April 3, 2025
Swimming Through Sorrow: Matt Mauser's Path from Loss to Triumph
"Swimming for me was huge therapy," Matt explains. When Matt lost his beloved wife Christina in the January 2020 helicopter crash that also claimed Kobe Bryant's life, his world shattered. Just weeks later, COVID lockdowns isolated him further as he faced the daunting challenge of raising three children alone. In this profoundly moving conversation, Matt reveals how he returned to swimming—a passion from his youth—as a form of therapy during his darkest days.
From the depths of unimaginable tragedy emerges a story of remarkable resilience, as Matt Mauser—musician, author, and masters swimmer and former NCAA All-American swimmer—shares his journey of rebuilding life after devastating loss.
"Swimming for me was huge therapy," Matt explains, describing how he improvised with a harness in his jacuzzi when pools closed during lockdown. This determination to keep swimming symbolizes his broader approach to grief: showing up even when it's difficult. "I go not because I want to go, but because it's the right thing to do."
Matt's story weaves together his journey from competitive swimmer to successful musician fronting the popular Tijuana Dogs band, his marriage to Christina (whom he met at one of his performances), and their eventual connection to Kobe Bryant through basketball coaching. Through it all emerges a powerful philosophy about finding joy after loss: "Life is for the living, and I intend to live."
Now, through his heartfelt memoir "Bittersweet Treasures" and the Christina Mauser Foundation (which has provided over $100,000 in scholarships to female athletes), Matt honors Christina's legacy while embracing a future filled with purpose. For anyone struggling with grief or seeking inspiration to overcome life's challenges, this conversation offers a roadmap to finding those "treasures" that make life worth living again.
Subscribe to Champions Mojo for more stories of resilience, achievement, and the healing power of swimming in our lives.
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
00:00 - Meeting Matt Mauser
02:40 - From Junior Lifeguard to All-American Swimmer
06:12 - Transitioning from Swimming to Music
10:35 - Meeting Christina and Coaching with Kobe
17:30 - Coping with Loss and Finding Purpose
24:00 - The Christina Mauser Foundation
36:04 - Sprinter Round Q&A with Matt
WEBVTT
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Little simple, you got it.
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You just have to acknowledge that you're being recorded, I think, and that's all right.
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Yes, this is Matt Mauser and I'm being recorded.
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Okay, yep, all right, here we go.
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Hello friends, I'm Kelly Pallas, the host of the Champions Mojo podcast.
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Today I'm thrilled to introduce an extraordinary guest whose journey is as inspiring as it is multifaceted.
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Besides being a master swimmer, matt Mauser is a dynamic entertainer, author and former NCAA All-American swimmer, whose passion for music ignited at a young age.
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From fronting the wildly popular party band Tijuana Dogs to captivating audiences with his Sinatra tribute shows, matt's ability to blend charisma, talent and authenticity has made him one of the West Coast's most sought-after performers Beyond the spotlight.
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Matt's story takes a deeply personal turn After losing his beloved wife, christina, in the tragic helicopter crash that claimed the lives of Kobe Bryant and others.
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Matt turned to music, swimming and writing as a way to navigate his grief.
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His heartfelt memoir Bittersweet Treasures A Father's Journey Through Loss and Healing not only chronicles his journey, but also supports the Christina Mauser Foundation, which honors Christina's legacy by providing scholarships to young female athletes.
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And when Matt's not performing or writing, he finds solace in the pool, reconnecting with his roots as a swimmer and embracing the therapeutic power of water.
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Get ready for a conversation filled with resilience, passion and purpose.
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Matt Mauser is about to take us on an unforgettable journey Matt.
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Welcome to Champions Mojo.
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Kelly, thank you for having me.
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Well, matt, in all that introduction I didn't even say that you were a finalist on America's Got Talent 2, which is another thing that I, that I didn't put in there, but it was a lot.
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Your, your life story is is truly multifaceted and amazing, and you know, we are a swimming kind of health and wellness podcast.
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So we, why don't we start with?
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You know where you got into swimming?
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Cause I, you know, I read that you also were a water polo player in high school and then an All-American swimmer in college.
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So how did swimming, you know, morph into music, morph into this life that you kind of find yourself in today?
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And, you know, leave some space for me to ask you questions.
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Well, it's a.
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It's an interesting past, uh, and definitely an interesting path to how I got to swimming.
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My uncle, or my, my aunt married a gentleman who was an Olympic kayaker and a great high school and college swimmer and he became the swim coach at a at a very popular you know, strong, uh, strong swimming background school called Newport Harbor High School here in Orange County.
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So in the 80s my uncle was the head coach at Newport Harbor.
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I was, I grew up in a beach community.
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I was a junior lifeguard and we spent a lot of time in the water just growing up.
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My dad lived on a houseboat.
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My parents separated when I was young.
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My dad lived on a houseboat when I was, you know, seven, eight years old, so we would spend all summer, you know, swimming around and I was always pretty, you know, comfortable in the water.
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I was a baseball player until I was about 14 years old and then one day in a PE class I was playing baseball and they said it's a hot, it's a hot day, it was a hot September day and they put us all in the pool and they said swim across the pool, we're going to race.
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And I won, and the water polo coach happened to be there and pulled me out and said, hey, have you ever thought about being a water polo player?
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And I had grown up around swimming?
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So I said, yeah, I'd give it a shot.
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So I went out and gave it a shot and I was pretty good and then it developed there I played baseball, I played water polo, but swimming was something I did because you had to.
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You know, I play in both the sports.
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And then when my junior year one of the teachers, one of the coaches for this, for the swim team, said you're a really good swimmer, have you thought about, you know, maybe quitting baseball, because swimming and baseball were in the same season and I said, no, I haven't.
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He said, well, if you ever want to make money being a lifeguard or you want some kind of scholarship, you know, unless you're a great baseball player, you might have a pretty good shot.
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So I took his words.
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I went out and I would swim in the morning, go to baseball practice and then go to swim practice at night.
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And I got pretty fast.
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I ended up breaking the school record in the hunter backstroke.
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This was 1987 or 88.
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And uh, I got some some offers to swim in college, I got my best offer.
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All my friends were going to a junior college, so I went there and it just continued on from there.
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And where?
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Where did you swim in college?
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I swam for two years at Golden West college and then the head coach at Cal Poly, san Luis Obispo, saw me at a meet and I believe I won an invitational and he said I would love it If you.
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I believe I won an invitational and he said I would love it if you would consider coming to Cal Poly, san Luis Obispo.
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So I I got a couple offers.
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I was looking at UCI Pepperdine was also on there for water polo.
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Believe it or not, I was also a pretty strong water polo player and I really something about swimming.
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I had just started and I was, you know, continuing to get faster and I just said this is what I want to do.
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So I went to Cal Poly.
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So you're, you obviously like swimming and did well with it.
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But your, your real passion in life seems to have been music and you know your career path was music.
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So how did you transition like into you know, the Tijuana dogs and and really getting into music?
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And then you know, eventually getting on America's Got Talent and and really music is your, your career.
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So what, what?
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How did that happen?
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And and what happened to your swimming along the way?
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With that, some people stay swimming and some people just get out of it for 20 years and then come back.
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Yeah, well, I did both.
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I, when I was a young boy, my dad played guitar.
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I come from a very musical family.
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My aunts were concert pianists, my great grandmother played in the Philadelphia Philharmonic.
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She also played at the White House for Teddy Roosevelt.
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So I had a long history of classically trained musicians and I grew up around music.
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I could sing on key, I would sing all the Elvis tunes and and you know the Johnny B goods and stuff like that, and and I would dance around with my little brother and we would, and my dad would just play guitar, and so we had music in the in the house, which I think it's such an important thing for kids just being exposed to something, not necessarily music, but anything, if you're exposed to it, you, you, you learn it.
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Necessarily music, but anything, if you're exposed to it, you, you, you learn it.
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And so as I was growing up, I, I really had an affection for guitar.
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So I would, you know, find, find pieces of music, uh, at music stores, and I would learn them, and just on my own, everything that I did was pretty much on my own.
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Um, when I went to college, I, uh, I remember they invited me to go to a party and I brought my guitar and I started doing some songs and I remember everybody sitting around and just saying I said this is what I want to do.
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But nothing gave me that thrill when I thought of careers.
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I was a lifeguard, I was a teacher for 20 years.
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I learned Spanish and I was a Spanish teacher, but nothing gave me that thrill like competition.
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I loved the competition that I got in swimming and playing in sports, and the only thing that gave me that same level of adrenaline was music.
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So when I graduated from school and I went to look for work, I kept my lifeguard job.
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I got a job as a teacher.
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I passed all the tests and I became a Spanish teacher and I said I'm going to start a band.
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So at 25, 26 years old, I started a band and I would invite all the people on the beach, I would pass off flyers, I would invite all my lifeguard buddies and I would just bring a huge crowd to every club.
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I would.
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I would say I'll pack your place and the band was was average at best.
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But I would bring, you know, two, 300 kids into the club and you know, bar owners like to make money.
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So we would.
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I realized it and I said this is, this is what I want to do.
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So I never was a starving artist per se.
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I always maintained jobs.
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So I had my teaching job.
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I was lifeguarding during the summer and then the band really started gaining traction.
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I got some great musicians in the band and we just got really popular.
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So for for about a good 10 years I was living the dream here in Southern California.
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I had a very popular band, I was a lifeguard on the weekends and I would teach during the year.
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You know, sometimes it would coincide and I'd have to kind of figure things out.
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I would be tired as a teacher and I had to, you know, kind of find a way to make sure that the kids didn't see me tired.
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But it worked out and uh, that's that's kind of when I was kind of a little bit crazy, living a crazy lifestyle.
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So, obviously, one of the things that we want to hear from you about today is, um, you know how you've dealt with your grief and the loss of your wife, christina, and where, where did you meet Christina in this journey, and what you know?
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I read that she was a big part of your music career, and so that must have been quite a blow.
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Obviously for a number of reasons besides being the mother of your three children.
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Quite a blow, obviously for a number of reasons besides being, you know, the mother of your three children.
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You know where did you meet her and what was her connection to you know, being on Kobe's helicopter.
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There's a lot of moving pieces to this part.
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So while the band got popularity, I would say we were working three, four nights a week.
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I was teaching at a private school here in Newport Beach and I was lifeguard in the summer.
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And then one night, at one of our shows, this beautiful, tall, athletic woman walked in and I was just, you know, taken by her.
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I went up and introduced myself, she bought a T-shirt, she bought a CD and I didn't hear from her for a while.
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So a few months later came by and I saw her again at one of our shows.
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I asked her out.
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She denied me, but she did give me a dance and we talked a little bit and then, a few months later, I would say it's probably like nine months later.
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But she did give me a dance and we talked a little bit and then a few months later, I would say it's probably like nine.
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Nine months later from our first encounter, she came walking in again and I I said this is getting a little bit.
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I mean you must like the band or maybe there's more.
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And I said I'll ask you out again and she accepted.
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So that was in 2004.
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Within nine months we were married.
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I asked her to marry me and by 2005 we were married.
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I didn't know much about her until I realized that she was incredibly.
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The beauty was just one part of her.
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She was incredibly bright, incredibly athletic and we had a lot of the similar histories.
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We both went to the same high school.
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We grew up, you know, within a mile from each other and we never knew.
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She was a little younger than I was, so we we'd never met prior, but once we met it felt like we had known each other our whole lives.
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So I knew she was the right one for me.
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I asked her to marry me.
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She accepted and she was a fantastic basketball player, a fantastic soccer and volleyball player.
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In fact, for our high school she was athlete of the year three times for three different sports.
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She she was just an incredible athlete, but mainly her love was basketball.
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So I was the basketball coach.
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It was a small school.
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We had to wear a lot of hats.
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I was not only the on-site EMT Spanish teacher, carpool director, but I was also the basketball coach.
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I wasn't super knowledgeable about basketball, but I loved it.
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I was a huge Laker fan and I learned a lot, so I figured out how to run defenses, how to run offenses.
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And one day I had a show and I couldn't make practice, and I'm sorry, it was a game and I asked Christina if she would cover my game so I could go work.
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She came in and the athletic director said who's this coaching for you?
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I said that's my wife, Christina.
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I said OK.
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The next day I came back.
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He said she's a better coach than you are.
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How do we get her on?
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board.
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So they gave her a job.
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They asked her to be the PE teacher with another wonderful couple of people that were the head of the department, and she and I started coaching basketball together.
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So we coached together for about 10 years Along that path.
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It was a very well-to-do school and Kobe Bryant's kids went to our school.
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His daughters both played for me.
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His second daughter, gigi, showed a pretty significant interest in basketball and I was her coach.
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My wife and I were her coach, and One day Kobe came to me and said hey, I want to start a team.
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Would you want to be my assistant coach?
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And we had gotten to know each other through music.
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He was doing some production stuff and he asked me to do some music for him and I became his full-time songwriter for his children's podcast Not long after that.
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Matt, I'm just having a little bit wonky internet.
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My editor will cut this out of here, but I'm going to.
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I'm just having a little bit wonky internet.
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My editor will cut this out of here, but I'm going to.
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Just I'm here, I'm just going to stop my video so that the bandwidth on video may I'm not in the place I usually am, so it may pull.
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It may help us, so just go.
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So so you started working on his podcast, so start right there.
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There you go.
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So I was working on his podcast, I was writing music for Kobe and I got really busy.
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It was a demanding schedule.
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So at one point we were, we were coaching basketball together and I was doing music.
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And he says to me and I said, hey, kobe, this is a a lot of time.
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I don't know if I can keep running these.
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Uh, you know, I'm a lifeguard, I'm a teacher, I'm a, I'm running my band and I'm writing songs for you.
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I think something's gonna give.
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And he said, well, would Christina want to be my assistant coach?
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And I said she would be wonderful.
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She's better coach than I am.
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So that was kind of how the whole thing, the genesis of her coaching with him Originally I was the coach and just the fact that she was better got her the job.
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And you know, they were going to coach for three days a week, and three soon turned into five and five turned into seven.
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They were playing every day.
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You know we had three kids.
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My wife and I both quit our teaching jobs me to just pursue music in 2018.
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And we pulled our kids out of the private school, we put them in public school and her job was was coach and we were extremely happy.
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It was just a wonderful time in our life.
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It was just a wonderful time in our life, yeah, yeah.
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So, um, obviously, when you, you know, heard the news of the Kobe's helicopter going down, I, I read the excerpt from your book Um, and it's, you know, it's very touching, very emotional.
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What, besides reading your book and and you know, learning all the details of this, what was just kind of your general feeling when you, when you had this happen and you know where, where your mindset went, and maybe what might have helped prepare you, or was there anything that helped prepare you?
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But what would you say to people who might be going through something similar?
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Right?
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Well, as you can imagine, when you lose the most significant person in your life, you are overwhelmed.
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The first feeling is shock.
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I mean, everybody goes through that one day, I would imagine.
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I was shocked, I was terrified.
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As a father, my first thought was my children.
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How am I going to do this without their mother?
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Was my children?
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How am I going to do this without their mother?
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And you know.
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And then, putting my feelings in there, I almost felt selfish, putting my feelings ahead of my kids.
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But I just, I just missed my wife tremendously for the first part and so.
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But I did have some comfort in the fact that I was prepared.
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You know, I I was teacher, so I could teach my kids.
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I knew how to deal with kids.
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I was a Spanish teacher, so I could teach them Spanish at the very least.
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But I knew I was going to get through it.
00:18:16.036 --> 00:18:18.653
I didn't know how, and that was the scary thing.
00:18:18.653 --> 00:18:29.917
So my first instinct and if you remember this was January of 2020, and less than a month later, by March 15th, march 13th, we were in COVID shutdown.
00:18:29.917 --> 00:18:41.270
So not only was that I lost my wife, but then I lost the ability to be around people and we were on complete lockdown and the kids got sick, I got sick.
00:18:41.270 --> 00:18:47.986
So there was some, there was some pretty hard, hard realities I had to face and that was terrifying.
00:18:50.392 --> 00:18:52.536
And that's where swimming and kind of came back into my life.
00:18:52.536 --> 00:18:54.566
I would swim on occasion.
00:18:54.566 --> 00:19:04.840
When Christina died, that became every day and that was the swimming for me was a huge therapy.
00:19:04.840 --> 00:19:13.573
I did therapy like where you walk in and you sit down on the couch and you talk, and I did it for about three or four months and I absolutely hated it.
00:19:14.055 --> 00:19:15.807
I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't stand it.
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It just wasn't for me.
00:19:17.513 --> 00:19:20.123
I'm not I'm not knocking it for anybody else, it just wasn't for me.
00:19:20.123 --> 00:19:22.606
I'm not knocking it for anybody else, but for me I just hated it.
00:19:22.606 --> 00:19:25.430
And they shut down every pool.
00:19:25.430 --> 00:19:36.040
I had a jacuzzi, a good-sized jacuzzi, so I tied a string to a tree and I put a harness around my waist and I got in that pool every day and I swam for like half hour and 45 minutes.
00:19:36.040 --> 00:19:47.638
They reopened the pools and by that time my good buddy, who is a master's coach at a local pool here, uh said, come out and join me.
00:19:47.638 --> 00:19:54.396
So I went out and that's when I started swimming, uh, consistently, and I haven't stopped for the past five years.
00:20:13.464 --> 00:20:14.507
Were your when you got back to your master's group.
00:20:14.527 --> 00:20:15.470
Were you supported by your teammates or how?
00:20:15.470 --> 00:20:15.849
How did your?
00:20:15.849 --> 00:20:17.795
How did the whole master's kind of reignite after COVID?
00:20:17.795 --> 00:20:22.484
For you, diego's a wonderful guy and I said I don't want to be with people, I just need to get in the water.
00:20:22.484 --> 00:20:24.112
So he said I'll meet you there.
00:20:24.112 --> 00:20:25.924
You tell me what time you want to be there.
00:20:25.924 --> 00:20:28.836
I said I'll be there in a half hour so I would go.
00:20:28.836 --> 00:20:45.034
And when it first started, I mean I could go maybe 500 to 1000 yards and it wasn't that I was out of shape but my adrenaline was so high for a few months and just in complete defense mode.
00:20:45.034 --> 00:20:52.419
But I would get in and you know, slowly I kind of started getting my wind back.
00:20:52.419 --> 00:20:54.412
Slowly I started getting my.
00:20:54.412 --> 00:20:56.565
You know, I lost the first two or three months.
00:20:56.565 --> 00:20:59.109
I'm about 200 pounds.
00:20:59.109 --> 00:21:04.359
You know 198, 195 at times, but I got down to 175.
00:21:04.359 --> 00:21:08.797
I lost, I lost a legitimate 20, 25 pounds in the first couple of months.
00:21:08.797 --> 00:21:14.305
So I was really thin and I was just uh, you know, was that?
00:21:14.885 --> 00:21:16.326
Matt, was that from swimming?
00:21:16.326 --> 00:21:18.608
Or was that nervous?
00:21:18.608 --> 00:21:21.190
Just nervous eating, no appetite.
00:21:22.131 --> 00:21:25.773
No appetite, no appetite, couldn't you know?
00:21:25.773 --> 00:21:28.596
And my adrenaline was just going all the time.
00:21:28.596 --> 00:21:29.957
I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat.
00:21:29.957 --> 00:21:31.037
I was just always in, you know, survival mode.
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