Everything You Need to Know About the 2026 UCF Rowing Team

ORLANDO, Fla. — Two seasons into the Mara Allen era, UCF rowing has already rewritten its record book. Now, as the Knights launch their 2026 campaign ranked No. 15 in the CRCA preseason poll, the program that stunned the Big 12 last spring is aiming even higher.

Allen, who collected eight Big 12 titles and two NCAA crowns as an assistant at Texas under her former college coach Dave O’Neil, guided UCF to its first conference championship in 2025—the first Big 12 postseason title in any sport for the university. The Knights backed that breakthrough with a program-best 15th-place finish at the NCAA Championship, a benchmark they will try to improve upon when the national regatta returns this spring.

“We’re starting where we left off,” Allen said at the team’s 2026 Media Day. “The standard is no longer just making the NCAAs—it’s contending once we’re there.”

The roster is anchored by a trio of all-conference performers. Senior Hannah Lovejoy, the program’s first All-American since Julie Poulsen in 2019, headlines the group after earning CRCA All-America honorable mention and Big 12 Rower of the Year honors last season. She is joined by fellow seniors Brigitz Kappler and Luna Kuiper, both All-Big 12 selections in 2025 and key engines in the varsity eight.

Depth arrived via the transfer portal in Schultz, a former Mercyhurst rower who bolsters the Knights’ middle lineup. The squad’s global footprint expanded again with newcomers from Denmark, Australia, Chile, South Africa, Canada, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Serbia, Hungary and Finland, continuing UCF’s tradition of mining international talent.

That pipeline has produced a litany of decorated alumni: a 2024 Olympic bronze medalist in Lithuanian single sculls, a Danish women’s four Olympian, three-time CRCA All-Americans and multiple AAC Boats of the Year spanning 2015-2017. The Knights made five consecutive NCAA appearances from 2015-2019 and now seek their third straight trip to the national stage after last year’s return.

With the Big 12 Championship set for May and the NCAA Championship following in June, UCF will spend the spring measuring itself against a schedule that includes perennial powers Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. The bar, Allen insists, is no longer a surprise title run—it is sustaining the momentum that has already made 2026 feel like the next chapter of a rapidly ascending legacy.