BERKELEY – Andrea Caligiana has joined the California men’s tennis team as an assistant coach, Peter Wright Director of Men’s Tennis Kris Kwinta announced Thursday.
Formerly at Middle Tennessee State, Caligiana served as the associate head coach for the Blue Raiders in 2023-24, earning the ITA Assistant Coach of the Year award for the Ohio Valley Region last season after helping MTSU post a 21-10 record and reach the second round of the NCAA Championship. He has also coached at New Mexico and Wichita State, his alma mater.
A native of Perugia, Italy, Caligiana played for Wichita State for three seasons and graduated in 2020.
Caligiana – whose nickname is “Cali” – joins a Cal coaching staff that also includes assistant coach Vasileios Iliopoulos.
“Cali brings a lot of recruiting expertise and coaching expertise from Middle Tennessee State,” Kwinta said. “His teams were successfully in the top 20, 25, for all the years he was there. And they beat us last year, which caught my eye. He’s just a very personable guy and knowledgeable coach, and he’s a good fit for a school like Berkeley, with an international roster. His philosophy on coaching and developing players matches mine, so it was an easy fit for us. His nickname is also an easy fit for Berkeley. It was a no-brainer.”
Caligiana was an MTSU assistant coach at MTSU for three seasons (2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23), helping the Blue Raiders earn the No. 15 ranking in the ITA poll and the No. 16 seed in the NCAA Championship in 2022. During his overall tenure, the Blue Raiders won three consecutive NCAA first-round matches (2022-24) and four straight Conference USA tournament titles (2021-24). Caligiana coached 10 student-athletes ranked in the ITA polls while at MTSU and coached and recruited 10 ATP-ranked players.
“I am honored to have the opportunity to work at the University of California, Berkeley,” Caligiana said. “Cal has an incredible reputation all over the world both academically and athletically being the No. 1 public university in the world and with all the success of the teams at both the collegiate and Olympic levels. I am also very excited to be working with Coach Kris Kwinta. He is a great coach, very well respected all over the country and someone who has had lots of success everywhere he has been. We have a group made of a bunch of talented players and incredible guys who love tennis and…
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