Cupini Announces 2025 Rowing Schedule

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Second-year Tennessee rowing head coach Kim Cupini announced the program's 2025 schedule Thursday.

In 2024, Tennessee's first season under Cupini, Tennessee rowing recorded the best season in program history. The Lady Vols ascended to No. 3 in the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association's (CRCA) national rankings and placed third nationally at the NCAA Championships, earning a podium spot in two of the three Grand Final events.

Cupini earned CRCA National Coach of the Year and Big 12 Co-Head Coach of the Year honors in her first season at the helm on Rocky Top. In addition, the Tennessee coaching staff collectively earned the CRCA National Staff of the Year Award.

Tennessee opens the 2025 campaign in Cocoa, Florida, with a Feb. 15 race versus Louisville.

Its next race comes on Saturday, March 29, just west of Knoxville in nearby Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as the Lady Vols race against the Stanford Cardinal on Melton Hill Lake. The event marks a battle between two of the nation's top three teams from a season ago, as Tennessee (third) followed Stanford's second-place showing at the 2024 NCAA Championships.

The following weekend, UT hits the Oak Ridge waters once again, as it hosts the first-ever Rocky Top Invite, Friday-Saturday, April 4-5.

Then, Tennessee returns to the Big Ten Invitational in Sarasota, Florida, April 18-19, an weekend which it not only dominated a year ago, but made a name for itself in the Cupini era. At last season's running of the event, the Lady Vols won 14 of the 15 races in which it had a boat competing in.

This year's Big Ten Invitational will see 23 schools in competition and remains one of the nation's premier regular-season regattas at the NCAA level. Eleven schools set to race are from the Big Ten—Washington, Michigan, Ohio State, Rutgers, Indiana, USC, UCLA, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan State and Iowa. Twelve "guest" schools will also race that weekend—Tennessee, Brown, Penn, Duke, Oregon State, Alabama, Notre Dame, Harvard, Miami, SMU, Oklahoma and Clemson.

In all, of the 23 schools competing, 12 finished the 2024 season ranked in the top 20 of the CRCA national poll, eight were in the top 15, five were in the top 10, two were in the top five and seven others were receiving votes in the final (June 5) poll of the year.

A week later, on April 26, the Lady Vols travel to Princeton, as the Tigers serve as host to UT, Ohio State and Syracuse. The entirety of the four-team field capped 2024 ranked as top-13 crews nationally.

On May 11, the first annual SEC Championship race will take place at a TBA site. On Aug. 23, it was announced that rowing was approved by the SEC athletics directors as the 22nd sport to be sponsored by the league, beginning with the 2024-25 campaign.

The 2025 NCAA Championships, set to be held in Mercer, New Jersey, will run May 31-June 2.

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University of Tennessee Athletics

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