Texas Longhorn women’s coach Carol Capitani and Wisconsin Badger coach Whitney Hite have been named the head coaches of Team USA’s contingent at the 2017 World University Games.
The World University Games (known to many outside the U.S. as the Summer Universiade) will take place from August 20th to the 207th in Taipei City, Taiwan. The even takes place every other year.
Capitani will head up the women’s team, coming off of a stellar NCAA season with Texas. The Longhorns finished 5th at NCAAs – their highest finish of her tenure – and notably ended Georgia’s 22-year home dual meet win streak.
Hite takes over the men’s team in Taiwan. He coaches both the men and women at Wisconsin, and led both into the NCAA’s top 20 this past season.
Last summer, Capitani was an assistant on the World University Games coaching staff, while Hite was an assistant at the World Championships that same summer.
Team USA will select its swimmers for the World University Games at the 2017 National Championships. They are slated to take place between June 27th and July 1st in Indianapolis, Indiana. That meet will be hosted at the same IUPUI pool where Capitani’s Longhorns and Hite’s Badgers just wrapped up their NCAA Championships meets.
The new coaching staff will try to continue the massive momentum of 2015. Team USA set a new World University Games record with 34 swimming medals in 2015, 15 of them gold. The 2015 coaching staff was Indiana’s Ray Looze (for the women) and Michigan’s Mike Bottom (for the men).
The full USA Swimming press release:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Carol Capitani and Whitney Hite, standout collegiate coaches with extensive international coaching experience, have been selected to lead USA Swimming as head coaches at the 2017 World University Games, National Team Director Frank Busch announced today.
Capitani, the women’s coach at Texas, will serve as the U.S. women’s head coach. Hite, who heads Wisconsin’s combined program, will lead the American men.
In her fifth year at Texas, Capitani recently led the Longhorns to a fifth-place finish at the 2017 NCAA Championships – the program’s top showing since 2009. She is a two-time Big 12 Conference Coach of the Year.
On the international front, Capitani served as an assistant coach for the United States at the 2011 and 2013 World University Games and was the women’s head coach at the 2013 Duel in the Pool. Most recently, she was an assistant for the Team USA women at the 2016 FINA World Championships – 25m.
Hite recently completed his sixth season as Wisconsin, where the women placed 15th and the men 18th at the 2017 NCAA Championships. He has led the Badgers to a combined six top-15 NCAA Championships finishes.
With USA Swimming, Hite was a men’s assistant coach for the 2015 FINA World Championships.
The 2017 World University Games will be held in Taipei City, Taiwan, with the swimming competition slated for Aug. 20-27. Team USA’s sole qualifying event is the 2017 Phillips 66 National Championships, which will be held June 27-July 1 in Indianapolis.
Little known fact: UW coaches Whitney Hite, Kelley Sheffield (VB), and Greg Gard (MBB) are really the same person, just photographed from different angles.
Now that’s funny!
Two great young coaching talents, great selections!
Let’s try mckeever/capitani/duchac as all female coaching dream team some time
How can they select the staff for this team prior to qualification? It’s conceivable that neither Whitney Hite nor Carol could have swimmers on this team.
World Champs is a different story as Durden and Meehan will likely have several qualifers each.
This is very much the norm… the head coaches and managers are typically selected well out of the selection meet, as there are decisions on logistics (travel, schedules, etc) that must be set in motion; as well as info about the meet (meetings, conference calls, etc)… we are only a few months out at this point…. can’t exactly wing it with these types of things
Texas will have some Lady Longhorns on the team. Remember, this is WUGs, not World Championships.
Believe it or not, coaches need vacations too. Most will have scheduled their august time off prior to the end of June
both former staffers at uga?
This smells fishy, darn it Soros!