The varsity men’s crew from University of California, San Diego (UCSD) rallied from third place in the last 1,000 meters of the 2,000-meter grand finals of the Cal Cup race to edge out UCLA by 2 feet ” 0.42 seconds ” and make a big splash at the 34th annual Crew Classic on Mission Bay Sunday, April 1.
“We were seven seats back at the halfway point, but our plan was to make our move in the third quarter of the race,” first-year UCSD men’s head coach Zach Johnson said. “It’s our first win. It was a great effort ” this means a lot to UCSD.”
The victory was shared by all San Diego universities ” all of the teams were at the finish line cheering the top local team to victory.
But it was a rough day, according to Johnson. With just three minutes before time to launch the men’s boat, it was discovered that a ladies crew had rowed a boat back to the boathouse on El Carmel Point ” and taken the varsity crew’s oars by mistake.
“The only (oars) left were old and loose ” an outdated design,” Johnson said. “So I asked USD coach Brooks Dagman, and he let us borrow their oars.”
The USD brothers-in-oars share boathouse space with UCSD.
“I only had 30 seconds for my pep-talk,” Johnson added. “I just said they had to trust each other. They had done all the work, now they just had to go out and get it done.”
Coach Johnson crewed at both SDSU and USD before serving two years as assistant coach for UCSD and then assuming the head coach job last fall.
It all added up to a great celebration by the men and women of the local crew community, who hadn’t seen a local team win a major victory since the SDSU women won the Women’s Cal Cup race in 2005.
The award is formally known as the American Specialty Health Cup (ASH). The champion UCSD crew included Joe Gram, Derek Huffman, Brenden Carriker, Tyler Sutheily, Shawn Hay, Gilbert Collins, Darren Von Platten, Ryan Andre and Michael Zurke.
Four of the crew and the coxswain are seniors. The Cal Cup trophy was presented by ASH president George DeVries, whose rowing days were at UCSD.
UCSD won its qualifying heat Saturday morning, but the team’s time was behind UCLA’s finish by a second.
The other highlight of the competition Saturday was the men’s masters victory from the San Diego Rowing Club (SDRC). The average age of all the masters crews in the race was over 70.
The champion SDRC crew included Kelsey McWilliams, Dodd Wragg, Mike Welch, Kent Casady, Scott Kemper, Ron Iverson, Greg Underwood, Wil Reimann and team captain Alfred Czerner.
The premiere women’s Jessop Whittier Cup race was won by USC. The men’s Copley Cup was won by Stanford. Both races saw Cal Berkeley come in second, edged out of a top trophy for the first time since 1999.
The Crew Classic is the largest regatta of eight-person teams to gather anywhere in the world. It featured 39 universities and included a total of 100 club and college teams, with more than 3,400 athletes from across the country and one team from the United Kingdom, all competing in 90 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 (1.24 miles) in six to seven all-out minutes of muscle-powered amateur competition.
Local participants in the Crew Classic included teams from UCSD, SDSU, USD, the ZLAC women’s club and the SDRC. All of them make their homes on Mission Bay.
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.
For SDRC information, visit www.SDRC-row.org.
The historic all-women’s ZLAC club on PB Drive has information available at www.ZLAC.com.