Water polo and swimming has been a passion of Anaheim High’s new swim coach, Denise Osorio, since she entered the pool at Los Altos High School in Hacienda Heights.
Her father encouraged to join the school’s aquatics program because her twin brother was swimming playing water polo. She took to the water like a fish and, in her senior year, she won the league championship in the 100 butterfly.
She competed on the boys’ water polo team because there wasn’t a girls’ team until the following season, when she and three other female swimmers formed a team, the first in the school’s history.
After graduating from Los Altos in 2003, she attended Citrus College, where she swam and played water polo, breaking school records for most goals and assists. She was also named a scholar athlete and received Athlete of the Year.
Denise was offered a scholarship to play for New York’s Sienna College but opted to stay in California and attend Cal State San Bernardino. During this time she coached water polo at the high school level and was an official for high school swimming and water polo meets.
She graduated with a Bachelors of Arts in English and is currently a specialized instructional assistant at Anaheim High. She is married to Class of 2000 Colonist Rafael Osorio. They are living in Anaheim with their three children ages 7, 6 and 2 years old.
