previously served as an assistant coach for the United States Olympic women's swimming team, and she served as the head coach of the 2012 U.S. Olympic women's swim team that competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Early years

McKeever was born in 1962. She was the oldest child in a family of ten children. Her father, Mike McKeever, and her father's twin brother, Marlin McKeever, both attended the University of Southern California, and were both first-team All-American linemen for the USC Trojans football team in 1959. Her father died in 1967 from head injuries received in a 1965 car accident, after twenty-two months in a coma. Her mother later remarried, had seven more children with her second husband. The family athletic influence remained strong, with all of her nine siblings participating in a variety of sports. Her sisters Kristi and Kelli were members of the U.S. national field hockey team.

College career

McKeever attended the University of Southern California, where she swam for the USC Trojans women's swimming and diving team from 1980 to 1983 and joined Alpha Gamma Delta in 1981. She competed in four NCAA national championship and contributed to the Trojans' four straight national top-ten finishes. She received All-America honors in 1980 and 1981, and following her 1983 senior season, she was recognized as the university's outstanding student-athlete. She graduated from USC with a bachelor's degree in education in 1983, and later earned a master's degree in athletic administration in 1987.

Coaching career

McKeever began coaching as an assistant coach at USC from 1984 to 1987. She has been the head coach of the California Golden Bears women's swimming team at the University of California, Berkeley since 1992-93. Since 1996-97, her California Bears swim teams have consistently finished among the top ten Division I college teams in the nation. The Bears women have won three out of the last four Pac-12 Conference team championships, and three of the last four NCAA national championships. She has been named Pacific-10 Conference Coach of the Year five time, and the NCAA Coach of the Year three times.
After USC and before going to the Cal Bears, McKeever was the head coach of the Women's swimming team at Fresno State University in Fresno, California.
McKeever's Cal Bears program has produced several members of the U.S. Olympic team, including Natalie Coughlin, Haley Cope, Jessica Hardy, Caitlin Leverenz, Emily Silver, Missy Franklin, Rachel Bootsma, and Dana Vollmer. She previously served as an assistant coach for the United States Olympic women's swimming team at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China.
In December 2010, she was selected as the head coach of the 2012 U.S. Olympic women's swim team that competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. She is the first woman to serve as the head coach of a U.S. women's national swim team at the Olympics. She previously served as the head coach the U.S. women's national team for the 2010 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships.

Personal

McKeever married Jerry Romani in 2007, after they met at a California Golden Bears football game. They live in the El Cerrito Hills area of metropolitan San Francisco.