April 6, 2005
The 32nd Annual Crew Classic turned out to be one of the more interesting regatta weekends in recent Torero Rowing history. Each of USD's five eights had tough draws for their heats, but all raced well against formidable competition which included NCAA top-ranked teams USC, UCLA, Texas and Tennessee. The Varsity Eight just missed third place in their heat, finishing behind Villanova by .4 seconds, and qualified for the Petite Final on Sunday morning.
The JV drew UCLA, USC, Tennessee and Kansas State in their heat, but had an extremely strong race against WCC rival, Loyola Marymount, who finished just .2 seconds ahead. Both LMU and USD went on to the 3rd Level Final in the JV Eights. Once again, the JV had a strong start, holding on to third place for the first 1500 meters. At 500 to go, the eight started to make a bold move, and were poised to take second place when one of the rowers caught a crab, costing the boat about 5 seconds, and moving them into 4th place. In the same race, USD's 2nd Novice put up a valiant fight against much more experienced varsity crews, finishing 6th.
Sunday morning brought more unfortunate "racing karma" to USD. The Varsity Eight faced solid competition in the Cal Cup Petite Final, but was confident that they would be able to bring home the win. The Eight started off strong, bow ball-to-bow ball with UC Santa Barbara, whom they had beaten by 9 seconds the previous weekend. By the 1500 meter mark, they had slipped into fourth, but were just 3 seconds off of the lead and ready to make their final charge. The boat began to pick up speed through the 500 meter mark when Junior, Christy Baker, caught the extremely rare "ejecto-crab" and was flung from the boat in mid-air! Fortunately, and most importantly, Christy was not seriously hurt. But needless to say, the race was lost for USD at that point. The crew pulled themselves together with great composure. Just 7 rowers then in the boat, the team went right back to racing cadence, finishing the course with a still-competitive spirit. Incredibly, despite all of this, the Varsity Eight finished just 30 seconds off of fifth-place finisher, Temple.
In Novice news...the First Novice Eight had an outstanding finish to their weekend. Having been grouped with powerhouses Washington State, Texas and UC Davis in their heat, they raced in the 3rd level final on Saturday afternoon. Jumping to the lead right off the start, the USD Eight held their over USCD for the first 1500 meters. With an increadable sprint at 500 meters to go, the Torero Novices expanded their lead to 8 seconds and easily took first place in the final.
But perhaps most interesting of all the strange happenings at this years Crew Classic was the infestation of bees in the 1st Novice Eight, the Brumder. Seemingly out of nowhere, a swarm of bees decided to make USD's boat their home. Experts estimate there were upewards of 3000 bees in the boat. Crew Classic officials cleared the area and called in a professional bee-keeper. Fully suited in protective gear, the bee expert strayed the boat, inside and out, in an attempt to encourage the bees to move on. Within a few hours, most of them did; but enough stubborn bees stuck around that the boat was deemed unrowable, and the Novices had to borrow another boat for their race.
"This was certainly one of the most unusual regattas I have ever been a part of," commented Coach O'Hara. "I hope that at next year's Crew Classic we will be able to simply have some good solid races. Even thought this is an early season regatta, the team was poised for some very good performances this year. So, we are all disappointed at this strange series of mishaps. But, we're ready to put this weekend behind us and continue to focus on our main goal for the season: winning the WCC Championship at the end of the month. And besides, now we have some really good stories to tell for years to come!"
The Toreros next race is the San Diego City Championships on April 9th.
