New Texas coach Bob Bowman also comes with a new job title to lead Longhorns swimming

When it comes to the swimming and diving teams for both the men and women at Texas, school officials believe shifting around the coaching structure can only strengthen one of the top programs in collegiate athletics.

That was the message delivered by Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte as well as new men’s swimming coach Bob Bowman, who was introduced as the replacement for recently retired coaching legend Eddie Reese on Tuesday. Bowman, fresh off a national championship at Arizona State, will serve in the newly created position of director of swimming and diving while also serving as head men’s coach. His salary was not immediately available.

Carol Capitani will retain her role as the head women’s swimming and diving coach, and Matt Scoggin remains the head diving coach for both the Texas men and women. Previously, Reese served solely as the head men’s swimming coach.

So why fix what’s not broke?

For one, it helped lure Bowman, 58, away from an Arizona State program that he built into a national champion from scratch. But both he and Capitani emphasized Tuesday that the program’s realignment will better utilize everything from coaching and recruiting to allocation of funding.

“The director of swimming role did have an appeal for me to come here because I feel like what you've seen in the landscape of swimming in recent years is there is a huge advantage towards being able to have men's and women's teams work together, mainly to capitalize on resources,” Bowman said. “Facility usage is much easier when we kind of work together. I think recruiting will be much better when we're doing it together. We can have more coaches who can be more specific in the training groups; you could have a coach coaching breaststroke, somebody coaching distance swimming, somebody coaching sprinting, instead of maybe two coaches doing everything separately. So there's a lot of synergy there.

“And my role is to sort of shepherd the two programs into the next era of doing that. And it'll be a process. It's not going to be today. Everything is pretty much the same and will be for a little bit. But my goal is to see where we can find areas where we can gain an advantage by really working together and to kind of foster that as we go along.”

Bowman is a Hall of Famer who served as the longtime coach of Olympic legend Michael Phelps. Working alongside Reese, who served as Team USA’s head coach in 2004 and 2008, as the primary coach for Phelps at the 2004 Olympic Games, Bowman helped Phelps claim eight total medals, including six gold and two bronze. Four years later at the 2008 Games, Phelps won eight Olympic gold medals, a feat that had never been done before in a single Olympiad.

Bowman served as the head men’s coach for Team USA at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Reese retired after an unprecedented 46-year career that includes not only 15 national titles but also 13 runner-up finishes. Starting in his second season at UT in 1978, he won the Southwest and Big 12 conference titles every year, giving him 45 straight championships. He said Bowman will continue the championship legacy of the Texas program

Meanwhile, Capitani, who just finished her 12th season at Texas by leading the Longhorns to a third consecutive runner-up finish at the NCAA national meet, told the American-Statesman that she welcomes Bowman — and the creation of the director of swimming and diving position — with open arms.

“I think what we really want to do is be in a unique situation where we don't have to look like any other program in the country. And we can,” Capitani said. “The women are rockin’ and rollin’ right now. I mean, all we want to do is help each other so we can both be great. And if I'm working with Bob, and we're working together really well, we can use our resources most efficiently.”

Capitani, who has known Bowman for 25 years, played a crucial role in recruiting the American Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Fame member to Texas, said Del Conte.

“The gravitas of this hire would not have been made without the leadership and the dedication and the fortitude of Carol Capitani,” Del Conte said. “And I just want to again reiterate that and thank her for that. The synergy of those conversations (with Capitani) during this process is critical, and we're just thrilled that we have a chance to have not only have Bob here, but also have Carol as our head women's coach.”

A 2010 inductee into the American Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Fame, Bowman is a five-time ASCA coach of the year and is the most-honored coach in the 40-plus years of the award. He has earned USA Swimming coach of the year honors six times, the USA Swimming Foundation’s Golden Goggle Award four times and was the 2002 USA Swimming developmental coach of the year.

Bowman was the U.S. men’s head coach at the 2007, 2009 and 2013 FINA World Championships and an assistant coach at the 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2011 World Championships. His swimmers have set 43 world records and more than 50 American records under his guidance.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: New Texas swim coach Bob Bowman comes with new job title