She is now training with the New Zealand Under-23 team at Lake Karapiro.
Behrent (19) and fellow University club member Fiona Bourke have been selected in the New Zealand Under-23 eight that is preparing for the world championships in Brest, Belarus, in July.
It is a rapid advance.
"It was a big shock to me.
"I didn't expect it at all," Behrent said from Lake Karapiro yesterday.
"I'm loving it up here, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else at the moment.
"It's brilliant training with the elite rowers.
"They have set the benchmark and we have to get up to that standard."
Behrent was a member of the New Zealand netball talent development squad, and the Southland team.
She also played water polo for Southland before the fateful day she went to the rowing course in Invercargill to watch her brother.
Oliver Behrent (17) is in the New Zealand junior rowing team that will compete at the world championships in Prague, Czech Republic, in August.
"Oliver's coach, John O'Connor, told me that I had the height and would make a good rower," Behrent said.
"He encouraged me to start rowing."
Bourke (21) was a novice rower when she joined the University club three years ago and has also made rapid progress with Behrent under the coaching direction of Glen Sinclair and Sonya Walker.
"We are targeting the gold medal at Brest," Behrent said.
Other Otago rowers training with New Zealand teams at Lake Karapiro are North End pair Lucy Strack, in the women's lightweight double sculls, and Hamish Bond, in the elite men's pair.
