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Cahill’s rise up D-I ranks swift, unexpected

At 29, Baldwin grad’s coaching journey has already taken her from Vandy to TCU and now Mizzou

By Robert Collias 7 min read

Jenn Cahill is on a very short list of NCAA Division I coaches from Maui. As a female swimming coach, she may be the only one.

The 2009 Baldwin High School graduate is currently on the swimming and diving team staff at the University of Missouri.

After swimming collegiately at Boise State, she was a graduate assistant for two years at Texas Christian and then spent two seasons as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Vanderbilt.

With the Commodores, she helped the program set eight school records. Prior to that, she helped the Horned Frogs to five school records and 16 NCAA 'B' cuts in her final year in Fort Worth.

Her journey to becoming a prominent coach -- which has taken her through two Southeastern Conference programs and another in the Big 12 -- was not planned when it began.

"I don't know if I ever really figured it out, it just kind of happened," Cahill said with a chuckle via phone on Wednesday. "I don't want to put this the wrong way, but it was never the plan to be a swim coach. I'm not going to lie, I didn't really have a plan coming out of college."

When she graduated from Boise State, a former Broncos teammate was coaching "the high school team just down the road, local high school in Boise, and she was, like, 'Hey, do you want to be my assistant? It's like a couple hundred bucks,' which at that point sounded great.

"So, I was an assistant for the season, started high school coaching and kind of just fell in love with it at that moment, just the relationships I built with those kids."

After coaching in the Boise club ranks, she landed a job at the University of Puget Sound, an NCAA Division III school in Washington state. One year there helped her get to TCU, and her journey to Division I was underway.

"I've worked my way up pretty quickly," Cahill said. "I couldn't be more thankful for everyone that has gone to bat for me through the process."

She quickly noted that veteran Maui High and Hawaii Swim Club coach Reid Yamamoto "is still one of my references. Every time I go somewhere I make sure that he's in the bio somehow because of everything that he's done for me. I just kind of worked my way up pretty quickly."

Former HSC coaches Rodney Hayashi, who died in 2016, and Susie Baker are also among those who Cahill credits with her development in the sport.

"It's incredible, it's amazing," Yamamoto said of the path Cahill has traveled. "She was a great, super prep swimmer, age-group and college swimmer and to see her grow is just amazing to me. I would have never picked that she would be coaching in her position. That's not a knock on her, it's just when she was swimming I never thought she would do it.

"She's risen very quickly. She's at an SEC, probably top-10, top-12 SEC school in Mizzou and I'm just really proud of her. Just to see her succeed like that makes me proud, knowing that we had a little hand in her development."

Cahill has to pinch herself sometimes.

"Yeah, I think about it, like, 'I'm in the SEC, I'm one of the youngest assistant coaches in the SEC,' " Cahill said. "When you say it like that, it's wild. I mean, I'm 29 years old as an assistant coach at a top-15 program.

"My first year at Mizzou, I remember walking into the pool deck for the first day and I was like, 'This isn't real. This is not real, there's no way that this is real.' Like, thinking 'I shouldn't be here, how am I here?' I'm so incredibly thankful for the journey and it's just the beginning here in Missouri.

"Never thought I'd be living in the middle of Missouri, but it's a little bit of a hidden gem except for the couple inches of snow we have on the ground right now."

When she makes trips home, she often stops by Sakamoto Pool to see Yamamoto before going to her parents' house, but Cahill is quick to point out how important Peter and Jessica Cahill have been to her development.

"They've been my rocks through this entire wild journey I've been on," Jenn Cahill said. "I really wouldn't be able to be in this position without their guidance and support and I'm incredibly thankful for everything they have done and sacrificed for me."

In her first season with Missouri, Cahill helped the Tiger women to a 7-2 regular-season record and a ranking of 20th in the final TYR/CSCAA Division I poll. The Tigers set three school records, four swimmers earned bids to the NCAA championships -- which were later canceled due to COVID-19 -- and seven claimed CSCAA All-America honors for the season.

Mizzou head coach Andrew Gravers is happy to have Cahill on staff.

"She's a great compliment to the Mizzou swimming and diving family," Grever said on Cahill's bio on the school's athletic website. "Her commitment to academic and athletic success, while connecting with the student-athletes to help them grow, is exactly what I'm looking for in an assistant coach."

Maui High senior Jordynn Brown said recently that Cahill is a role model for her and "someday I want to be a coach like Jenn, I think."

Brown, who will swim collegiately at the University of Rhode Island, is the granddaughter of Hayashi and just the latest in a remarkable list of NCAA Division I swimmers produced on Maui.

Libby Matthews, a Seabury Hall graduate who swam collegiately at Brown, is one of Cahill's lifelong friends in the sport. Another HSC product from Maui, Kysha Altura, is currently a junior swimming standout at Fordham.

"I watched Jordynn grow up -- I remember when she was taking swim lessons," Cahill said. "Me and Libby were the ones who taught Kysha how to swim. ... Seeing these kids grow up and go on to do these things, it's awesome."

Cahill said it is all part of the plan. She rattled off the names of Chelsea Nagata, Randall Tom, Cheyne Bloch, Reece Kaya, Emalia Suehiro and Toshi Baker, all NCAA Division I swimmers.

"It's kind of the culture," she said. "Jordynn said it, you just kind of grow up watching these older swimmers go on and do amazing things. ... We've been kind of following footsteps forever. It's just kind of a continuum. I could make a list of someone from every year when I was growing up -- it's a big community."

Cahill knows how tough things are right now for Maui Interscholastic League student-athletes who are not competing for their schools amid the pandemic.

"One thing is that we're all in the same boat right now," Cahill said. "Everyone is going through this to some extent or another. As cliche as it sounds, everything happens for a reason and it makes you find the good and the things that you're grateful for."

She sends the message to her swimmers each day as they try to make it through to the championship portion of their seasons coming up in the next couple months. They were on the verge of the NCAA Championships last year when things got canceled in March.

"Some of the hardest gut punches and learning how to take the curveballs with grace and just coming out that much stronger in anything that you do," Cahill said. "In life you're going to get curveballs no matter what you do, so learning how to deal with the adversity, it comes down to your reaction. You get to choose your reaction so you can choose to react in a negative way or put your nose down and keep grinding and wait for the next opportunity to come to you."

* Robert Collias is at rcollias@mauinews.com.

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