Arat helps Long Beach capture gold

Fighting the rush-hour commutes six days a week from La Cañada Flintridge to Long Beach might leave most motorists irritated. Not so for Jared Arat.

When stuck in a traffic jam on a freeway on his way to practice with his youth rowing team, Arat had plenty of time to mull over strategies for what it would take to help his squad to a piece of national glory.

“I was commuting between 3 to 7 p.m. back and forth from home to Long Beach,” said Arat, who helped the Long Beach Junior Crew’s men’s Varsity 8 team capture the gold medal at the United States Rowing Youth National Championship Regatta in Lake Natoma, Calif., on June 15. “I treated it as a time to reflect.

“Nobody likes to be stuck in traffic, but I didn’t mind too much because I thought a lot about how our team might be in line to accomplish something special.”

Long Beach won the 2,000-meter race in 6 minutes 18.969 seconds, topping the rival Oakland Strokes (6:21.812). The team, coached by Tom Graves and Erich Hanxleden, consisted of Arat, Liam Erlich, Izak Epstein, Logan Carter, Austin Geller, Brock Bozzani, Weston Cole, Luke Khoury and Allen Reitz.

Arat, a La Cañada resident who graduated from St. Francis High in June and will attend the University of California on a partial athletic scholarship in the fall, began rowing in 2010. He had played lower-level football at St. Francis before shifting gears to rowing.

“I wasn’t bad and I wasn’t good at football,” Arat, 18, said. “I really loved rowing, so I felt like I made the right decision to move to that.

“It’s sort of like football in that you learn about leadership and having the need for good communication skills. You develop that trust among your teammates.”

Arat worked hard at rowing fundamentals and putting in numerous hours of training.

“There’s a lot of pain and sweat involved in order to make gains with rowing,” said Arat, a co-captain. “The workouts are very demanding and exhausting because your muscles are always working, but you know you are there for a reason.”

Arat and his crew had to scramble to get back into the mix to compete for the gold medal competition. Long Beach finished third in the Southwest Regionals, nine seconds off the lead. The regionals were held May 3-4 at Lake Natoma, located in Northern California.

After the regionals, Long Beach went back to the basics and shored up some areas of concern. It then came back prepared for the national championships six weeks later.

“We made some changes with the lineup and we put in even more time working out,” Arat said.

In the championship race, which covered nearly a mile and a half, Long Beach kept its pace while battling Oakland and a team from Florida.

“I thought we got off to a decent start,” Arat said. “The team from Florida held the lead during the first half of the race and then Oakland got the lead on us.

“When we got just past the halfway point, we made our move. There was great energy and rhythm that helped us take the lead. It was an amazing feeling when we won.”

Graves said Long Beach learned some lessons after finishing third in the regionals before it won the race for the first time in the team’s history.

“It was good to have six weeks of training,” Graves said. “We had a good idea that we could go faster, but you never know until you start the race.

“You try to go out there and be smart as possible about things. They put in the work and it was great to see them win.”