In early 2020, SHC announced that its Athletic Director for the last 30 years, Ms. Jo Ann Momono, would be retiring at the end of the 2019-2020 school year. It would normally be an enormous task to fill the shoes of Ms. Momono, but SHC can sleep soundly knowing that the position of Athletic Director could not be in better hands. Margi Beima, a Bay Area native and volleyball coach of twenty-one years, is the school’s new AD, and she is a darn good one, too!

Ms. Beima started coaching the SHC Frosh volleyball team in 1999. Ms. Momono, her high school volleyball coach, asked if she would be interested in coaching at SHC while attending Beima’s wedding! Ms. Beima, a star volleyball player at Santa Clara University, was up for the challenge. After a year of coaching the freshmen, Mrs. Beima became the Junior Varsity coach for the next two years. In 2004, she was promoted to Varsity head coach, a position she still holds today. Under her leadership, the SHC Girls Volleyball program has built a reputation of excellence. In her 17 years of coaching, she has made it to the CIF State Tournament every single year. She also led SHC to a state title in 2014, in addition to eight CCS championships & three WCAL championships over the years. “Regardless of the outcome, we are always playing deep into the season,” she stated. Along the way, she has raised her two kids, Joe ’20 and Madeleine ’22. Madeleine is a member of the SHC Varsity Volleyball team. 

Ms. Beima’s favorite part of being the SHC Varsity volleyball head coach is the players. “It’s like a human puzzle, I do my part but it’s up to the players to create something special. I love it when they do that,” she added. When asked: “What was the hardest challenge you have ever overcome in coaching?” She responded, “I want teams to come together in a way that is genuinely about the team. That challenge never gets old.” In her personal life, Ms. Beima fearlessly overcame breast cancer in 2005. She said that was difficult, but “even that didn’t seem like an unsurpassable challenge.”

Sports have played an outsized role in Ms. Beima’s life thus far. She calls sports a “classroom of life, so to speak.” Ms. Beima doesn’t simply mean playing a sport has played a huge part in her life; she means that the people surrounding the sport help her grow as a person. “Every person is superior to me in every way, shape, or form,” Mrs. Beima said, “ I can learn from them all.” Her love of people is what makes her so valuable to the SHC community; she has made an indelible imprint on the lives of so many young men and women. Ms. Beima will work alongside co-Athletic Director,  Mr. Phil Freed ‘80, to continue fostering a culture of excellence in which people and relationships are always prioritized.