No. 8 Texas rowing continued its strong start with wins over No. 16 Notre Dame and San Diego in the second day of the Longhorn Invitational on Saturday morning. 

Both sessions featured four 2000-meter races each, with the second and first varsity four teams and second and first varsity eight teams competing. 

The Longhorns dominated the Fighting Irish, sweeping them with wide margins in each race. The day got off with a good start in the first race for Texas, as they beat Notre Dame by over 22 seconds with a 7:27.44 time in the second varsity four race. 

Texas posted impressive times in each race, including an invitational-best time of 6:26.95 in the first varsity eight race. The Longhorns beat Notre Dame by at least eight seconds in each race. 

Texas continued their strong start against San Diego later in the morning, again taking all four races. But this time the races were much closer. 

Texas rowed a slower time in each race than the corresponding time in the Notre Dame races. The Longhorns’ margin of victory in each race was between three and seven seconds.

Head coach Dave O’Neill said the wind conditions and the toughness of the Tritons played a factor, but he was happy with Texas’ ability to come back when initially down. 

“[One] of the good things was seeing how boats respond under pressure,” O’Neill said. “San Diego is definitely a team that can be really tough, so seeing some of our boats down to them and having the resilience to come through was definitely good.”

The Longhorns will head to Southern California next weekend to take part in the San Diego Crew Classic. O’Neill said they hope to build upon its strong start to the season by increasing their readiness. 

“The intensity for our training is going to pick up; we’ll do some more higher rate pieces, and we certainly have some figuring out to do in terms of who sits where,” O’Neill said. “[But] some of these kids, they never raced before. So just building on and having this experience, it’s going to get better.”