Peter J.Cutino
April 3, 1933 – September 19, 2004
 Born
in Monterey on April 3, 1933 into the Sicilian fishing family
of Paul and Rose Cutino, Peter J. Cutino was the second of four
children (Rose Marie, Bert, and Jo). Pete grew up in and around
Monterey Bay.
"Family" was the most important word in Pete's life,
and his devotion to his family is legendary. During and after
his years of leadership and achievement on the pool deck, every
conversation with Pete invariably included abundant and affectionate
references to — and gratitude for — the encouragement
and support of Louise, his wife of 51 years, and for the latest
news and accomplishments of his children, Paul, Peter Jr., and
Anna. In more recent years, Pete took enormous pleasure in the
privileged role of “nano,” playful grandfather to
Peter John III and Paolo Carlo Cutino, Jenna Mary Rose, Maria
Louisa and Sophia Bella Cutino Guglielmi. Yet, the more his family
achieved, the greater was Pete's quiet satisfaction and personal
humility.
 "Monterey"
was the most important place in Pete's early years, and he wrote
beautifully about his formative years there in Monterey: A View
from Garlic Hill. He attended elementary and secondary school
there as well as Monterey Peninsula College before graduating
from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 1957. He starred on the swim
team in Monterey and earned water polo all-conference honors for
three seasons at Cal Poly, where he was named Outstanding Athlete
in 1957. He continued his education there, earning a master's
degree in 1959.
Pete Cutino's distinguished teaching and coaching careers started
at Oxnard High School, where he led his swim team to 60 consecutive
dual-meet victories, 5 league championships, and 2 California
Interscholastic Federation Championships. His water polo teams
established an overall record of 80 wins and 16 losses.
 In
1963, Pete began working as a supervisor in physical education
and coach of swimming and water polo at the University of California,
Berkeley. Each of his swim teams from 1963 to 1974 had a winning
season, and his water polo teams established an unprecedented
record of having won eight NCAA titles as well as having been
the runner-up four times, placing third once and fourth twice.
In his 26 years as a coach at Cal, Pete was the all-time winning
coach in U.S. water polo history. He was also a four-time NCAA
and Pac-10 Coach of the Year, directing Golden Bear teams to a
record of 519-172. Pete retired in 1989 on the momentum of a 33-game
win streak and a second straight NCAA title. He coached 68 All-Americans,
six Pac-10 and NCAA Players of the Year, and many Olympians. Pete
also coached 13 teams to victory in the U.S. water polo senior
national championships and served as the head coach of U.S. National
Water Polo team from 1972-76, during which he led the team to
the Pan American Games and many other international tournaments,
including the World University Games. Every athlete he coached
became a member of his extended family.
 Pete's
stature in water polo is reflected in his having been elected
to the Technical Water Polo Committee (TWPC), the international
governing body of the sport as well as having served in countless
leadership roles in NCAA and U.S.A. water polo. Pete received
the AIA Gold Pin Award from the Association Internationale des
Arbitres de Water Polo and the Silver Pin Award from FINA. In
1990 he received the U.S. Water Polo Award, the highest honor
in the sport. He received the Master Coach Award — the highest
honor given to an aquatics coach — and in 1999, the Peter
J. Cutino Award was established in his honor by the San Francisco
Olympic Club, and is presented annually to the top male and female
collegiate water players in the nation. In addition to his memoir,
Monterey: A View from Garlic Hill, Pete also wrote three landmark
books on coaching water polo.
Pete Cutino was frequently honored as an educator and coach,
and was presented with the U.S. Congressional Award by the Honorable
Leon E. Panetta. Pete received the Distinguished Alumnus-of-the-Year
from Cal Poly, and he was also inducted into 8 Halls of Fame.
 Pete
returned to the community he loved in 1989 when he served as the
director of the Monterey Sports Center. But Pete hardly retired
from water polo or from Cal. In addition to giving generously
of his time to conducting clinics and coaching Olympic Club teams,
Pete fought relentlessly — and unflinchingly — on
behalf of building pools suitable for water polo and swimming
training and competition. Pete’s e-mails and phone calls
about this subject are nearly as legendary (and sometimes were
quite unprintable) as what he said at the innumerable meetings
held on this subject. At precisely the moment when Pete had grown
unimaginably frustrated at the lack of progress in these discussions,
he invariably would take out the knife he carried in his pocket
and play with it menacingly. Pete also returned to coaching at
Cal twice after he retired, most recently as an assistant to Coach
Kirk Everist.
 Throughout
his years on and beyond the pool deck at UC Berkeley, Pete Cutino
worked tirelessly on promoting and raising funds for Cal Aquatics
— to perpetuate the success he had built there. Along with
Rick Cronk, Pete founded the “Splash Club,” which
consisted of supporters of the men’s water polo and swimming
teams at Cal. More recently, Pete was a driving force, along with
Rick Cronk, Peter Schnugg, and many others, in establishing the
“Friends of Cal Aquatics,” a broader-based support
group which continues to seek philanthropic support in order to
insure that Cal’s championship men’s and women’s
water polo and swimming teams will have world-class training and
competition facilities.
After returning to Monterey, Pete quickly became an ardent and
compelling advocate for education and sport as well as an increasing
presence in civic leadership and among his childhood friends in
the Amici, Paisano, and Campari clubs, as well as in the “Jefferson
Street Gang.”
A mountain of a man and a king in his sport, Peter J. Cutino
died peacefully at his home overlooking the sea in Monterey ("King
of the Mountain") on September 19, 2004.
Peter J. Cutino: He Lived the Way He Coached
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