Cascade Names Olympic Gold Medalist Tairia Flowers as Inaugural Head Coach

The Cascade has named Tairia Flowers as the franchise’s first head coach ahead of the team’s debut in the 2026 Athletes Unlimited Softball League season.

Flowers brings a decorated playing career and extensive coaching experience to the expansion franchise. She won Olympic gold with Team USA at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She also captured gold medals at the 2002 and 2006 World Championships with the U.S. national softball team from 2001 to 2008.

Her coaching resume includes multiple roles with USA Softball, where she served as an assistant, selection committee member, and head coach from 2010 to 2021. Most recently, she served as an assistant coach for Team USA at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, where the team earned a silver medal. Flowers also coached the USA Junior National Team to silver in 2013 and gold in 2015, and served as head coach of the Elite Team in 2026. She was an assistant for the national team during the 2011 and 2019 Pan American Games, capturing gold in 2019.

This spring, Flowers wrapped her fifth season as head coach at Loyola Marymount University, where she has won 137 games–one shy of the top two in program history. She has led the Lions to two West Coast Conference Championships and two NCAA Tournament appearances as the automatic bid from the WCC.

In 2023, she guided the Lions to a 12-3 conference record and a first-place finish in the WCC before advancing to the NCAA Championship Tournament. The following year, she led the program to a second-place conference finish, highlighted by a victory over No. 14 Oregon.

In 2022, Flowers led the Lions to a 37-17 overall record and a 13-2 conference record, tying for first place with BYU. The team earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament and defeated Ole Miss 4-2 in the first round, marking the program’s third regional appearance in school history.

Flowers graduated from UCLA with a history degree in 2005 after a standout collegiate career. She also played on the USA Junior National Team in 1999.

Flowers will join General Manager Jami Lobpries on the Cascade staff. The team will make its AUSL debut in the 2026 season after selecting 12 players in the AUSL Draft this month. The team will have the option to add four more players during the AUSL College Draft in the spring.

Siera Jones is the digital media reporter at Athletes Unlimited. You can follow her on Instagram and X @sieraajones.