Rising From the Depths

They were sunk.

No, no, seriously, they were sunk.

Last August, the aging boathouse containing all of the equipment belonging to the Loyola Marymount crew teams broke from its moorings and drifted to the bottom of Marina del Rey.

The boats were totaled. The program had gone overboard. The schedule had been shipwrecked. They were up the regatta without a paddle.

It only sounded funny. School officials immediately canceled the season and suspended the program for a year.

At which point, a group of ordinary Loyola Marymount athletes came together to prove an extraordinary thing.

That, indeed, hope floats.

The team decided it was going to have a season anyway.

The school said there won’t be a coach, because he had just been dismissed.

The team said it would coach itself.

The school said it couldn’t salvage any boats.

The team said it would borrow boats.

The school said it could offer little money.

The team said it would raise the money.

And the team, about 28 men and women, did just that. All of it. From coaching to scheduling to traveling to finding a parent to bring the orange slices for breaks.

“We figured, if we wanted something, really wanted it, why should we let anything stand in our way?” said Mark Mason, a senior and unofficial boss.

They survived logistic problems and leadership conflicts, climbed back into the water, then realized another extraordinary thing.

They weren’t merely buoyant, they were good. They were fast. They were stronger than ever.

The men’s varsity borrowed UCLA’s boats, then beat the Bruins and UC Irvine in a meet. They finished second in the Newport Regatta. They finished third in the California Collegiate Rowing Championships.

They are now in a position to turn the extraordinary into the amazing.

The men’s team will fly to New Jersey in three weeks to compete in what is considered college rowing’s national championships and could reasonably finish in the top 10.

This is even though the rowers have no idea what they will use for boats, or on which floor of which friend’s house they will be sleeping.

The only thing for certain is, even though the school’s athletic department has virtually no association with them, the athletes will proudly compete for the national title wearing bodysuits with the letters “LMU” on them.

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Why not? They paid for them.

Maybe it really is all decoration.

Maybe all the trappings in the windows of today’s college athletics--crazy coaches, silly cheerleaders, loud bands--are nothing more than empty mannequins.

Maybe all you really need are the athletes.

It is an absurd notion, of course, but sometimes you wonder.

Maybe what those Loyola Marymount kids said to the administration on that sad day last summer was what everybody should be saying.

“We told them, ‘Just let us do it ourselves,’ ” junior John Zanetos said. “We said, ‘Just give us a boat and four oars. That’s all we need, a boat and four oars.’ ”

Loyola agreed to pay a rental fee for boats from UCLA and the California Yacht Club and for use of the UCLA boathouse for crew practice.

Then, for insurance and monetary reasons, the school washed its hands of them.

“We don’t have an affiliation with the crew team,” said Bill Husak, Loyola athletic director. “These rowers are a very independent group of people.”

That, and a little bit scared, at least at first.

It was one thing to have everyone agree to continue the team while meeting on the gym bleachers one day after class.

It was another thing to figure out whom they would race.

Mason grabbed the phone and began calling coaches who had just noticed that Loyola had been dropped from their schedule.

“I was like, ‘We’d still like to race you if you have any free time,’ ” Mason said. “It was strange, me, a student, talking on the same level to a coach.”

Then they had to figure out how to pay entry fees for these races, and for transportation, and for lodging.

The team arranged a couple of school fund-raisers, then filled the rest of their pockets in a way that involved--what else?--water.

Team members walked around campus all day wearing empty water bottles strapped to their backs, asking folks to drop in their change.

“We didn’t have a lot of choice,” Mason said. “By the end, at least, people knew who we were.”

Once they had the schedule and the money, it was time for the hard part.

How would the team be run? Would Mason, the only varsity senior, be in charge? Or would it be a democracy?

After one of several loud meetings during which some team members quit, it was decided that, hey, there is a reason every team has one person in charge.

Mason was given the title. But their troubles were only beginning.

“We’re talking about athletes making the rules for other teammates,” he said. “It was very strange.” There were arguments over where to eat after matches. There were arguments about how many times they should practice during finals weeks.

Some of it wasn’t fun. And some of it was downright embarrassing, such as the time a crew member’s car keys fell out of his pocket and sank to the bottom of the marina.

He was the one who had driven everyone to practice, so the team had to call the school and ask for a ride home. On a pay phone. Collect.

But eventually a former coach began helping out at some practices, and other team members began chipping in, coaching themselves when necessary, making it work.

“I think each of us has been forced to act as the head coach at some point, and it’s made us all grow,” said Zanetos.

He recalled a time when, as varsity captain, he had to scold a teammate for missing practice.

“I had to go to his room and talk to him, and it was strange, because we are like, friends,” Zanetos said. “But it’s something we had to do.”

There were many things they had to do, things today’s athletes normally have done for them.

They are perhaps the only team in the country that travels with sleeping bags and pillows. Before the state championships, some of them not only slept on the floor, but in the house of a stranger, a next-door neighbor to one of the crew member’s families.

“It’s hard, when you see every other team staying in a hotel right across from the course,” Zanetos said.

Next year will be better. A new Loyola coach has been hired, a new boathouse is scheduled to enter the water in August, the sport will be recognized by the school again and everything will soon be back to normal.

When the athletes arrive in New Jersey in a couple of weeks, though, it will still be abnormal.

Some of the varsity teams will have 24 athletes and five coaches. Loyola Marymount will have six athletes and no coaches.

But they will have something nobody has--an appreciation that only comes from doing something yourself.

“Knowing we had to push ourselves because we were doing it for us, that made us better,” sophomore Anthony Podegracz said.

If nothing else, they may be one of the few teams there that understands the true meaning of the word crew.

“Getting out there in the water, everybody pulling for each other, working together, the water running under you, the sky humming above you . . . it’s a beautiful feeling,” Zanetos said.

For a boat and four oars, that will be one majestic ship.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.