Lady Vols rowers, led by coach-of-the-year Kim Cupini, aim to repeat their trip to the podium at nationals
On a sunny April Saturday in Oak Ridge, UT’s third and fourth varsity 4s were neck and neck at the 1,000-meter mark, far ahead of a UNC boat.
At 1,500 meters the 4V4 was up by three seats. On the shore, Head Coach Kim Cupini peddled her bike among the tents and passers-by, turning her head left to the water, then forward to the road ahead, then left again, every 10 meters or so bringing her fingers to her lips and emitting a loud whistle of encouragement. “I started whistling back when I was in swimming,” said Cupini after the race, “so I’ve kept it up. Now if I don’t whistle, they get upset.”
As the boats entered the last 250 meters, the announcer, Olympian Megan Kalmoe, said, “UT’s four-V-four continues to lead in a dominant, controlled, mature way. They are going to hold this margin if it kills them.” The 4V4 finished in 7:40.916; the 3V4 in 7:41.463—a half-second margin for a 2,000-meter race. The coxswain of the winning 4 was Marissa Garcia, a sophomore from Knoxville. The stroke was Brooke Busk, a freshman from Plymouth Meeting, Pa., behind her were Katie Fitzgerald, a sophomore from Fairfield, Conn., Maddie Becker, a sophomore from Greenville, S.C., and Sarah Shepherd, a freshman from Lafayette, California.
It was the last race of the inaugural Rocky Top Invite, in which UT boats won all seven finals over Clemson, Duke, UCF, and UNC. The week before, also at Oak Ridge, the Lady Vols had lost several races to No. 2-ranked Stanford. “We got a little bit short and a little bit frantic, a little bit too excited,” said Jamie Harris, an Ohio State grad transfer from Nelson, N.Z., who stroked the first varsity 8. “We learned from that experience.” The cox was freshman Taryn Graves from Newport, Calif., who won nationals in high school coxing a men’s 4 and a men’s 8.
“I think that our team has a very good culture,” says Graves. “We have a big freshman class. You could be friends with a senior.” The Lady Vols are deep, with 63 on the roster, not counting walk-ons. There are 27 freshmen, including another top cox, Patricia Menendez, from Gotha, Florida, and seven internationals—from Australia, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K. The Lady Vols ranked No. 5 in the nation heading into a schedule that will culminate in the first SEC Regatta on May 11 at Oak Ridge and then nationals on May 31-June 2 in Mercer, N.J.
Making the Podium at Nationals
A year ago, the Lady Vols worked their way up from No. 15 to No. 5 in the rankings and placed second in the Big 12 championships to earn a bid to the NCAA Championships in Bethel, Ohio.
In the heat races at nationals, the First 8 fought through a gusty headwind for a time of 7:00.246, edging No. 6-ranked California, No. 15 Ohio State, and 12th-ranked Indiana to qualify for the semis. There, UT finished second, in 6:16.689, ahead of three top-10 crews to qualify for the Grand Final against Texas, Stanford, Princeton, Brown, and Washington.
Alice Fahey, a senior from Wellington, N.Z., was in the 3 seat. “Going in to the final, we knew Princeton,” she remembers. “We felt like we were quite ready. We said we have to get off well at the start, but we didn’t. We saw that Texas is up and knew we had to really lock in on the coxswain [Sasha Radovanovic]. We had a shift in the middle, and we were listening to the cox so much. In the last 500 we were still holding close with Stanford. We didn’t realize how close. In our 300-meter sprint, she was calling seats every stroke. Our stroke rate was 40 or above. Hearing the crowd helps you go as hard as you can go.”
UT’s bow ball crossed the line 2.236 seconds behind first-place Texas (6:09.920) and just .352 seconds behind second-place Stanford. UT finished ahead of No. 4 Princeton, No. 8 Brown, and No. 7 Washington. “It was a surreal experience,” says Alex Pidgeon, a junior from Montreal, who rowed in the 6 seat. “I had never been to nationals. Making the Grand Final was just crazy. We didn’t think that we would podium. To live all those emotions in three days. The picture of us with the trophies is mounted in the boathouse above where we refill our water bottles, so I see it every day. Looking at that picture. It’s crazy.” Cupini, in just her first season at UT, was named the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association national coach of the year.
New Teammates from SMU
Pidgeon had been recruited by and rowed for a year under Lisa Glenn, who retired on June 2, 2023, after 25 years as Lady Vols head coach. A week later, UT Athletics Director Danny White named Cupini, then the coach at SMU, as Glenn’s successor. The Mustangs had just finished an impressive ninth at the NCAAs, and the CRCA had named Cupini as a regional coach of the year.
“We had a team zoom meeting,” remembers Allison Lea, from Arlington, Va., who had rowed for Cupini at SMU for three years. “We looked at our choices. We could stay at SMU with the new staff and weather it out. Or we could go somewhere else. Or we could go with Kim to UT.” Fahey was one of those facing the choice. She visited Knoxville and liked the nature all around. “Dallas is all concrete,” she says. “That’s kind of what I missed from New Zealand. We went to the quarry within the first few weeks, and it was everything I was looking for.” She and 17 other rowers transferred to UT, along with Cupini’s staff.
“At first it was a little scary with 18 new rowers and the whole coaching staff,” Pidgeon admits. “It was exciting at the same time. As soon as we all met, I had a feeling it was going to be real good. They didn’t make the people who were there feel like outsiders. On the first day of practice, we decided to row as one. We were a team.”
Harris transferred from Ohio State a year ago because of Cupini. “I heard that she has a strong character,” says Harris. “I knew I was going to work well with Kim. She works her athletes really hard. I’m tough and she’s tough, and we work very well together. I’ve loved it at UT. Kim looks at the well-rounded perspective, including nutrition and our recovery and mental well-being. I was seeing in black and white before. I’m seeing in color now.”
“Coach Kim knows so much about the stroke and getting maximum power out of all the rowers,” says coxswain Graves, a journalism major aiming to be a broadcaster. “She can develop them. It’s super important to do every single part of the stroke together.”
Kim Cupini grew up as a multi-sport athlete in Rochester, N.Y., right along the Erie Canal, with a focus on swimming and basketball. She grew up loving water sports though, especially from summers spent with her grandparents on Honeoye Lake, one of the Finger Lakes. At a certain point she started rowing with Pittsford Rowing on the Erie Canal and Genesee River.
She swam and rowed as a freshman at Division III Colby College in Maine, majoring in environmental science. After a particularly cold winter, she transferred to the University of San Diego, where she could row in a Division I program and add marine science to her major. A three-time all-conference pick, she assistant coached for the Toreros in 2005 and for UCF for two years before returning to San Diego as head coach for 10 years and then to SMU for six. The Mustangs won conference titles in 2021 and ’22, finishing 12th overall at the NCAAs in 2022 and ninth in 2023, after which she heard from Danny White.
Cupini says she emphasizes “getting the most out of every student-athlete by emphasizing the whole person—mind, body, and soul.” In a Senior Day Ceremony after the Rocky Top Invite, she referred to the 12 seniors and graduates (including Harris) as “Tough, tough, tough women: Some of the toughest I’ve ever coached.” Of her team as a whole, she said, “They’re super competitive, but they always support each other. They always joke around. I hear these horror stories with other teams where people are really putting each other down to get up into the top boats. They are super supportive, which is really awesome, and they’re just really happy for each other.”
The goal for the coming weeks, says Pidgeon: “Doing it together. Not being complacent. We gained a lot of freshmen and transfers. We need to learn to row together because that’s what made us fast last year.”
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