Fresh off her gold medal win with the USA women’s water polo team in Rio de Janeiro, Kaleigh Gilchrist hopes to be added to that list of multi-medal Olympians. Before fully pursuing polo, the 24-year-old was a rising force in the surf world. She was on the path to pro surfing greatness, but something stopped her – she decided to devote herself to the pool instead of the ocean. The Newport Beach local played polo at USC, where she became team captain. And after that, she went to represent the USA in 2016 Games.
In high school, Gilchrist won the most prestigious U.S. amateur surfing title (the Surfing America USA Championship) twice by beating the country’s best surfers under 18, including Courtney Conlogue (currently No. 1 in the world) and Lakey Peterson (No. 6 in the world last year). At fourteen, Newport Harbor High School water polo coach Bill Barnett put her on the varsity team as a freshman, a prestigious selection. Barnett had coached three U.S. Olympic men’s teams and was in his 40th year at Newport. People always thought she would have to end up picking only one sport, but Gilchrist refused and pushed herself to excel at both. Playing collegiate water polo was intense for Gilchrist was intense. Members of the team were required to watch the video in their free time, complete water polo homework, keep binders full of plays, scouting, take water polo tests, and on top of that playing four to five hours a day. Even now, despite playing for the most dominant water polo team on the planet, Gilchrist went back to her love of surfing. She just took out some of the biggest up and coming surfers at the APSS Shoe City Pro, a 2017 Women’s Qualifying Series 1000 event held on the south side of the Huntington Beach pier.
Gilchrist became nostalgic for the golden years during her first fall away from South Central. At her inaugural homecoming as an alumnus, she wanted to do it big. Notorious for her all-time costumes, Kaleigh made her first ever “I MISS SOUTH CENTRAL” T-Shirt. With the insane amount of positive feedback from her fellow alums the light bulb went off and imisssouthcentral.com was born.
With being the founder of a business and excelling at two different sports, there doesn’t seem to be anything Kaleigh Gilchrist can’t do.
Mavens of NYC 