The men’s crew from Stanford University broke the seven-year dynasty of Cal Berkeley by two seconds to have their names engraved on the Copley Cup. Stanford has been trying for 31 of the 33 years of Crew Classic eight-person rowing regatta history to win the race.
The women from Cal defeated University of Southern California (USC) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to hold on to the Jessop-Whittier Cup for the fourth consecutive year in the premiere race for collegiate women athletes.
San Diego State University (SDSU) won the Cal Cup in 2005 and were obliged to move up to the premiere ranks of the Jessop-Whittier competition. After turning in a better time than last spring, the Lady Aztecs were 18 seconds behind the best women’s time at the event.
“It’s tough mentally to move up and not enjoy that feeling of success as last year,” said SDSU women’s head coach Jennifer Zebroski. “But I am happy with our varsity and all our crews. We are building to that next level. We rowed well and only one from that varsity boat will be graduating. Next year we’ll be back stronger than ever.”
The UCSD men’s varsity placed second in their Men’s Cal Cup qualifier ahead of SDSU to advance to the grand finals on Sunday. The UCSD junior varsity crew also made the grand final to go head-to-head with Cal.
The UCSD men’s novice crew advanced to the “Petite” consolation race, where they turned in the winning time of 6:33.
The novice men from University of San Diego (USD) made the grand final where they were racing the top young prospects from Cal, Stanford and Texas.
Young crews were also among the most successful from other local clubs. The SD Rowing Club (SDRC) junior-age men’s crew won the Petite race in impressive style.
The women’s varsity crew from the U.S. Naval Academy won their Women’s Cal Cup qualifying heat. After getting off to a bad start in the finals, they finished behind Miami, Kansas and Sacramento State.
“Considering there are about 900 women at the Naval Academy and about 10,000 at most of these other schools, they are very competitive,” said Linda Hrenko, mother of Academy freshman women’s crew member Michael from University City High.
Michael is an alum of the San Diego Rowing Club (SDRC) girls junior crew program who were competing in Boston while the Academy varsity made the trip to Mission Bay. Her younger sister Ashlan competed with the SDRC Juniors junior varsity crew to continue the family tradition on the water.
Another local athlete, Amanda Bremseth from Mission Bay High, rowed for SDSU. The prep three-sport athlete is a senior political science major who now has her sights set on law school.
During Blemseth’s Women’s Open grand final race, a 40-foot yacht drifted across the course, causing two shells to veer out of their lanes to avoid the intruder ,which ended up grounded on Fiesta Island.
“It was a little distracting, to say the least,” Blemseth said.
Another senior on Blemseth’s crew, Korina Tonne, brought her family out to meet her SDSU women’s crew family and share in the dedication of a new shell (62-foot boat) to Tonne’s grandfather, Deter “Papas” Meyer.
“There is a tradition in rowing to name a shell and dedicate it to someone,” Zebroski said. “Their family stepped up with money for our program and we agreed to dedicate our new boat to grandpa Deter, who died recently.”
Tonne’s grandfather was proud of their family’s athletic tradition and taught her to “never give up,” Korina said.
The Crew Classic is the largest regatta of eight-person teams to gather anywhere in the world. It included more than 100 teams with over 3,200 athletes from universities and clubs across the country competing in 92 races over two days.
A race includes more than 220 strokes by eight synchronized rowers to propel the 62-foot shells over the 2,000-meter course in a 6-to 7 minute all-out, muscle-powered competition.
After threats of foul weather Saturday, the skies turned sunny both days. A light breeze cooled the guests.
Local competitors in the Crew Classic included teams from UCSD, SDSU, USD, ZLAC women’s club, the SDRC and Mission Bay Rowing Club. All of them make their home on Mission Bay.
Among the other successful local teams were SDRC men’s and women’s masters as well as the ZLAC women’s masters.
Both clubs offer outstanding juniors summer camp programs in June, July and August. SDRC is co-ed, while ZLAC features introductory camps for high school-age girls.
SDRC information is available from their Web site at www.SDRC-row.org and click on “juniors.”
The historic all-women’s ZLAC club on Pacific Beach Drive has information available at www.ZLAC.com.
The next big local crew action comes this Saturday, April 8, at 8 a.m., when all the local university teams gather for the city championships on East Mission Bay near the Hilton.