Well, we've got a new member of the Michigan Athletic Department.

That's Cassie Churnside, the new head coach of Women's Waterpole, and she joins me today on Conquering Heroes.

Welcome to your one-stop podcast for all things Michigan Athletics.

Updates on every team on campus and interviews with players and

coaches are all on the way. This is Conquering Heroes. Here's your host, John Jansen. Well, as promised,

I'm now joined by Cassie Churnside, who is the new water polo coach here at Michigan. Cassie,

thanks for joining me. And second, welcome to

Ann Arbor. What's it been like since you've been on campus? It's been amazing. I think being

in a small college town like Ann Arbor, it lives up to all the hype. You know, football Saturdays

is something that I can't even explain. You just have to be there to experience. It's definitely

not Boston. It's not as busy, but there's hype all around. And anytime you're wearing

Michigan, I think I was walking through like LAX the other weekend. And I think about five people

total yelled go blue at me. It's crazy. It's just everybody here loves Michigan and it's very, it's well known.

So your path to Ann Arbor was as a student athlete at Stanford, as an assistant coach at Harvard,

was being a head coach always one of your goals? Not when I was at Stanford, for sure. I went and

played abroad in Spain and I really wanted to play in Spain because I wanted to pick up my Spanish again.

And then when I came home, I was actually going through interview processes.

Like I was in second, third round interviews, and I was coaching on the side.

And I started realizing that the office job just didn't seem as enticing

as like being on a pool deck all day. And once the Harvard assistant position opened up, I think I cold called

Teddy. And I just asked him, I heard you're looking for an assistant. And he said, are you willing to leave

California? And I was like, absolutely. And visited Boston, fell in love with it. But to be honest with

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