SDSU Crew Must Pull Its Weight : Rowing: As the Aztec coach, Doug Perez has learned that it requires money and hard work just to keep the program afloat.
Doug Perez has seen the dark side. He has soiled his hands on the evil in the streets, the crime in the alleys, the down and the dirty. He’s seen it from behind a badge pinned to his chest and he decided he was no Marshal Dillon.
So he turned away from law enforcement and looked elsewhere for satisfaction. He became an educator. And then he became a coach of what is, perhaps, the last amateur sport.
“You can be the best rower in the world,” he says, “and you can’t make any money.”
There is little glory in crew.
Arenas aren’t filled with cheering fans rooting for their favorite university’s shells, those thin vessels that glide across the water with as few as one or as many as nine athletes aboard. The only waves are the ones created by the water. No, there isn’t much glamour being a volunteer coach for a Southern California crew team. But there aren’t any bullets flying in your direction, either.
Today (6:45 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.) and Saturday (7 a.m to 3:30 p.m.), in the San Diego Crew Classic at Mission Bay’s Crown Point Shores, Perez and his San Diego State men’s team will try to redirect a program that was once a West Coast power but is now third among three San Diego universities with crew teams.
Perez has 17 years of experience, including a stint from 1978-84 as coach at SDSU. That was when he turned the program into the West Coast’s third-best. He returned to the program in January after spending five years at UC Santa Barbara, which had lured him away after the 1984 Olympics with a coaching position paid out of an actual crew budget.
Coincidentally, he has coached three others who are head crew coaches at San Diego colleges: Joe Flohr (University of San Diego men), Mike Shannon (UC San Diego men) and Darlene Disney (USD women).
“I’ve been the crazy one because I’ve tried to make a living at it,” Perez joked.
He is the only one of the four who doesn’t get backing from his athletic department.
Perez’s salary will be about half the $25,000 “budget” his program will fund-raise through its athletes, parents and alumni rowers.
“If you get to coach rowing and get paid for it, you’re kind of lucky,” said Flohr. “I don’t envy his position at all. The only thing I envy of his is a student body of 30,000.”
Some people might think that Perez is a nut case. He has had three careers in his 41-year lifetime: law enforcement, education, and coaching. There’s no doubt where the least money is in those three options, but that’s the one he has chosen.
Perhaps it is natural that he would gravitate toward a sport that is the antithesis of all the grime he was exposed to as a member of the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department and Oakland Police Department from 1970-78. Except for his two-year teaching hiatus in 1975-76 while pursuing his masters degree in political science, Perez saw enough of the dark side to last him a lifetime.
In contrast to life on the streets, the sport of rowing is one filled with men and women who must discipline in a grueling manner not only their bodies, but also their time. There are eight to 10 practices in a week--in the water, in the weight room and on the stationary bikes--but it’s all in addition to normal student activities. There aren’t enough hours in the day to be undisciplined.
“When you’re in crew and you’re preparing yourself for law school,” Perez said, “you can’t go over to the pizza parlor and have a couple of beers in the middle of the afternoon just because somebody you know happens to wander by.”
He got a taste of this discipline when he was in college.
“Crew meant a great deal to me as an undergraduate at Cal,” he said. “Then to go out in the real world and experience the slice of life that a cop sees is very negative. To see people making excuses and not taking responsibility for what they were doing made rowing that much more important to me.”
Perez’s day sometimes begins at 5 a.m. when he watches the freshmen row and it usually ends around 9 p.m. after an evening of fund-raising on the telephone. Without any backing from SDSU’s athletic department, he has to work hard, but that’s one of the demands of the sport. He is not unlike the athletes who compete not only for him but for most crew teams around the country.
“It’s real important to me that crew’s a throwback to amateur athletics,” he said. “The sport teaches a couple of very important lessons. One, to know substance from fluff and, two, the importance of hard work.”
He says that is why members of crew teams graduate and go on to become doctors, lawyers and business leaders.
“They learn the difference between substantive performance and making up excuses,” he explained. “The fact is that if you don’t win the race, nobody wants to know why. No one wants to hear your excuses. I think that’s an important principle.
“The leaders of tomorrow should have some idea of what real, honest, hard work is all about and not making excuses about your performance. It’s about taking responsibility for your life. Your bosses in the business world don’t want to hear your excuses about why your reports aren’t ready.”
In short, for the big money that many rowers go on to make in the business world, crew as a club sport is almost an initiation.
“When you have to pay your own way and pick up your own expenses, it can get into the hundreds of dollars,” Perez said. “The rewards these kids get are between their ears or in their heart. There’s not a lot of money. There are no scholarships. There is no way to make any money. If you’re the best rower in the world, you can’t make any money.”
As a club sport, the program’s budget, like its destiny, is in its own hands. Perez, in fact, was talking between phone calls, hitting up young alums for $100 and more established ones for $1,000 trying to sustain his program.
“The biggest problem is just money,” he was saying. “In 1983 and ‘84, when we were racing at our highest level against programs where crew is a major sport, we did that with no budget. You spend more time fund-raising and not as much time coaching. Unfortunately, it means some kids can’t row because it costs too much.
“Our budget is $25,000, and we’re fund-raising every penny. On the other hand, there are universities like Harvard where they get a budget of $500,000 and become national champions.”
Perez’s dream is to get a million dollar endowment and have his program live off the interest.
“Not only so we can go fast and make inroads toward being a powerhouse team,” he said, “but so that we can make crew available to every kid who goes to San Diego State, not just the ones who can afford it.”
Flohr, who rowed for Perez for one year, says his former coach is a great recruiter and expects an Aztec turnaround.
“He does get some very good athletes out there, and in ’83 and ‘84, he had some great athletes in his boat,” said Flohr, who competed in 1978. “I think they’ll get faster with him. If he does what he did here and at Santa Barbara, he’ll get better athletes in the program and they’ll definitely show some speed.”
As for the Crew Classic, Perez is hoping his team will show some speed. But if it doesn’t, at least there won’t be any bullets flying.
SAN DIEGO CREW CLASSIC
More than 2,800 rowers from around the world will be at Crown Point Shores today and Saturday for the San Diego Crew Classic, the season’s first major collegiate regatta.
This is expected to be the strongest field in the event’s 17-year history, which was witnessed by more than 35,000 fans last year along the 1 1/4 mile course.
The major prizes are for the heavyweight rowers, the Copley Cup, the Collegiate Men’s Varsity Eight Invitational, and the Whittier Cup, the same event for the women. The women’s final is at 3 p.m. Saturday; the men go at 3:20 p.m.
Among the participants this year are national champion Harvard, and perennial powers Yale, Princeton, Cal, and Washington.
In addition to the collegiate events, the Crew Classic has been named the only non-European venue among the five races of the first World Cup, a world competition between the best male and female single scullers. Those international events are 6:45 a.m.-10 a.m. today, and 2:25 p.m.-3 p.m. Saturday. The collegiate and club rowing events are today from 12:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m. and tomorrow from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Admission is $3.