The Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table will be inducting seven new members into its Hall of Fame on Monday, Sept. 16. The Induction Class of 2024 includes five athletes, a coach and a special achievement honoree.
This is the third in a series of stories about this year’s inductees.
To purchase tickets to the Hall of Fame event at the Cabrillo Pavillion, click here.
Ed Gover relishes the beauty and peacefulness of a golf course, not to mention shooting a low score.
It’s in a noisy gym, though, where he’s made an impact in our sports community. He has coached and developed volleyball players from the youth club to the collegiate level in Santa Barbara since the early 1990s.
For 28 years, he guided the women’s volleyball program at Santa Barbara City College. His teams posted a record of 378-216, won 11 conference titles and finished as the state runner-up in 1999. He retired in 2019.
Gover has been recognized by his community college peers. He’s been named Western State Conference North Coach of the Year honors six times and was voted the Southern Cal Coach of the Year in 2015.
In his last 10 years at SBCC, his winning percentage was .729 (186-69) and a sparkling .873 (89-13) in conference with eight WSC titles. He guided the Vaqueros to fifth-place finishes in the state tournament in 2013 and 2015.
In 2016, Gover enjoyed a memorable experience in the sport volleyball without coaching a team. He got the opportunity to work as a volunteer at the beach volleyball venue at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Gover started his coaching career in Santa Barbara with the Santa Barbara Volleyball Club, working primarily with junior high school-aged girls. Several of his club players progressed to earn spots on varsity team rosters at the local high schools.
In recent years, Gover has assisted with the girls program at Bishop Diego. He helped coach Dillan Bennett’s Cardinals win a CIF-SS title in 2021.
He’s done all of this coaching while working as a full-time physical education teacher at Santa Barbara Junior High.
Gover arrived in Santa Barbara in 1990 after coaching high school volleyball at Melodyland High / Southern California Christian in Buena Park, where he won consecutive CIF- Southern Section titles in 1984 and 1985. In 1989, he served as a volunteer assistant coach for the Long Beach State women’s volleyball team that won the NCAA championship.
Former SBCC Athletic Director Rocco Constantino called Gover a “classy coach.”
“Ed is one of the classiest and most well-respected coaches I have ever worked with in any capacity,” said Constantino. “He ran a highly successful program on the court for a long time while prioritizing grades, growth and his student-athletes’ futures.
“Ed is a stand-up guy who does things the right way. He has impacted hundreds of students at SBCC over the years and those students were lucky to call him their coach.”
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