Cal Assistant Jesse Moore Leaving Swimming to ‘Pursue Coaching in a Different Capacity’

Cal assistant Jesse Moore is leaving the college coaching ranks to “pursue coaching in a different capacity outside of swimming.”

“I’m moving back to Minneapolis in July, and I have a pretty exciting expansion of my business that I’m looking forward to growing,” Moore said in a video posted to Instagram on Saturday. 

He said he was grateful to swimmers and coaches he’s worked with over his 15-year coaching career, adding that he’s “leaving swimming with the biggest and fullest heart in the world.”

Moore joined Cal last April after one season as the head coach at Dartmouth. A month later, allegations of harassment and bullying surfaced against longtime Cal women’s head coach Teri McKeever, resulting in Moore being named acting women’s head coach for a period last summer. 

Before he signed off, Moore offered a public service announcement about the lack of female coaches in the sport. 

“This has nothing to do with Cal,” he said. “This is me doing my spicy PSA to the world of swimming as I do exit, while I have people’s attention. We, as a swimming community, especially in college, are doing a horrible job of supporting women and retaining women in coaching. We’re doing a terrible job of hiring women. If I have to hear another male coach across the country say, ‘We have to hire a woman,’ and have that one woman on their staff, I’m going to go crazy. 

“We need to do a better job of understanding why we’re losing so many,” Moore said. “Especially in the last few years, we’ve lost a lot of, even younger, amazing women coaches. By failing our women coaches, we’re failing our male and female and gender non-binary student athletes. We can do better, so to all the male coaches out there, it’s time to do a deeper dive than you’ve ever done. We need to provide more opportunity and we need to stop sucking at this.”

Moore took over the Dartmouth program as head coach in April 2021. The team was coming out of the COVID-19 season where not only did the Ivy League cancel all competition, but the school cut, and then reinstated, the swimming & diving programs.

Moore spent the prior three seasons at Minnesota, where he oversaw the middle distance and IM groups, coordinated recruiting, and managed rosters for both the men’s and women’s programs. While at Minnesota, Moore coached 33 NCAA qualifiers and helped both the men’s and women’s team earn top 20 finishes at the 2019 NCAA Championships.

Before coming to Minnesota, Moore served as the associate head coach at Northwestern University, where he coached all training groups, led recruiting efforts, managed social media accounts, and coordinated team travel. During his time there, the team thrived in both the pool and the classroom, making it to NCAAs in both 2017 and 2018 and earning multiple CSCAA All-America and Big Ten individual honors.

Prior to Northwestern, Moore also worked as an assistant coach at Duke (2012-16), and at his alma mater William & Mary (2010-12), where he earned his MBA while working as an assistant coach.

Moore launched his coaching career in 2008, working as a graduate assistant academic advisor at Drexel for two years. In this role, he advised students from several different athletic teams and worked as a volunteer assistant coach with the swimming and diving teams.