Hecht Is Ready for Chapter 2 : Rowing: President of Books on Tape, Inc., who founded the UC Irvine crew program 26 years ago, returns as team’s volunteer coach.

UC Irvine’s crew team was up the creek without a paddle after the university withdrew financial support last spring and its coach later quit.

The rowers needed a coach--not just any coach, but a coach who would work with them at their pre-dawn practices and do it for free. The team kept training on its own as it waited for someone, and now the rowers have been rescued by Duvall Hecht, the founder, president and CEO of Books on Tape, Inc., and a 1956 Olympic gold medalist.

Hecht, 61, who founded the Irvine crew program 26 years ago and was its coach from 1965-69, has returned as a volunteer coach. He made his name as an entrepreneur after he and his former wife, Sigrid Hecht, founded Books on Tape, a Costa Mesa company that produces and rents audiocassette recordings of bestsellers, classics, self-help, history and business books. The company, started in 1975, produces more than 2,500 titles and is projecting revenues of $7.5 million this year.

“When (Irvine Athletic Director Tom Ford) called me and said they’d been unable to find a coach and asked me to help out, I just thought, ‘That’s terrific. I’m in a place in my life where I can do that,’ ” Hecht said. “It’s a great, great opportunity to work with young people, and when it’s something you love as much as I happen to love crew, it’s a real blessing. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be out there working with this particular group of boys.”

It means a hectic schedule. Up at 4:45 a.m., and at the crew house by 5:45, greeting the oarsmen at 6 for workouts. Afterward, Hecht will get to work by 9 or 10. Even though his staff of six helps the business run itself, he often stays until 8 p.m. or so, answering correspondence. He goes to bed at 11 or midnight, sometimes getting less than five hours sleep.

“I prefer five or six,” he said. “But we’ve all done with short rations. I don’t relate to eight hours a night. You get sluggish.”

Hecht was a two-time Olympic rower for the U.S. team, competing in 1952 and ’56. A Stanford graduate, he founded a crew program at Menlo College before starting the program at Irvine, and later was crew coach at UCLA from 1975-79.

Irvine’s crew program, which competes as a club sport, not an NCAA sport, spent $110,000 as recently as 1988, and received about $51,000 in university funding last year before it became one of several sports designated as self-supporting last spring.

Larry Moore then resigned after eight seasons as the team’s coach. The team has been without a coach since May.

“We were fortunate that someone of Duvall’s caliber was willing to return as our volunteer coach,” Ford said in a news release. “His concern was that the program maintain continuity. Duvall sensed a fragmentation of community support for rowing and he will become the catalyst that draws support from former oarsmen and the rowing community.”

Hecht, who jokes that he remembers thinking of his coaches as “geezers,” and that no one should coach after 50, couldn’t be happier.

“It’s terrific. I just love it,” he said. “The boys are highly charged and motivated--otherwise they wouldn’t have stayed out.

“I think I can give them a very good program. I wouldn’t take the job if I didn’t think so. I’m 100% on. I’m taking it as seriously as ever. I’ve had to cancel a couple of hunting trips, but that’s no problem at all.”

Christina Adams, a freshman on the UC Irvine women’s basketball team who led the state in scoring two seasons ago at Grossmont High School, has left the Irvine team because of a back injury.

Adams, a 5-foot-6 freshman guard, had been practicing with the team but was hampered by pain from a lower back strain and sciatica. A doctor had advised her to consider redshirting, but Adams said she eventually decided to leave the team.

“My initial response was I was going to play through it,” she said. “(The doctor) was giving me anti-inflammatory medication, but over the next couple of weeks, I decided I could no longer stand the pain.”

Adams said the injury began as mild back pain toward the end of her senior season in high school, but that it had gotten progressively worse. A doctor told her that with rest and therapy, she might be able to play next year, but Adams decided against redshirting.

“I basically have chosen not to redshirt because to redshirt a year would set me back. I don’t want to come back and try to play after a year off.”

Adams averaged 24 points and eight assists last season as a senior at El Cajon Granite Hills High School. As a junior at Grossmont, she averaged 38.3 points a game, leading the state. She set a national record for three-pointers in a season with 100, and also set a national record for free throws in a game after making 28 of 32.

Adams said she plans to remain in school at Irvine.

Irvine had a record of 5-22 last season and has won only six games over the past two seasons. Colleen Matsuhara, preparing for her first season as the team’s coach, said Adams will be missed.

“Especially her outside shooting,” Matsuhara said. “That’s her forte, we’re still trying to find some more of that.”