UC Irvine Notebook : Moore Puts Stock in Anteater Rowing

Larry Moore has an MBA, lives in Newport Beach and rises at 5:30 every morning. He is up when the stock market opens.

But Moore isn’t sitting in front of a ticker. He is not driven by money; he is driven by an outboard motor out on Newport Bay, following behind a bunch of guys in long, thin boats.

Moore is the crew coach at UC Irvine. Fourteen years ago, he was getting his master’s in business administration at Irvine when he started coaching the school’s freshman crew.

Then he coached for eight years at Orange Coast College, where he rowed before he went on to Cornell University. For the past five years, he has coached at Irvine.

Other crew programs have a head start on 23-year-old Irvine in the oldest intercollegiate sport in the United States. But Irvine goes head to head with the most established programs on the West Coast--schools such as California, UCLA and Washington--and holds its own.

Last Sunday, the Anteaters finished third behind UCLA and Orange Coast in the varsity eight and junior varsity eight races. Earlier this season, the Anteaters took 3 of 4 races from USC, losing the varsity race only after one oarsman’s rigger snapped with Irvine leading by a length.

On May 21-22, Irvine will compete in the Pacific Coast Championships on Lake Natoma in Northern California.

The Irvine crew, currently totaling about 50 members, is composed entirely of walk-ons, most of whom have never been involved with the sport before. They have taken it upon themselves to get up before dawn, six days a week, in order to get cold and wet and push themselves to the brink of exhaustion. They receive minimal recognition, no scholarship money and little more than the shirts of the opponents they defeat.

The ideal oarsman, according to Moore, is 6-feet 4-inches and 200 pounds.

“It’s a leverage thing,” Moore said. “A crew should be the same size, doing the same thing at the same time. Like a V-8 engine.”

But there aren’t necessarily a surplus of such athletes roaming the Irvine campus. Anyone is welcome to come out for crew, and Moore recruits by setting up a table during orientation week and keeping an eye out for heads above the crowd.

“And any guys (basketball coach Bill) Mulligan cuts, I tell him to send over to us,” Moore said.

In addition to not receiving scholarships, the Irvine crew must raise most of its own funds for travel and equipment.

“It’s an extremely expensive sport,” Moore said. “A fully rigged boat costs $18,000.”

And that is where Moore’s MBA comes in handy.

The Anteaters have raised funds in innovative ways, including raffles, selling concessions at basketball games and doing inventory at a department store.

A local artist, Ruth Hynds, donated one of her original watercolors to the team, which then sold reproductions and raised enough money for a new eight-man boat, appropriately named “Ruth Hynds.”

The boat for which the crew raised money in a variety of ways was christened “Myrmecophaga Jubata Irvinus.” That is Latin for Giant Irvine Anteater.

Moore estimates it will cost about $7,000 for the crew to attend the Pacific Coast Championships.

So why do they do it?

“You just get kind of hooked,” Moore said. “Look at me. I could be off making money.”

The team will travel to San Diego Saturday to row against the University of San Diego.

The men’s tennis team won its fifth Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. title in six years last weekend at Las Cruces, N.M. And, for the fifth time in his nine-year career at Irvine, Greg Patton was named the PCAA coach of the year.

The Anteaters won 7 of 9 individual events, finishing with 59 points, well ahead of second-place UC Santa Barbara (40).

Irvine champions included Trevor Kronemann at No. 2 singles, Richard Lubner at No. 3 singles, Mike Briggs at No. 4 singles and Mike Cadigan at No. 6 singles.

The Anteaters won all three doubles titles. Briggs and Kronemann won No. 1 doubles, junior Mark Kaplan and Lubner won at No. 2, and Cadigan and sophomore Shige Kanroji won at No. 3.

Invitations to the NCAA championships, which begin May 20 at Athens, Ga., will be announced next week. Irvine (21-6 in dual matches) is fifth-ranked in the nation.

Members of the Anteater track and field team are traveling far and wide this weekend to find the best competition available in hope of qualifying for the NCAA championships, which will be held June 1-4 at Eugene, Ore.

Jill Harrington, Judy McLaughlin and Buffy Rabbitt will compete in the Oregon Twilight meet in Eugene on Saturday. McLaughlin and Rabbitt, who have both qualified for the NCAAs in the 1,500 meters, will run in the 3,000 meters. Harrington will run in both the 1,500 and the 3,000. And senior Rod Brower will compete in the 800 meters at the S&W; California Relays in Modesto Saturday.

The Irvine golf team tied for fourth at the PCAA championships Monday and Tuesday at Fort Ord, Calif. The Anteaters finished 54 holes at 930 strokes, along with New Mexico State. Fresno State won the title at 911. The University of the Pacific finished second (925) and UC Santa Barbara third (927).

Irvine’s Price Shoemaker, who was named to the All-PCAA second team, finished fourth with a total of 226. He shot rounds of 77, 75 and 74 and finished just one stroke behind the top three finishers, who tied at 225.

Anteater Notes

The Irvine baseball team (27-28-1) will finish its season this weekend with a three-game home stand against the University of the Pacific. Jeff Oberdank set the Irvine single-season hit record last week with a home run against Southern California College. It was his 89th hit of the season, breaking Mike Hirano’s record of 88 set in 1979. John Seeburger, batting .350 with a team-leading 59 RBIs, is 4 doubles shy of his school record of 23, set last season. Craig Brink, scheduled to start Sunday, pitched his eighth complete game of the season last week, defeating Nevada Las Vegas and improving his record to 8-5. The three Anteater seniors are expected to be selected in the June baseball draft. . . . The women’s tennis team placed fifth in the PCAA championships last weekend in Honolulu. Freshman Stacey Cadigan finished second at No. 6 singles, Courtney Weichsel won the consolation No. 1 singles and Weichsel and Kathy Rose placed second at No. 2 doubles.