Bruins Rowing on a Shoestring : Crews Are Successful, but UCLA Support Is Diminishing Because of Budget Cutbacks

For the first time since the early 1930s, UCLA has been left with only one oar in the water.

Last summer, the university dropped crew and water polo as school-sponsored sports. Now, with water polo reinstated--it is being privately financed--rowing remains the only sport in the last 11 years to be permanently sidelined.

Wrestling was dropped after the 1979-80 season.

UCLA, however, has fielded competitive men’s and women’s crews for decades.

The men won the Pacific 10 Conference championship three consecutive years, 1987-89, and were runner-up to champion Washington in 1990.

The women won consecutive conference championships in 1990 and last season.

Even so, the rowers were told that the school had no money to continue crew and that, if they wanted to compete, they would have to reorganize as a club sport under the university’s Cultural and Recreational Activities program.

They have now done so, but it hasn’t been a smooth transition.

Under CRA rules, they must share the school’s rowing facilities with recreational users--rowing classes.

“I feel cheated,” senior Catriona Fallon said. “My dream was to train through the ’92 Olympics. Now, it looks like we’ll only have about half as much time with the equipment.

“The decision to cut rowing was a rash one. We’re one of the least expensive sports. There were probably other avenues that should have been considered.”

Fallon, 21, is president of the women’s club at the novice and varsity levels.

“There’s no scholarship for crew, and if you need to work out twice a day, you can’t work much (at a job), and if you do, your grades suffer,” Fallon said.

“Ultimately, we will be doing a lot of fund raising.”

Both squads did well at the national collegiate regatta in Cincinnati last spring, the Bruin women placing third and the men sixth.

“The major reason crew was cut is that there is no NCAA championship in that sport,” said Peter Dalis, UCLA’s athletic director.

Some club members view that as narrow thinking. Crew flourishes on the East Coast, even though it is not recognized by the NCAA.

“The support back East is amazing,” senior Todd McAteer said. “It’s a precedent. Schools like Harvard are built around rowing. Then there are schools like the University of New Hampshire that don’t compete on the same level . . . and they’re getting close to $100,000 in support each year.”

Crew at UCLA has struggled for years, but Dalis contends that the team blew an opportunity to work with the athletic department.

“In 1985-86, there was an agreement between crew and the athletic department that they would raise money to help with the program,” Dalis said. “They failed to meet the agreement.”

The rowers at UCLA now weren’t around when that happened.

But crew will be, at least for another three years. The school has agreed to a diminishing subsidy, giving the club a chance to work out its own financing.

This season, crew is receiving $60,000. Next season, that will drop to 40,000, and in 1993-94 it will drop to $20,000.

After that the club is on its own.

The rowers, however, are making the most of their limited opportunities. They showed up ready to compete in October at the 27th annual Head-of-the-Charles Regatta in Boston.

Long considered the premiere rowing event in North America, that regatta draws some 200,000 spectators.

Getting there may have been the toughest stroke.

The Bruins struggled to come up with the money on their own. Ten rowers each paid $450 to make the trip.

“Boston had been a dream for me, for most of us,” Fallon said. “I was looking forward to competing there all my life. There was no way I would have missed it. But coming up with that money was real tough.”

Still, each squad made its mark.

Competing in championship fours, the UCLA men placed fourth overall, and theirs was the first collegiate boat to finish.

Not bad, considering that the first three boats belonged to national teams. The Bruins beat teams from Navy, Temple, Brown, Syracuse and Northeastern, among others.

The women finished fourth on the collegiate level and ninth overall.

Among the 4,000 competitors were the Soviet and German national teams.

“It’s important for us to be seen, to let the competition know that UCLA still has a rowing program, and that on race day, we’re still someone to be contended with,” senior coxswain Bob Strachan said.

UCLA denied the team access to university equipment until several things could be resolved, among them CRA paperwork and the cleaning and inventory of equipment left over from last summer’s Olympic Festival.

This interfered with training for the Boston regatta. Luckily for UCLA, Loyola Marymount Coach Lee Miller stepped in.

He offered to let the Bruins use the Loyola boathouse and equipment to train for the event.

“What happened to them was sad,” said Miller, who once coached the UCLA novice team. “They’ve helped us out before. It’s been a very neighborly relationship between the two teams, so it was a chance for us to help them out.”

Early this fall, members of the Pac-10 and Big West conferences met to discuss athletic issues and scheduling. At that time, there was a unanimous vote to support crew in the two conferences.

How serious conference officials were remains to be seen.

“It’s kind of funny. The sport has been growing,” McAteer said. “You would never guess, being here on the West Coast, but rowing numbers have tripled in recent years.”

The club has five rowers, including alumni, slated to compete in the ’92 Olympics. Among them are Fallon, Leif Patterson and Tim Evans.

The athletes say they would rather be there feeling as if they truly represented UCLA. Being a CRA club isn’t quite the same.

“The only thing that can save us now is getting a corporate sponsorship,” McAteer said. “If we can just get more people involved. . . . Cal and Orange Coast College are examples of teams that are afloat because of donations.”