News and Notes from Triton Athletics

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This story originally appeared in the winter 2025 issue of UC San Diego Magazine as “Tritons Rise.”

It’s a turning point for college sports, scholar-athletes and fans at UC San Diego. 

Following the recent success of men’s and women’s basketball — earning invitations for March Madness earlier this year and making NCAA history, as both teams qualified for the tournament in their first year of eligibility — Triton Athletics is making some big moves. 

In September, UC San Diego announced that it had accepted a formal invitation to join the West Coast Conference beginning July 1, 2027. UC San Diego has been a member of The Big West for five years. Shortly after the WCC announcement, Andy Fee was hired as the new athletic director, just the fourth person to hold that position since 1966. Fee follows the tenure of Earl Edwards, who held the position for 25 years and has been named athletic director emeritus.

“We will be transitioning into the WCC in the summer of 2027. While The Big West is a great conference, the WCC offers us an opportunity to be in one of the best mid-major basketball conferences in America, with greater national exposure,” says Fee. 

Fee joins UC San Diego from Seattle University, where he was deputy athletics director and responsible for managing its 19 sports programs, revenue generation units, capital projects and business office. Before that, he was deputy athletic director and chief of staff at the University of Washington. But his roots are in Southern California: Fee grew up in Orange County and previously worked for Cal State University Long Beach, UC Santa Barbara and the University of San Diego.

Today, Fee oversees 24 sports programs and 600 scholar-athletes with the goal of making UC San Diego the top DI-AAA athletic department in America by elevating Triton Athletics with men’s and women’s basketball.

“Our classification at the AAA level, which is the non-football level, comes with basketball leading the way,” says Fee. “We need basketball to succeed, be competitive and get us where we want to be.”

The addition of Fee comes on the heels of recent coaching appointments, including Sarah Lizotte ’15, head coach of the women’s water polo team, and Clint Allard ’08, head coach of the men’s basketball team. Lizotte was a marquee player for the Tritons from 2011 to 2014; she still holds the program’s all-time record for goals and assists. And Allard brings nearly 20 years of experience with Triton Athletics as both a former player and assistant coach of men’s basketball. 

Read more and purchase tickets at ucsdtritons.com.