Taking classes at San Jose State was a sign of recommitment to education for Minnis, who had struggled with dyslexia at a young age.

“School was difficult for me,” Minnis says.  “Once I realized [getting my college degree] was what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to be, things started to open up for me.”

Indeed, more doors would open for the Bay Area native.

In 2005, Minnis received his college degree from San Jose State University and got asked to teach full-time at the Castilleja School.

"[It] was amazing for me because I was getting paid to coach water polo and teach,” Minnis said. “Even before I got my degree, doors opened up. Doors opened up because of water polo, they saw what I could do with the kids.”

In July 2010, Ted Minnis was hired as the men’s and women’s water polo coach at Harvard.

What began as an assistant coaching job with the boy’s basketball team at the Phillips Brooks School in Menlo Park finally came to a dream fulfilled and realized.

“I always wanted to coach in college, but I couldn’t coach because I didn’t have a college degree,” Minnis said. “I thought I would spend the rest of my career at Castilleja. [Harvard] is the only place that would get me away from there.”

Word of Minnis’ employment reached Harvard senior attacker Lizzie Abbott particularly quickly. Abbott had played for Minnis at the Stanford club team from a young age and had been in contact with Minnis during his hiring process.

“He was my first coach for my club team. We took third at Junior Olympics when I was sixteen,” Abbott says. “When he got the job in June, it was really exciting. He just knows so much about me as a player and as a person. Not a lot of people can say that [about their college coach].”

For Minnis, working at Harvard as the men’s and women’s water polo coach is a culmination of years and years of hard work and focused dedication to his dream of coaching at the collegiate level.

During his time coaching and working as the middle school athletic director at the Castilleja School, Minnis gained an appreciation of the idea of the scholar-athlete, an idea that he has brought with him to Harvard.

“Castilleja is a school that is a very academic school,” Minnis said. “For me, I knew what it meant to coach an Ivy League athlete. [Although] I understand that we are scholar-athletes and that the academic part is always going to come first for [my team], I still think that we can be very competitive in the pool and be one of the top programs in the country.”

Minnis also gained valuable insights into the inner workings of an athletic administration.

“Being a college coach, there is so much of the administrative stuff that you have to do,” Minnis said. “Working as an administrator, working with budgets, helped prepare me to get [the water polo coach job at Harvard].”