The Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table will be inducting seven new members into its Hall of Fame on Monday, Sept. 14, at 5:30 p.m. The Induction Class of 2026 includes four athletes, two coaches and a special achievement honoree.
This is the second in a series of stories about this year’s inductees.
Click here to purchase tickets to the 2026 SBART Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.
Danelle Little Muhr made the pool deck at Elings Aquatic Center home for nearly two decades.
After starring for the Charger aquatics programs as a student-athlete, she played four years of water polo at UCSB and then stepped into the coaching world, returning to her high school alma mater.
She graduated from UCSB in 2000, and during the year, she was assisting the Dos Pueblos boys water polo team that lost in the final seconds to Santa Barbara High in the CIF-SS Semifinals.
“I thought it was the last game I was going to ever coach and I was devastated,” Muhr said of the semifinal loss. “I had to tell all the girls (and boys) that I would no longer coach them as I had to finish my credential. They were devastated as well.
“Shortly after Dave Cash, principal of Dos Pueblos at the time, found me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He asked me to take over the Girls Aquatics Program at DP and teach whatever I wanted. I knew I wasn’t done coaching but really just beginning.”
After a few years of building a program identity and culture, Muhr found herself at the helm of one of the greatest aquatics dynasties that Santa Barbara has ever seen.
Muhr and the Chargers won three consecutive CIF-SS championships in 2008 (Div. 2), 2009 (Div. 1) and 2010 (Div. 1). The team won the Channel League title in each of these three years, while Muhr was named the CIF-SS Coach of the Year for all three seasons as well.
While all three titles were undoubtedly special, Muhr highlighted the 2010 championship as her proudest achievement. The team went 31-0 that season to complete the three-peat, but it wasn’t an easy championship battle.
“We were down 7-2 at half (in the CIF-SS championship), and the girls were spiraling inward negatively,” Muhr said. “I paired them up with a teammate and told them they had to build up one another’s confidence, and I made a defensive switch and we came back to win the game 8-7.
“There were many top college coaches watching the game and many of them told me afterwards that it was one of the most exciting and well-coached games they had ever seen.”
Her success as a coach was not limited to the girls water polo team. She led the girls swim team to back-to-back Channel League titles in 2008 and 2009, while the boys water polo team won a CIF-SS title in 2005 with Muhr as an assistant.
Muhr stepped away from coaching following the 2010 season when she became pregnant with her son, Logan. However, she has continued to teach math at Dos Pueblos and has now taught three cohorts of AVID students.
“Being an AVID teacher and mentor requires a lot of the same skills as being a good coach, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to really get to know and develop students over their high school years in the classroom instead of the pool deck,” Muhr said.
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