A Stand-In Boat Makes Good as Penn Wins Varsity Eight Final

Call it the boat that disappeared.

The University of Pennsylvania won the Copley Cup--men’s varsity eight final--Saturday in the San Diego Crew Classic at Mission Bay.

Then the Quakers watched USC haul their boat away.

It was gone by the time Penn accepted the award for covering the 2,000-meter course in 6:04.01, ahead of second-place Washington’s 6:04.67.

USC took possession before the Quakers even had a chance to name the thing. The other winners--the University of Washington (Whittier Cup), the University of San Diego (men’s Cal Cup) and UC Davis (women’s Cal Cup)--kept their boats. But not Penn.

And Penn Coach Stan Bergman wasn’t even upset.

“Well, we didn’t pay anything for it,” he said.

Explanation? The boat was sent down from Seattle on loan by Bill Titys, who builds racing shells. It was a Pocock--a new make--and Penn purchased one a couple of weeks ago. But Titys offered to loan Penn another Pocock this weekend in San Diego, so Bergman left Pocock I in Philadelphia. USC, meanwhile, purchased the boat Penn used Saturday.

It was the second disappearing act of the day for the Penn boat. The first was in the Copley Cup race, which Penn led the entire way. Washington kicked in the final 500 meters to make it close, but it was Penn’s race from the start.

“We wanted to take charge from the first strokes,” said Andrew Goldberg, the Penn coxswain. “We wanted to be aggressive as hell. At the end, we knew they were coming, but we had worked too hard to let some crew get us at the end.”

The Washington women were able to finish the job the men couldn’t, winning their third consecutive Whittier Cup (women’s varsity eights final). UCLA had the early lead. Stanford passed the Bruins, and then Cal took the lead, but the persistent Washington crew rowed into first with about 200 meters left.

The picked up momentum with about 500 meters left, when Washington coxswain Stephanie Doyle called out to the crew that they were running out of time.

“I told them we can’t wait any longer,” Doyle said. “And we went.”

The University of San Diego men’s crew, smiling all the way, won its first Cal Cup (varsity eights from California schools) since 1986.

“The big joke on the boat was to smile for the whole day,” USD coxswain Brigid Sullivan said. “Coach said if we smiled, we would relax.”

Apparently, it worked.

“We rowed horribly in practice yesterday,” USD Coach Joe Flohr said. “So I was trying to get them to relax. Smiling is a good relaxing technique.”

USD was wary because UC Santa Barbara was in the Cal Cup finals, and UCSB defeated USD by about four seconds in a dual meet three weeks ago. But the USD boat hit a buoy in that race. Saturday, USD sailed along smoothly, covering the 2,000-meter course in 6:22.49, ahead of UCSB’s 6:23.28.

“The guys were really relaxed at the start, but we had a shaky first 20 strokes,” Sullivan said. “Then we did what we call a shift and started swinging together.”

It worked. USD overtook the UC Irvine, the early leader, at about 300 or 400 meters, held off a UCSB charge at about 1,250 meters and then out-sprinted UCSB to the end.

USD lost to UCSB later in the day in the Cal-Visitor’s Cup, a late-addition to the racing schedule designed to give California crews a chance to compete against the best visitors from other states. But USD had already accomplished its goal.

Purdue (6:21.2) won the Cal-Visitor’s Cup, UCSB (6:28.61) was second and USD (6:28.72) was third.

The USD women’s crew almost made it a Cal Cup sweep for the school, but a surge by UC Davis at the midway point ended that possibility. UC Davis (7:28.9) finished first, Long Beach State (7:29.93) second and USD (7:29.95) a close third.

It was a four-boat race at the 1,000-meter mark between UC Davis, UCSD, USD and Loyola Marymount before UC Davis edged ahead.

“After the 1,000-meter mark, we waited about 15 strokes and then took a power-20 (20 hard strokes),” fourth-year UC Davis coxswain Leanne Pratt said. “After that, we rode it out. We did it all on guts.”

UC Davis took a three-seat lead on UCSD with about 250 meters left and held on.

Crew Classic Notes

The public address announcer’s call of the day came in the men’s elite eight final, which was won by the Great Britain Rowing Club in 5:58.4. Great Britain was listed by its initials on the race form, and as the crew opened up a large lead, the public address announcer continually referred to the crew as the “Golden Bear Rowing Club.” The Great Britain crew featured six former Olympic rowers. . . . Saturday’s crowd at Crown Point Shores was estimated at 25,000.