Roland McDonald

Biography

Roland McDonald enters his 16th season as San Diego State's head diving coach. In his 15 years on The Mesa, McDonald has been named Mountain West Conference Diving Coach of the Year on four occasions (2019, 2020, 2024. 2025), leading Aztec divers to 12 individual MW Championship titles, while six competitors have qualified for the NCAA Championships. He has consistently fostered Aztec divers to be some of the best within the Mountain West and the country, with at least one SDSU diver earning all-conference honors every year since his arrival to America’s Finest City. Under McDonald’s tutelage, Aztec senior Valentina Lopez Arevalo capped her brilliant collegiate career by earning Mountain West Diver of the Year honors for the 2024-25 campaign. With her award, Lopez Arevalo gave the SDSU swim and dive program a MW Athlete of the Year recipient for the seventh straight season after Alex Roberts (2023-24) and Klara Thormalm (2020-22) received conference Swimmer of the Year distinction in each of the previous five seasons, while Ximena Lechuga Gonzalez (2018-20) was twice tabbed MW Diver of the Year. Lopez Arevalo was the lone Mountain West diver to qualify for the NCAA Championships after finishing sixth on the 3-meter springboard at the NCAA Zone E Championships, extending the Aztecs’ streak of advancing at least one student-athlete to the national meet to 15 consecutive seasons. Throughout the 2024-25 campaign, McDonald directed the overall success of the SDSU diving contingent