Nyssa Peele was hired as the head coach of the UC Santa Cruz women’s tennis program in August of
2025, bringing a national championship pedigree to the Banana Slugs.
Peele joins UC Santa Cruz with five years of coaching experience under her belt, including two as a head
coach. During her career, she has helped four of her programs achieve historic milestones, including her
first full-time season in the coaching industry, when she helped Claremont-Mudd-Scripps to its first-ever
national championship in 2018.
Most recently, Peele served as the head coach of the women’s tennis program at Caltech in 2024-25,
which she guided to an 8-6 record and a No. 29 final national ranking. During the year, the Beavers
climbed as high as No. 16, matching the highest ranking in program history (after starting out at No. 34),
despite not having an individual player ranked in the top 75 in the nation. Caltech also was a tiebreaker
away from defeating No. 2 Pomona-Pitzer, which went on to finish the year as the National Runner-Up.
Prior to taking the job at Caltech, Peele served as the head coach of both the men’s tennis and women’s
tennis programs at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas in 2023-24. Her efforts helped Oscar
Roy achieve the highest individual ranking in Southwestern men’s tennis history at No. 11 on his way to
earning All-America honors. Both Pirates teams finished as runners-up in the SCAC Tournament, with
the men’s team edged out 5-3 by No. 7 Trinity in a competitive battle decided by a doubles tiebreaker,
and two three-setters in singles.
Peele had an immediate impact in her first year in the profession, serving as the assistant coach for the
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women’s tennis team under head coach David Schwarz, when it won the first
national title in program history in 2018 with a 5-4 win over Emory. The four courts Peele was
responsible for overseeing (No. 3 doubles, and No. 4-6 singles) all produced victories for the Athenas in
the one-point win.
After her second season at CMS in 2018-19, when she helped the Athenas back to the national
championship match, before finishing as the runner-up to Wesleyan (Conn.), Peele captured the
Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s Division III West Region Assistant Coach of the Year honor. She was
also one of just four finalists for the National Assistant Coach of the Year Award in just her second
season in the profession.
Following the 2019 season, Peele relocated to Tucson, Arizona and re-entered the corporate world,
spending four years working for Priori Nearshore, where she was promoted from a sales and marketing
position into the director of business development.
Despite temporarily stepping away from the coaching profession, Peele’s influence remained. Eight of
the players she coached in her two seasons at CMS eventually earned All-America status, and other
players she helped recruit had key roles in back-to-back national titles for the Athenas in 2022 and 2023.
Post-pandemic, Peele decided to return to coaching again, accepting an assistant position at California
Lutheran University in 2022-23, where she also helped the Regals. The program qualified its first-ever player for the NCAA Division III Singles Championship, defeated local rival Westmont for the first time, and earned a national ranking after defeating ranked opponents UT Dallas and Grinnell.
Peele was a high-level tennis player throughout her youth, ranking No. 101 in the nation in the Class of
2006 as a senior at St. Stephen’s in Austin, Texas (moving up from 197 as a sophomore to 176 as a junior
to 101 as a senior). She played four years at the NCAA Division I level, beginning her collegiate career at
the University of Rhode Island, where she played No. 1 singles and earned all-conference honors. She
then transferred to Texas State for her final two seasons, where she earned all-conference distinction
again and had a 16-1 record as a senior, ending her career on a 15-match winning streak.
After graduating with a degree in art history, Peele’s first professional stops included a corporate
position at Q2 e-banking in Austin for two years, and a fine art consultant job at Altamira Fine Art in
Jackson, Wyoming for two years.
Her passion for tennis eventually led her to change career paths, and she returned home to Texas to be
a volunteer assistant with the women’s tennis program at Trinity University in San Antonio, which won a
conference title and advanced to the NCAA Tournament. She learned under head coach Gretchen Rush,
who had a standout pro career that saw her reach the quarterfinals of the US Open, Wimbledon and
French Open in singles, and the Wimbledon quarterfinals three times in doubles.
Rush previously coached at CMS before taking the job with Trinity, and when an assistant coach
opportunity opened with CMS in 2017-18, Peele joined a program with national championship
aspirations, and helped them achieve those goals in her first full-time season.
Peele graduated from Texas State in 2011 after majoring in art history and minoring in business
administration, earning Capital One Bank/Southland Conference All-Academic honors. In 2012, Peele was
the recipient of a Master of Letters degree from the University of Glasgow Christie’s Education in
London. The program is affiliated with Christie’s International, the world-famous auction house.
