Diljeet Taylor joined the Warrior staff in the Fall of 2007 as the successor to Kim Duyst, who relinquished her coaching roles to move into an administrative position.
Taylor has served as head coach of the men and women’s cross country programs, as well as the distance coach for both the men and women’s outdoor track teams and the women’s indoor track team since 2007 and was named the Director of Track & Field/Cross Country in June of 2013.
Her recent success stories include guiding All-American Courtney Anderson to a NCAA Division II national championship in the 1,500-meter run in 2014. Since becoming the head coach, the distance teams and cross country programs have had 16 All-Americans including consecutive runner-up finishes in the indoor championships by the Distance Medley Relay team.
Just this past spring, Taylor coached sophomore Abraham Alvarado to a runner-up finish in the men's 800-meter run.
Also as the Director of Track and Field since 2013, Taylor helped guided three other All-Americans in field events.
Taylor, formerly Diljeet Mendoza, was a highly successful student-athlete at Cal State Stanislaus from 1999-2002. She brings her middle distance expertise as a student-athlete and head coach to this new position. Taylor was a three-time All-American in indoor and outdoor track and field as a specialist in the 800-meter and 1500-meter runs. She set the school indoor record in the 800-meter in 2002. That same year she finished second at the NCAA National Championship meet and finished her career second on the outdoor track all-time list in both the 800- and 1,500-meter events.
She was named Cal State Stanislaus Female Athlete of the Year and Scholar Athlete of the Year in 2002. Taylor was also the most dominant runner for the Warriors during the time, earning Most Valuable Runner from 2000-2002. She also served as a team captain for the Warriors for two years.
Taylor graduated from Cal State Stanislaus in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies. She graduated with cum laude honors.
From 2004-2006, Taylor spent time training with Nike’s Farm Elite Team, an Olympic development team that makes its home at Stanford University. She served as an assistant coach to Keith Spataro at Menlo College before taking over as head coach in 2005-06.
Taylor is married to former Warrior basketball player Ira Taylor and they live in Turlock. They have two children: Taj and Avi.
