Love’s in the air

Local coaching couples share their stories of affection




TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE—Jordan Wild and his wife, Taylor, are the head coaches of the Oaks Christian High boys’ and girls’ basketball teams, respectively. They got engaged in Perth, Australia. JOSEPH A. GARCIA/Acorn Newspapers

TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE—Jordan Wild and his wife, Taylor, are the head coaches of the Oaks Christian High boys’ and girls’ basketball teams, respectively. They got engaged in Perth, Australia. JOSEPH A. GARCIA/Acorn Newspapers

There’s no game plan for the unpredictability of love.

Defensive shift can’t put anyone in the right place to snare Cupid’s arrows. No trick play makes it easier to gather up the courage to ask out that special someone. Taking a knee won’t make butterflies stop flapping wildly before popping the big question.

Only by chance does a coach find a lifelong companion who shares the desire to coach.

Jordan and Taylor Wild, head coaches of the Oaks Christian High boys’ and girls’ basketball teams, respectively, connected over a pair of kicks.

David Avila and Melissa Skiba, co-head coaches of the La Reina cross country and track and field team, were teammates at Cal Lutheran long before they started going steady.

Camarillo softball skipper Nichole Pinedo coached on the same campus as her husband, Tony, a former Scorpion football assistant, on two campuses.

It was love at first sight for Moorpark swim head coach Peter Daland and his wife, Minette, a Musketeer assistant coach.

KEEPING PACE—Melissa Skiba, left, and David Avila are co-head coaches for La Reina High cross country and track and field teams. RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn Newspapers

KEEPING PACE—Melissa Skiba, left, and David Avila are co-head coaches for La Reina High cross country and track and field teams. RICHARD GILLARD/Acorn Newspapers

Royal swim coach Kacy Ota and his wife, Jennifer, wouldn’t date until well after they first locked eyes on the pool deck at Fresno State.

• • •

The Wilds bonded over a pair of Kobe sneakers eight years ago.

“When she asked me about the basketball shoes I was wearing when I first met her, I knew she was elite,” Jordan Wild said jokingly.

Jordan was shooting hoops in The Master’s University gym. He was preparing to head overseas to play professional basketball in Australia when Taylor, who was providing one-on-one lessons to another player in the gym, commented on his footwear.

“I played in the Kobes a little bit,” said Taylor, a former WNBA player.

The two had lunch and dinner before Jordan headed to Australia. They stayed in touch, and Taylor got a job opportunity in Brisbane soon after.

The coaches, who led their teams into the CIF-Southern Section playoffs this winter, had dated almost two years before Jordan built up the courage to ask for Taylor’s hand in marriage.

 

“It wasn’t a great weather day,” Jordan said. “It was kind of overcast. I was going through with it regardless.”

They strolled a white sandy beach under dark gray clouds of Perth, Australia.

“All of a sudden, he starts telling me the reasons he loves me,” Taylor said. “As he’s proposing, there was a break in the storm and it was sunny for that moment. You couldn’t have scripted it better.

“A minute later, it started hailing.”

The love birds are wild about each other. Their love is more than killer crossovers and smooth jumpers.

“Basketball was just an initial introduction,” Jordan said. “After that, it got much deeper than our love for the game. But without basketball, I don’t know if we would have connected at all.”

• • •

Sports brought Avila and Skiba together, too.

The runners never dated during two seasons as teammates at Cal Lutheran. When Skiba, an Oak Park High graduate, returned to train with the team as a grad student in 2016, the two reconnected.

They had their first date at Islands restaurant in Simi Valley during the summer of 2016.

“We talked mostly about running,” Avila said.

They’ve been dating for nearly three years. They took over La Reina’s cross country and track and field teams as co-head coaches this school year.

Much of their relationship still revolves around the sport they equally adore.

“One of the (Regents) a week ago asked us if we talk about the team, practice or workouts at home,” Avila said. “That’s like half of what we talk about. We’re both really invested in (coaching).”

The couple will enjoy Valentine’s Day the best way they know how: coaching the Regents’ track and field team during an intrasquad meet.

They’re almost certain to share notes afterward at their Newbury Park home.

“It’s really special being able to come home and talk about my passion with someone who also shares the same passion,” Skiba said.

• • •

The Pinedos, who met at Hueneme High in 1999, have been married for 16 years.

Nichole Pinedo coached softball and Tony coached football at Hueneme. They both found their way to Camarillo. Tony spent time as offensive coordinator under former head coach Dennis Riedmiller and current head coach Jack Willard.

Parents to three children, the Pinedos make their hectic schedules work.

“The kids were little so I would drop them off at the football field during my season so I could go to practice,” Nichole Pinedo said. “They’d basically be running around on the football field playing with all the hitting mats.”

The Pinedo children have sprouted into teenagers.

Thomas, a Camarillo junior, plays football. Rylee, a freshman, plays softball. Little brother Aiden will join his siblings at Camarillo next year.

• • •

Peter Daland recently convinced his wife of 26 years to get back into coaching.

After nearly two decades of raising five children, Minette returned to the pool deck as an assistant last spring.

The Musketeers initially met on a different pool deck, at Daland Swim School, where Minette was hired by her eventual mother-in-law, Ingrid.

“There was chemistry right at the first moment we saw each other,” Minette said of Peter. “It’s an epic love story. The first minute we saw each other, we both just kind of knew. It was intense.”

Peter, a Westlake High graduate, wasted no time asking out the mysterious bombshell, who prepped at Thousand Oaks.

For their first date, they attended the B-52’s “Cosmic Thing” album release party in Los Angeles.

The smell of love and Aqua Net hairspray was in the air.

“There were ’80s hairdos and ’80s clothes,” Peter said. “Looking back, we all looked kind of silly, but it was fun.”

They’re as happy now as they were then dancing to “Rock Lobster.”

“The best part of my day is looking over at him and seeing him on the pool deck,” Minette said of Peter. “Being with him is the best part of every day.”

Minette was able to return to the pool deck because life’s quieter at home. Three children are in college, and the youngest, Cate, will be a freshman water polo player and swimmer at Moorpark next year.

“It’s not as hectic as it used to be,” Peter said.

• • •

Life got a little more hectic for the Otas in December when Jennifer, a Royal High graduate who swam at Fresno State, gave birth to their second son, Kian. Their first-born, Koa, is 1.

“We’re juggling kids right now,” said Kacy Ota, the Highlanders’ head coach who also leads the Conejo Simi Swim Club.

The couple, who met as coaches for an all-star swim team in Central California, first got together for dinner and a movie in 2007. Kacy moved to Simi Valley in 2010. Jennifer followed in 2011. They were engaged September 2011 and married a year later.

The Otas plan on continuing their Valentine’s Day tradition of getting Thai food for dinner; that ritual started their first year of dating.

Both coaches could be spotted roaming the Rancho Simi Community Park pool deck, but Jennifer won’t be there as often this spring. She stepped down as Grace Brethren’s swim coach, a position she held the past four seasons, to spend more time with her children.

Kacy, a self-described swim nerd, said his wife won’t get too far away from the sport they adore.

“Swimming is definitely a big part of who we are,” he said.

Find Jonathan Andrade on Twitter at @J_ Andrade_.

On this date

Keith Hernandez, who starred for the New York Mets baseball team but gained a wider audience for his role on “Seinfeld,” married Kai Thompson on Feb. 14, 2005. Their love, alas, was not eternal: The couple divorced five years later. Perhaps a second spitter, or a jambalaya-loving mail carrier known only as Newman, was involved in the dissolution. We’ll never know for sure.