Coaches
Berkeley High Coup Ultimate coaches are volunteers from the local ultimate community. They play on club teams, and in some cases on national and professional teams. Coaching at Berkeley High School takes dedication to the sport and students, as it is on a volunteer basis and takes time during the week and on weekends.
James Sheridan, Head Coach
How can you tell if someone played Ultimate at Carleton? Don't worry, they'll tell you. A proud alum of the Carleton College Gods of Plastic, James started his Ultimate career in 2006. A veteran of the SF mixed scene, James most recently played for SF Polar Bears and the Dominican Republic National Team at the World Championships in 2018. But his critical claim to fame is his coaching look: barefoot, striped pajama pants, a ball cap, and proudly rocking a Coup jersey. This will be his 9th season coaching Coup, and we're so lucky to have him!
Joey Ricks, Head Coach
Joey has a reputation of being the best dressed coach at tournaments with his crazy facial hair and break blazer. He has been coaching Berkeley since 2022 and is hoping to continue to grow the sport of ultimate. Joey started playing ultimate in college at UMBC and quickly fell in love with the sport. He has dabbled in the pro scene with the DC Current and Detroit Mechanix, but has been playing mixed club since 2015. He is coming back for his 3rd season with Berkeley hoping to not get another 2nd place finish. Joey is excited to be coaching the next generation of ultimate studs! Outside of ultimate, you will find Joey still coaching ultimate or crocheting.
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Matt Zelin, Assistant Coach
Matt stumbled his way onto Colorado College Wasabi in 2012 and never looked back. A consummate role player, Matt has played every position on the field over his career that has led him from Colorado to New Zealand and back to his roots here in the Bay Area. You can often find Matt at the fields carrying his umbrella (helpful rain or shine!) - a pretty iconic look according to this writer, though maybe not as infamous as that of the Godfather of BHS COUP. Outside of ultimate, you'll find Matt gallivanting in the mountains distractedly tinkering with his next halftime speech and searching for cliché quotes to inspire your children.
Pavel Shering:
"An international import from Russia and later Canada where his Ultimate career began in 2009 as a freshman in high school. Over the years, he molded himself into a defensive hybrid on the field; was a 2017 U24 Team Canada prospect, played for Toronto's Roy in 2018, Toronto's GrandTrunk in 2019 and played at PAUC in 2019 with Houndd. Once moving to the Bay Area in 2022, he signed with the Oakland Spiders UFA along with Berkeley's Zyzzyva Club Team. He started coaching Spiders Clinics in 2022 and joined the BHS coaching staff in 2024.
Finding Pavel is a foolproof science: just locate the player whose voice carries across three zip codes, follow the passionate declarations about 'one more sprint!', or simply navigate toward the speaker that's turning the practice field into an impromptu dance party. Outside of ultimate, Pavel is coding, gaming, building robots or cross training."
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Riggs:
"I started playing competitive ultimate in college at Cal in 2006. I’ve played at nearly every level of the sport, ranging from local leagues, fun (but somehow still too competitive) social tournaments, semipro ultimate under the lights and in front of fans(?), competitive club teams trying to make nationals, club teams just trying to have fun and improve as players, and even on the international stage at WMUCC in 2022. I currently play masters ultimate and way too much disc golf.
As a coach - I’ve coached BHS since 2019, club since 2022, and been in leadership positions on club teams for 5+ seasons doing everything from practice and strategy planning to captaining.
As a high school coach I believe in having fun, learning strong fundamentals, and learning how to be a good teammate. I tend to focus more on the developmental side of ultimate at BHS and have coached Yellow for most of my years. I think success in ultimate can look like many different things for different students and I try my best to make sure each student can enjoy their time on the team no matter what their goals are. On Yellow we will learn new skills, score points on teams better than us, win some tight games here and there, and be supportive to the newer teams we play as schools all over start to field their first teams and play their first games."
Joseph Gorelik (Bonus)
Wyatt Berreman
Olivia Goss
Chris Godek
Betsy Siegal
Jackelyne Nguyen (Kobe)
Connor Stuart-Paul (CSP)
Andrew Riggs
Leo Gordon