Varsity Girls Golf Coach Kenneth Gan received the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League Coach of the Year award under the 2024 fall sports category alongside CHS coach Aaron Eeg. This award is decided during a meeting at the end of the sports season where all SCVAL head coaches vote for fall sports coaches from the De Anza and El Camino divisions. According to Gan, coaches consider various factors, including team performance in league play and overall impressions of the coach and team, before casting their votes.
Gan has been coaching the Varsity Girls Golf team since the 2020-2021 season, and in the 2024-2025 season, the team reached an overall league record of 12-0. Gan says that the most rewarding part of coaching is the opportunity to provide a space outside of the classroom for students to pursue their interests.
“Being able to see my players be able to participate in something that they truly enjoy, that they truly love, as well as being able to see them excel, has a different look and feel to it,” Gan said. “When kids are inside of the classroom setting, that can often be very stressful or rigorous, so this is just a different vibe. And then when kids get out onto the golf course, or pretty much any sport, I feel that coaches probably feel the same way. It’s just very unique and very special.”
When Gan found out he received the award, he was excited, yet he describes the process as a bit anticlimactic, as he got nominated by fellow coaches at the end of October. However, he did not know that he received this award until the beginning of January. He credits his accomplishment to the players and his assistant coach, saying that it is a shared award.
“Part of the reason I think the other coaches in the league voted for me is because of the girls,” Gan said. “That’s truly what I think this award means. It’s not anything truly to do with how I actually coach. It’s just the environment that my team, my girls, helped create when we’re around the golf course with other coaches and other teams.”
Senior, golf player and team manager Aruna Venkateswaran feels that the award the Gan received is well-deserved. She says that since her freshman year, Gan has helped the team grow and now it is stronger than ever, as throughout the season they won every single one of their games.
“He’s very passionate about golf, and you can see that through the way he coaches,” Venkateswaran said. “The thing about golf is that it’s a pretty individual sport, and so it’s already hard to coach 18 people when everybody is different. During practice, he walks around a lot to look at our swings and things like that. He really makes an effort to make sure that we’re putting in our best at each practice.”
Going forward with coaching, Gan hopes to continue to build off of the strong performances the team accomplished this year and help the team improve on playoff performances. He also wants to continue to advocate for women in sports and hopes to create a place of belonging for everyone on the golf team.
“I just want to continue to build a really strong community,” Gan said. “I’m a big proponent of women in sports. I truly believe that one of my goals is to continue to have women in sports as well as have women compete at the highest level and also be compensated at the highest level. In recent years, there has been a big movement about the visibility of women in sports as well as people of color in sports, and it is something that I truly care about and will continue to advocate for as long as I’m a coach.”
