Hilt-Costello filed a lawsuit against Long Beach State <\/a>claiming age discrimination as part of her exit from the school, where she was the most accomplished coach in its tennis program\u2019s history. She declined comment on the lawsuit.<\/p>\nRegardless of the reasons she became available, it\u2019s a rare opportunity for Wilson to hire one of the most accomplished college coaches in Southern California tennis history. In addition to her success as a coach, Hilt-Costello was also a standout player at UCLA and helped lead the team to the 1991 NCAA championship match.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to welcome coach Hilt-Costello to Wilson High School,\u201d said Wilson athletic director John Janzen. \u201cHer track record speaks for itself, but what stood out most throughout the hiring process was her commitment to developing student-athletes both on and off the court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hilt-Costello, a longtime Long Beach resident as well as coach, said that she heard about the opening from a college teammate from UCLA whose son attends Wilson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe called me and said \u2018they\u2019re looking for a girls\u2019 tennis coach,\u2019 and it all started there,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was just about getting back to the community for me. This is a whole new domain, totally different than college tennis\u2014there\u2019s a big learning curve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hilt-Costello said she hadn\u2019t had much time with the team yet as she\u2019s going through the clearance process, but in an initial meeting the girls seemed as excited as she was.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately they\u2019re the engine that\u2019s going to drive this, their expectations for themselves and what they want to achieve,\u201d said Hilt-Costello. \u201cI\u2019m excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"High school tennis coaching hires aren\u2019t often described as splashy, but Wilson has made a huge move as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-371826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}