Bob Bowman has coached at five Olympic Games. He’s guided some of the biggest swimmers in the world, from Michael Phelps — the most decorated Olympian in history — to Léon Marchand, who won four gold medals at the 2024 Paris Games. He comes to The University of Texas after nine years as head coach at Arizona State University, where he transformed the program and led the men’s team to its first national championship in 2024.
Still, taking on Texas’ program is a formidable task — one he feels ready to meet.
“(Texas) has had 15 men’s championships. I’ve had one,” Bowman says. “Clearly there is an expectation that we’re going to continue at that level, which I am all about.”
Bowman joined Texas in April in a newly created position, director of swimming and diving, and also takes over the role of men’s head coach from Eddie Reese, the winningest coach in the sport’s history, who retired after 46 seasons of building UT swimming into a national powerhouse.
“It’s an intimidating job no matter what you do, but I’m in a different place in my career, and I can stand on my own two feet,” Bowman says. “I’m not trying to make a name for myself in Eddie Reese’s shadow. I’m just going to be me.”
Bowman says he came to Texas to be part of the best.
“What I have found here, and what I learned in the interviewing process, is that every person in this building shares my passion for excellence, which is hard to do because it’s pretty high,” Bowman says. “Everybody in this facility believes we can be the best, we should be the best, and we should be striving for excellence. And that’s why I came.”
Bowman started swimming at 10 in his neighborhood pool and went on to compete at Florida State University. But after three years, he says, he recognized that his personal swimming career had gone as far as it could go. One of his coaches asked Bowman whether he would like to coach a summer program, and he has never looked back.
Bowman says he already enjoyed learning the theory and techniques behind his swimming, making the transition from swimmer to coach comfortable.
“I always thought like a coach, and I think it hurt my swimming,” Bowman says. “I was always analyzing myself. I was very hard on myself.”
Bowman likens his early coaching to the saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Like many young coaches, he started out doing what his own coaches did, which was limiting, he says.
“It’s very effective in the short term in getting people to change their behavior, but in the long term it’s exhausting, and it’s not a very good educational model,” Bowman says. “(Now), I can tailor it to the individual, and I can communicate with them the way that they are most effectively communicated with.”
Erik Posegay, named associate head coach a few weeks after Bowman assumed his role as director, formerly coached with Bowman at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club and calls him a visionary planner.
“The structure that he is going to bring to the program is not only going to set us up for success in the near future but is going to set us up for success in the long term,” Posegay says.
This past summer, Bowman coached with Team France at the Paris Olympics, where Marchand won five medals in all, while also training several American Olympians and Hungarian gold medal winner Hubert Kós, now a UT swimmer. Several other UT athletes also competed, and Bowman says he’s looking forward to many more in future Olympics.
“Every time I go there, it’s a refresher into why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Bowman says. “What a joy it is to help these young people step up into big moments and do great things. What I bring back (from the Olympics) is the enthusiasm to get back to work after going through that.”
Bowman says regardless of the level of competition or the level of athlete, his process doesn’t change. His coaching philosophy is simple: The process is more important than the outcome. It’s a way of thinking that he says has evolved over his career.
“I was very outcome-focused in the early years,” Bowman says. “But what I’ve learned is if you really want to have consistent, sustained success, you need to focus your time and energy and efforts on the things that you control 100%.”
You’re not going to be a mediocre student and an excellent athlete because the things that make you excellent in the pool are going to make you excellent in school.
What Bowman and his athletes can control, he says, is their attitude, the strategies they use in training, the equipment brought to the program and what they do away from the pool.
“We’re trying to refine our process for success, trying to get each individual to key into what are their things that they need to do to be successful,” Bowman says. “And then on a daily basis, just try to make incremental change. Just be a small percentage better each day. If you’re doing that for a long enough time, big changes are going to occur.”
Bowman and his coaches don’t want their athletes to only be successful in the pool. They build the program around values, such as honesty, accountability, resiliency and respect, that they hope will serve athletes well in all areas of their life.
“What we tell people is that how you do anything is how you do everything,” Bowman says. “You’re not going to be a mediocre student and an excellent athlete because the things that make you excellent in the pool are going to make you excellent in school.”
Posegay says the 15 championships won at Texas are ever present, a constant reminder, but he and Bowman embrace the expectations.
“We could not be more excited to be here,” Posegay says. “We could not be more excited to be a part of this great tradition and this great legacy, and we’re looking forward to putting our own footprint down as well in this program’s great history. There’s no place any of us would rather be than The University of Texas.”
