Pinnacle for U.S. Swim Coach McKeever, but Don't Call Her a Pioneer Teri McKeever has always been the facilitator. Whether mediating a disagreement among her nine siblings or a roommate squabble on her Cal swim team, she has a way of navigating cliques, calming emotions and resolving problems without playing favorites. McKeever, the first woman to be named head coach of the United States Olympic women's swim team, cannot explain how she developed this skill. "Maybe that's my gift," she said. That's been my role on teams I've been involved in. Maybe it came naturally. If so, it is one of the few things in McKeever's life that did. From the little girl thrust into adulthood after the death of her father, to the gawky teenager with glasses and braces who found confidence in the water, to the coach who built Cal into a national power while her peers and even her own swimmers questioned her credentials, McKeever has struggled for acceptance. She married late, at 45, because she threw all her energy into succeeding as a coach. "I married my job," said McKeever, 50, at the recent Olympic swimming trials in Omaha. I blew the kid thing. But I don't think it was conscious. I just had such a competitive desire that I wanted to be good at this. Now, there is little doubt she is. McKeever specializes in repairing broken psyches and pushing her swimmers to excellence in and out of the water. She made her reputation in Berkeley nurturing a burned-out Natalie Coughlin into an 11-time Olympic medalist. More recently, McKeever helped the 2004 Olympian Dana Vollmer recover her confidence after a disastrous 2008 trials in which she failed to make the team. At this year's trials, Vollmer won the 100-meter butterfly and qualified for the 4x200 freestyle relay. "She is my coach; she is my mentor; she is my second mom," Vollmer said. It's such an empowering experience to have someone who cares so much about me and my personal development and how I swim. Anthony Ervin, headed to London in the 50 freestyle, credited McKeever with gently nudging him back into competing after an eight-year retirement. Ervin, a former Cal swimmer, trained with the Cal women's team late last year. "She inherited a very fragile mentally kind of persona," Ervin said, "and she brought back what it was like to swim for fun and enjoy myself." In a way, McKeever has been mentoring her whole life. She often says she has been 40 years old since she was 10 or 12. Her father, the U.S.C. football star Mike McKeever, spent 22 months in a coma after an accident and died in 1967, when Teri was 6, the oldest of three children at the time. Her mother Judy, formerly a competitive swimmer, remarried and had seven more children. In the family dynamic, McKeever often functioned as another parent, from changing diapers to, as a 16-year-old, driving her younger siblings on shopping trips. By then McKeever excelled as a swimmer, training in their 25-yard backyard pool (later rebuilt to 50 meters) with her mother writing out workouts and often watching from a window. "For me, sports was the first place I felt good about myself," McKeever said. She went on to become the first female student body president at San Pascual High School in Escondido, Calif., and an all-American swimmer at U.S.C. McKeever graduated in 1983 with an education degree, intending to teach, but she stayed at U.S.C. as assistant coach for the women's team from 1984-87 while earning her masters in athletic administration. "In those days, she was trying to find if this was the occupation she wanted to have," said Dave Salo, now the U.S.C. swimming coach, who was a graduate assistant for the men when McKeever was on the women's coaching staff. Fresno State hired McKeever as head coach in 1987. Five years later McKeever moved on to Cal, where she fought the perception that her gender, not her ability, got her the job. "The early days at Cal were very difficult for her," Salo said. She had to work harder to be successful to get any kind of credence for her success. I knew she would be good because I knew what drove her. The important values that she had were the ones that the right kids in the mix were going to go, yeah, this is more than just about swimming. That's why I think Natalie has been so successful. It wasn't just about swimming. It was about the big picture. Once she found those women on her team who could embrace those values, it was just a matter of time before she would be successful.