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From left to right, Coaches Hughes, Adnoff and Cheever bring years of coaching experience to their new assignments.

New coaches will be leading Brahma athletes this year in girls basketball, water polo and volleyball teams on campus, but two of them are very familiar faces.

Marcus Hughes will be taking over as the head coach for girls basketball at all levels this season. Having coached frosh and junior varsity for the past three years along with football for three years, Hughes is no stranger to coaching. Hughes said his decision to coach girls basketball was an easy decision to make.

“I’ve just gotten to know the girls in the progra

m, and I’ve learned so much from Coach McCabe and Coach Erica [Young]. Just the chance to coach these girls would be a great experience and I love working with them,” Hughes said.

As the girls varsity team only won a single league game last season, Hughes hopes to build on the girls’ foundational skills in order to compete for a conference championship or  a spot in the playoffs. Hughes believes that the girls’ experience from last year will help to improve their game along with conditioning to get them stronger and more in shape.

With the departure of Alexander Matal,  Gary Cheever will be taking over as the head water polo coach. Cheever, who doesn’t teach at DBHS, has years of experience under his belt, having coached at Don Lugo for nine years, Chino Hills for three years and Claremont for four years. Besides coaching water polo, Cheever works as a one-on-one aide and overnight security guard at Boys Republic.

Going into the program, Cheever was already well informed about the atmosphere of the team. Cheever seeks to build on what coach Matal built.  He said he believes the team  is ready to compete for league championship and make a run at playoffs. Cheever is most focused on conditioning, consisting of swimming, strength training and running.

“It’s not just about winning but building on their experience and passion for the game, as well as driving them to push themselves,” Cheever said.

Lauren Adnoff will replace Katie Swetnam as varsity girls volleyball coach. This is Adnoff’s fourth year with the program, as she was previously an assistant coach. In addition to coaching at Diamond Bar, Adnoff also coaches club volleyball while pursuing a higher education. Her main goal this year among all levels is to build more camaraderie and to diminish division between the three teams. She said she is excited to see the team continuously improve and hopes to make CIF once again with varsity.

“[I’m] just taking the hard work and building off of that, showing them that ‘you did it before, you can do it again,’ and just expanding on what’s already been emplaced from coach Swetnam,” Adnoff said.

Rather than focusing on practicing sets of skills, Adnoff aims to prepare her athletes for real-game scenarios.

“I do conditioning within the technique and more gameplay so that we can learn from that situation. If that situation arises in an actual game, then they will be ready,” Adnoff said.