SAN DIEGO – Sophia Noble, the career leader in saves for UC Davis women’s water polo, has been named an assistant coach on the San Diego State water polo staff, head coach Dana Ochsner announced on Wednesday.
“I want to thank Dana and (assistant coach) Mitch (Seeley),” Noble said. “This is my first opportunity to coach collegiately, and I'm very excited. I played for four years at UC Davis and for the last two I’ve been playing professionally, so this will be a nice step into a coaching role. I really am looking forward to working with our four goalies. They are amazing athletes that are eager to learn, and I can’t wait to get started.”
“We're very happy to have Sophia join the staff,” Ochsner said. “She's going to be a phenomenal addition. She comes in with a lot of expertise and high-level experience. Not only was she a Division I player at a great school, she also then went and played professionally for a few years.
“Having been a Division I athlete, she's someone that the team is really going to be able to relate to and brings that “fresh out of college” experience and really rounds out the dynamic of our staff. In addition, having goalie experience and bringing that strength to our team, where we have some really great goalies who now get to work one-on-one with her, will really make us even better in the cage and better as a defensive team.”
Noble, a four-year letterwinner who competed for UC Davis from 2019 through 2023, exhausted her eligibility with the program record of 748 career saves. Her 254 saves in 2023, her senior season, ranks No. 3 on the UC Davis single season list and represents more than 82.0 percent of the team total of the 309 saves that season. In addition, she was named an honorable mention All-Big West performer following that campaign.
In available information, Noble posted a 9.23-career goals against average and among 23 games with double-digit stops, on three occasions tallied a career-best 17 saves in a game. The San Clemente, Calif., native assumed the role of the program’s top goalie as a sophomore, after starting in three of her 19 appearances as a freshman, and went on the start 71 times in the next 73 contests.
Equally successful in the classroom as the pool, Noble earned Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches (ACWPC) All-Academic Excellent honors in 2021 and 2023 and Superior honors in 2022. She was recognized as a Big West Academic All-Conference performer in each of those years as well.
An assistant water polo coach at Davis (Calif.) High School from 2022-23, Noble embarked on a professional playing career with CN Echeyde in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, for the 2023-24 season. As the starting goalie, she helped lead the squad in securing a spot in the EuroCup playoffs and the Copa de SM La Reina. Last year, as the starting goalie for LUC Metropole in Lille, France, she helped guide the team to an undefeated season and a first-place finish in the country’s top league. The team also won the French Cup, the title at the French Championships, and reached the second round of the EuroCup qualifier.
During her collegiate playing career, she was a youth water polo coach with Davis (Calif.) Water Polo Club from 2019-to-2023.
The 2018 graduate of San Clemente (Calif.) High School was a four-year letterwinner in goal. According to maxpreps.com, her 352 saves and 0.577 goals against average in her senior season ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in California.
Noble earned a degree in psychology from UC Davis in 2023.