The No. 2 Texas women’s swim and dive team has had quite a decade, and it has the accolades to prove it.
The most notable of these accomplishments are its 12 consecutive Big 12 titles and its top-two finishes in the last three consecutive NCAA tournaments. The three successive runner-up finishes mark Texas’ best three-year stint from 1990 to 1992.
While success like this can be traced to several moving pieces, there is one that has remained constant. The impressive resume of the Texas women’s swim team was built by none other than head coach Carol Capitani, the common denominator for so many years of success.
Capitani arrived at Texas before the 2012-2013 season, the season Texas won the first conference victory of their 12-year run. She is a 10-time Big 12 Conference Women’s Swimming Coach of the Year and has developed several Olympians during their collegiate years at Texas.
She has produced consistent success throughout her tenure as head coach, and her swimmers echo this success doesn’t come at the cost of her welcoming nature and the encouraging team atmosphere she fosters.
“Carol, she’s my main coach here,” freshman Lillie Nesty said. “She is amazing. I have so many good things to say about her, and then I just clicked really well with the team. I literally didn’t have any bad things to say about Texas after I visited here.”
Nesty just contributed to the second-place finishing 800-free relay team in the Southeastern Conference Championships earlier this week, and Capitani is currently on track to coach the team to a first-place victory in the tournament by the end of the week.
Winning the SEC Championship is yet another thing Capitani would like to add to her already impressive resume, and she has extensively emphasized it as a team goal for this season.
“We want to win SECs,” she said earlier in the spring season. “It’s going to be really competitive.”
Departing from the Big 12 and embracing the SEC is no small task, especially considering the conference is widely regarded as the best in NCAA swimming.
However, she served as assistant head coach for Georgia before coming to Texas, so she isn’t a total newcomer to SEC competition.
Additionally, this isn’t a transition she has to make alone.
Her team works alongside the Texas men’s team, which was previously coached by Eddie Reese and is now led by head coach Bob Bowman. Bowman is transitioning to Texas generally as a first-year coach and to SEC swimming with Capitani.
Although Capitani and Bowman have only coached alongside one another for one season at Texas, this won’t be the first time they have held similar positions.
They both coached in the 2024 Paris Olympics, Capitani as an assistant coach for Team USA and Bowman helping to coach for France.
Capitani’s international resume as a coach expands beyond this Olympic experience as well. She served as the associate head coach for the Singapore National Team from 2009-2010, as well as an assistant and head coach for Team USA Women in multiple different international competitions.
However, her priority right now is coaching the Texas women’s team to two titles in one month: SEC and NCAA.
