VENTURA : Student Finds Niche on College Crew at 38

Everybody’s heard about the wunderkind who graduates from high school with high honors, makes the varsity team in college and goes on to earn six figures by the tender age of 23. Ventura’s P.J. Galligan isn’t one of those people. But at age 38, he’s finally made the varsity.

Galligan has been an oarsman at Sarah Lawrence College in New York state since September, when he entered the elite school to study drama. His only previous athletic experience was playing softball.

Since then, he’s raced in novice and varsity lightweight teams at such choice events as the Head of the Charles Regatta. He’s also grown used to getting up at 5 a.m. for practice sessions and occasionally being brained by a misplaced paddle.

Galligan rowed a circuitous course to college jockdom.

He graduated from Ventura’s continuation school, Mar Vista, and held various day jobs while he played with a rock ‘n’ roll band. His guitar-playing eventually gained him a place in the Angry Samoans, a hard-core L.A. punk rock group.

The band toured California and the East Coast, but Galligan never made the cover of Rolling Stone--or much money. “We made and squandered most of our dollars when we were on tour,” Galligan said.

He cut three records with the Samoans but decided to split when they switched their style to “retread psychedelia.”

“I said no thanks,” Galligan said. “I’d rather play fast and loud.”

In transition, he attended Ventura College for a while, dropped out to earn a living, lost his job when the company went out of business, went back to Ventura College and finally decided what he wanted to do for the rest of his life: work in professional theater and write plays and sitcoms.

He’s already had a few plays produced at the college level. In “Celebrity Power Play,” for example, terrorists on a television game show compete for control of a country for a year. In “Peace Is Hell,” characters in a state unemployment office muse over the end of the Cold War.

He’s also acted, but the only place he’s performing right now is at the Ventura Family YMCA, where he’ll be keeping in shape on the rowing machine until Jan. 22, when he returns to school and to a new season of crew.

Despite the fact that his teammates are half his age--ages 17 to 22--he’s fitting in just fine. Being a former rock star gives him celebrity status. Some teammates have even suggested an Angry Samoans revival.

That’s not to say they weren’t skeptical at the outset.

“I think they looked at me at first and said, ‘You think he’s going to undergo a heart attack?’ ” Galligan said.