Women’s Beach Volleyball | July 27, 2023
LOS ANGELES – USC beach volleyball has promoted Gustavo Rocha to the position of associate head coach, head coach Dain Blanton announced on Thursday, July 27.
Recently honored as the 2023 American Volleyball Coaches Association National Assistant Coach of the Year, Rocha served the previous six years (2018-23) as the Trojans’ assistant coach and enters his seventh season (2023-24) with the program.
“Gustavo is quite simply one of the best coaches in our game today,” said Blanton. “He is a master of technique, an inspirational voice in the box, and has been an integral piece to our program’s unprecedented success. We’re so pleased to be able to elevate him to an associate position for our team and look forward to having him in the Cardinal and Gold for much more success to come.”
With Rocha on staff, the Women of Troy have captured three consecutive NCAA championships (2021, ’22, ’23); the program’s fourth, fifth, and sixth national titles. He also helped guide the Trojans to two Pac-12 Championships (2019 and 2022) and to an NCAA runner-up finish in 2019.
Rocha also serves as a co-head coach for Team USA’s pair of USC alumnae and All-Americans Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng (formerly Claes) as the duo makes a run towards the 2024 Paris Olympics.
In the summer of 2021, Rocha served as the first-ever head coach of the Latvian women’s beach volleyball national team and coached four-time USC All-American Tina Graudina and partner Anastasija Kravcenoka to a fourth-place finish at the Tokyo Olympic Games. For his efforts, he was named Latvia Volleyball’s 2022 Beach Volleyball Coach of the Year.
In the lead-up to the Tokyo Games, he also helped Graudina-Kravcenoka claim a pair of fourth-place finishes at FIVB World Tour stops in Sochi, Russia, and Gstaad, Switzerland. He continued to serve as coach to Graudina-Kravcenoka in the summer of 2022 and helped the duo to a second-place finish at the FIVB Mexico tour stop and a fourth-place finish in Gstaad.
In other international competition, Rocha was the assistant coach under Marcio Sicoli to…
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