OCC Crew Ready for Challenge : Rowing: West Coast’s entry in England’s Henley Regatta will face a higher level of competition this week.

The Orange Coast College crew, which has made a name for itself on the national level, will compete at an even higher level this week when it participates in the 151st Henley Royal Regatta in England.

In May, the eight OCC oarsmen and their coxswain defeated teams from UCLA, Stanford and Washington to win a Pacific Coast rowing championship in Sacramento. In June, Orange Coast finished fifth at the U.S. national championships in Syracuse.

This week at Henley, 40,000 to 50,000 spectators are expected to line the banks of the River Thames 36 miles west of London to watch the most prestigious rowing competition in the world. All but 70 of the 403 teams entered are from Great Britain. Six are from the United States, and Orange Coast is the only West Coast entry.

“The intensity of racing here is so dramatic because there are so many hundreds of crews,” Orange Coast College Coach Dave Grant said. “To race at Henley is such a tremendous thrill, and of course, to win at Henley is just about the best thing that could happen to an athlete.”

Orange Coast has entered seven previous competitions at Henley but no one on this crew--Sean Nicholson, Jon Kern, Kyle Enger, Ed Turner, Jeff Lundwall, Ramsey Madsen, Charlie Stewart, Tom Mitchell and coxswain Steve Morris--was around in 1988, the last time the Pirates competed there, so the pomp and pageantry is a new experience.

“It’s kind of breathtaking but we can’t enjoy it,” said oarsman Kyle Enger in a telephone interview from England. “We’re not here to take part in all that. We’re here to win.”

Winning at Henley takes four victories in four races, unlike most collegiate crew events in the United States. Usually U.S. crew races match at least four boats on a lake or canal, but at Henley two boats go head-to-head in each race on the Thames.

Not only is the race about 200 yards longer than 2,000 meters--the standard Olympic course length--it also goes against the Thames’ current.

Grant, who also is the college’s president, said he believes this team has a good chance to outperform any OCC team. In 1977, the OCC boat advanced to the semifinals of the Ladies Challenge Plate division before losing.

This year, OCC, which will open Wednesday against University College of Oxford, is one of five seeded teams in the 16-team Henley Prize Cup division. The division, made up of college teams and excluding teams from universities, was created to give smaller schools a chance to be more competitive.

“We’ve seen some of our competition,” Enger said. “It looks good. It’s going to be a very hard race, but that’s how it’s been all along.”