Mavericks swim club goes Gold

Gold had known the club’s former program director, Jim Stretch, who previously alerted her when Stretch announced he was stepping down from Mavericks and as Half Moon Bay High School’s head coach of swimming. She initially declined Stretch’s invitation to apply for the job in March 2021 and was surprised to discover the post was still vacant when she walked onto the pool deck five months later.

“I knew Jim had some amazing swimmers,” Gold said. “And it broke my heart that they were still out of the water and still didn’t have a coach.”

Now, Gold is the new Stretch. She said she applied for the job immediately and has since settled in as the new head coach of Half Moon Bay High School swimming. She is Mavericks’ fourth coach in the past five years, with Cindy Lee departing in 2018, followed by single-season tours of duty by Lauren Baeder and Stretch.

Mavericks had not been operating since prior to the COVID pandemic. The private club for youth swimmers had been on hiatus due to pandemic closures, and when the world began reopening, it didn’t have a program director to supervise.

Gold relaunched the club in September 2021. It is now operating with approximately 40 students ages 6-14, and Gold said she expects enrollment to return to the normal number around 65 students by summertime when the current class of high school swimmers return.

“They were very excited,” Gold said. “The excitement was huge to be back in the water and to have a coach and to have structured practices again. But it was a little awkward. … I’m the fourth coach. So, it took a little time to build trust and to bond and to get to know each other. … This was the biggest part for me, was to get the kids to trust me again.”

This is not the first time Gold has fallen into a coaching gig.

A native of Bulgaria, Gold grew up in the nation’s capital city of Sofia. She was a superb talent and began training with the Bulgarian national team when she was 13.

Bulgaria was gearing up for the Olympic trials heading into the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, where the team would go on to capture gold and silver medals in the women’s 100 breast, and a bronze in the women’s 200 breast. This was Gold’s specialty discipline, and her ambition was to follow in those footsteps by competing some four years later in the 1992 Summer Games.

“This is what I was shooting for,” Gold said.

At age 14, however, Gold’s competitive swimming career ended when she was diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia.

Forced into premature retirement and stepping away from the sport altogether, Gold returned to the Bulgarian national team as a coaching apprentice, shadowing her former coach Todor Vulef.

“I enjoyed it,” Gold said. “It kept me in the sport in a way. I was extremely competitive. Our club was the in the top three clubs in the country. But I did not visualize it as a future career.”

After stepping away from coaching in 1992, Gold took up a career in real estate. Then she married a Pacifica native and relocated to the U.S. in 1998. Coincidently — 22 years before she even thought about working in Half Moon Bay — this was the same year Mavericks opened its doors.

“I see something in the stars about it though,” Gold said.