University of Texas women's rowing team wins national championship
AUSTIN, Texas - The University of Texas women's rowing team captured its first-ever national championship.
UT rowing head coach Dave O'Neill says it's great to see all the hard work pay off after the team finished in the nation's top five the previous three years.
"I've always said, the best way to get noticed, is to do something noticeable and I feel us winning a national championship, now people are like, oh wait, Texas has a rowing team and they're really good. From day one when we came in here, we were like, yeah Texas is a football school, it's a really good football school and they have really great tradition in swimming and a number of other sports," O'Neill says.
"I was like, let's turn this into a rowing school. We've got a good group graduating, we've done a great job developing kids and getting better and we have a really good group coming in, so we're not a one-hit wonder, by any means, we're built to last for sure," O'Neill added.
O'Neill says he not only recruits top rowers to the 40 Acres but he also likes to turn great athletes into rowers while they're at Texas.
The team also got a nice shoutout on its achievement when it was recognized in a tweet by actor Matthew McConaughey.