Penn AC Gold Coaches
Paul Coomes - Director of Penn AC Gold
Paul's journey in rowing started 34 years ago, where he and 14 other students helped start up a small club rowing program at the University of Dayton. His 3+ years of rowing at Dayton could be termed forgettable in terms of results on the water, but his biggest victory came in helping to build a sustainable rowing program that was both competitive and respected not only within the rowing community but also by the University. When he graduated, he volunteered to coach Dayton’s men’s team and discovered his true passion in life – coaching. For three years, he led a Dayton men’s rowing team that experienced significant growth and improved results.
A move to Philadelphia in the fall of 1998 and a chance encounter led to Paul being hired as the Head Coach for Conestoga High School’s yet-to-be-started rowing team. While he had no experience coaching junior athletes, he was excited to have the opportunity to build a new program in what he considers to be rowing nirvana, Philadelphia and Boathouse Row. During his 18 years coaching Conestoga, he built the Club into one of the most respected rowing organizations in the region and the team into a scholastic sculling powerhouse, coaching crews to 21 Stotesbury Cup titles, 25 Scholastic National Championships and multiple gold, silver, and bronze medals at the USRowing Youth National Championships. He was named the 2007 Schuylkill Navy Coach of the Year, the 2014 American Junior Coaching Conference Girls Sculling Coach of the Year, and in what he considers to be the highlight of his coaching career, his girls 4x won the Schools/Junior 4x at the 2006 Women’s Henley Regatta.
His summers and falls as Conestoga’s coach were spent helping his wife start and grow PA Rowing Camps, a summer program dedicated to teaching adults and juniors to row, as well as coaching crews of various levels for several clubs along Boathouse Row, including Penn AC, Undine Barge Club, Bachelors Barge Club, and Crescent Boat Club. Numerous crews under his guidance found success at the junior, intermediate, senior, and elite level. He served as the coach for the US Lightweight Men’s 1x at the 2009 World Championships in Poland. While at Undine, the Club won the Colgan Cup and the Marion D. Ventura Women’s Points Trophy in 2001. His crews also won the Head of the Charles in 2000, 2001, and 2003, the Canadian Henley in 2002 and multiple Club National Championships between 2000 and 2003.
Recently, Paul has taken on a new role as Penn AC’s High Performance Junior Head Coach and the Director of Junior Programs. He is excited about the opportunity to start up the first, year-round high performance junior program in the city of Philadelphia.
Paul is a degreed engineer and when not involved in the sport of rowing has worked in various professional roles, including project management, product development and innovation management. Paul resides in the East Falls section of Philadelphia with his wife, Amy Giddings, and their three children.
Will Scully - Junior Men’s Head Coach/Recruiting Coordinator
Will Scully comes to Penn AC from just up the road, in Pottstown, PA at The Hill School, where he is the head boys rowing coach as well as a dorm parent, and instructor of physics and mathematics.
He returns to Penn AC Gold for his fifth summer on the coaching staff and his third leading the men’s squad. In his two years as head coach, the Penn AC Gold men have brought home a lot of hardware but most importantly, helped the team secure back-to-back team points trophies at the Independence Day Regatta and most recently, the Colgan Cup team points trophy at USRowing RowFest in Oklahoma City.
Will began his rowing career in 2008 as a junior at Simsbury High School in Simsbury, CT. After graduating high school, Will continued his rowing career at Trinity College, in Hartford CT, where he won two New England Championships and one ECAC Championship, and helped Trinity secure the New England’s Points Trophy three years in a row.
Following his graduation, Will came to Philadelphia to continue rowing for the U23 program at Penn AC, and represented them at U23 Trials, Club Nationals and Canadian Henley. In search of more rowing and adventure, Will moved to Sydney, Australia, where he joined Mosman Rowing Club and trained with members of the Australian U23 and senior national teams. He competed at the Sydney International Rowing Regatta, earning himself a finals spot in the Open 4x and Open 2x.
Upon returning home, Will took on some brief coaching stints in Connecticut before moving to The Hill School in 2016. Under Will, the Hill boys won the 2018 Stotesbury Cup Junior 4+ event and finished 4th in the 2019 Senior 4+. After nine years at The Hill School, Coach Scully will move to Delaware this summer, where he will take over as the Head Boys Coach at the St. Andrews School in Middletown, DE.
Sierra Williams - Junior Women's Head Coach/Recruiting Coordinator
Sierra Williams returns to Boathouse Row for her third summer with Penn AC Gold.
Sierra began rowing in 2012 at Mount Baker Rowing and Sailing Center in Seattle, WA. After graduating from high school, Sierra continued rowing at the University of Washington, earning spots on the 2019 Pac-12 and NCAA championship women’s team.
After completing her bachelor’s degree in Geography and Urban Planning, she began coaching for Seattle Preparatory School in the fall of 2022. In her first two years, the program sent 15 boats to the USRowing Youth National Championships, setting a program record in the spring of 2024 by sending 9 boats.
Since January of 2025, she has been the Girls Head Coach at Sammamish Rowing Association. During her first spring season with Sammamish, the SRA junior girls claimed the Northwest Regional Women’s Team Points Trophy for the first time since 2018. SRA then took a Varsity 4+ and U17 4+ to the Youth National Championships, where they placed 16th and 12th respectively, making it through to the A/B semis, the first SRA girls' boats to do so since 2019.
In the summer of 2025, her second year with Penn AC Gold, she returned as the Junior Girls Head Coach. At the Independence Day Regatta, the team claimed the Team Points Trophy for the third consecutive year. At USRowing's RowFest National Championships, PAC swept the Men’s, Women’s, and Overall Team Points Trophies, marking the first time in program history that the women of Gold brought home the Women's Team Points title.
When Sierra is not coaching or rowing semi-recreationally, she enjoys skiing in the Pacific Northwest or lounging with her cats Gustav and Petunia.