The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Big 12 Swimming & Diving Championships Spotlight: Joanna Evans
02.21.2016 | Women's Swimming and Diving
Bahamian freshman Joanna Evans holds top-three seeds in her three events at this week's Big 12 Championships.
Big 12 Championship Events (Event, Seed, Time)
500 Freestyle, 2nd, 4:43.07
200 Freestyle, 3rd, 1:47.30
1,650 Freestyle, 1st, 9:14.77 (1000 free)
On coming to the United States and transitioning to life at Texas: For me, it was so much more than a different atmosphere. When I trained at home there weren't very many people and there were limited resources. There weren't very many places to train…you'd have to bounce around to find pool space, basically. Now, once you're here, you have weights and practice, and if you can't make practice for a certain reason you can catch up later or catch it up earlier. There's so many more benefits than you realize. Looking from the outside, obviously, you see a great program, but once you get here you realize that it's so much better than an outsider can see.
On her progress so far in her first season: When I first got here, I was a little concerned because I had never swam short course yards, and the times were like I was reading a foreign language (after training in short-course meters in The Bahamas). My coaches would tell me that some of my times were good and I thought… alright! I always trained short course meters but I always raced long course meters, but when I got here it was all yards. I could've gone a minute for a 100-yard free and thought it was so good.
Getting into the season, I feel like for any freshman it's a little challenging because it's all new, and you have weights that most people probably haven't done before. You have schedules and things like that that you're probably never used to because, for me, I never did morning (workouts), let alone 5:30 mornings. That was a big change with weights and all that.
On head coach Carol Capitani and assistant coach Roric Fink: Obviously both of them are very, very knowledgeable, but there's more to a coach than just knowing what they're good at. They're both very good. I work with Carol a bit more just because the nature of what I swim, but both of them are very into making sure you feel okay. It's not just "go and do the set." They want to make sure that you're doing it properly and that you feel alright and that everyone is on the same page. You could feel really, really bad and they will want to know. They just want to make sure it's all good. For me, I never really envisioned having a woman as my coach. So, when I got a call from Texas my mom was like, "Yeah, a lady called!" And I thought, "Oh!" But once I met she and Roric, it was a done deal because they're just so charismatic as well as knowing what they do so well.
On the Big 12 Championships: For any swimmer going into a big championship like that, you've always got goals. For everyone I feel like it's different, but for me I definitely just want to go stand up and race and see what I can do and prepare myself the best I can for NCAAs. I feel like I just want to race for Texas and see what I can do.
Texas head coach Carol Capitani
On Joanna: Joanna has had a really solid year. I think that sometimes the transition from long-course swimming and international swimming is a completely different story than where she's been and what we're trying to do now. There's a really big learning curve and I think she's handled it really, really well.
On Joanna's outlook at the Big 12 Championships: We're using this meet to prepare for the NCAA Championships and to prepare for the mile. The goal is to have her season-best times in the 200, 500 and the mile. Especially just the last day, I think the goal is always for great milers to get under 16 minutes. That'd be kind of a fun thing to do.
She's pretty serious about racing and she has a great sense of humor. To juxtapose those two, her great sense of humor, her intensity and her seriousness about racing, is pretty fun.
