Sometimes, as a reporter, you have to dig deep. Look for stories
in the oddest, strangest, least explored places. And wake up on a
Saturday morning when normally your life is but a dream.
So, blurry-eyed at 11 on Saturday morning, I rolled into Marina
Del Rey to find out about the most obscure, unrecognizable varsity
team at UCLA ““ the rowing team.
It took about five minutes to figure out the lack of ticket
scalpers at the Miller Cup regatta.
As varsity rower Lora Batina acknowledged, “It’s not
really a spectator sport.”
No, it certainly isn’t.
A race is a little over a mile long, but the problem is that,
unlike an elliptical horse race, it is straight as an arrow,
meaning you can only watch the boats for approximately 45 seconds
as they pass the spot where you’re standing. They then
disappear to the distant finish line, rendering the climax a mere
announcement over the loudspeakers.
And as if that weren’t anti-climactic enough, there was
the “grand finale.”
The race ended in a tie. Now ties are unacceptable in any sport,
but to have one in a race is preposterous.
How can two boats both finish exactly at 6:17.4?! Sure, it was
cool to see something with the same odds as the Dodgers’
Cesar Izturis and Alex Cora hitting home runs in the same game
(shoot me), but nothing deflates the excitement of competition more
than a stalemate.
Granted, the tie seemed to be an unavoidable glitch. I mean, a
lone judge sitting in a lawn chair at the finish line with a watch
is obviously not a flawless system.
That aside, the sport itself was, I guess, exactly as I
envisioned. It’s like watching a machine ““ the motion
is repetitive and thoroughly unglamorous.
Of course, despite the seemingly simple act of sitting down and
pushing a stick, it’s not as merrily merrily as they would
have you think.
As Ben Cramer of the men’s club rowing team explained to
me, technique is interestingly much more important than strength.
Of course, it’s still rough physically.
“By about halfway, your body is screaming in pain,”
Cramer said.
Varsity women’s coxswain Kirsten Potenza compared the
sport to golf. Belying the stroke’s simple appearance is a
complex web of actions.
The most enjoyable revelation of the day was learning about the
coxswain. Assistant coach Bill Zack described the position as
“like a jockey, except the horse can understand what
you’re telling them.”
The coxswain sits in the boat with a microphone and is a
combination of coach and cheerleader. Doesn’t everybody know
at least one loud friend who would be perfect for this?
The coxswain is, in fact, the only person who stands out. There
are no individual stats nor stars. Rowing is the epitome of a team
sport.
Its lack of notoriety is unfortunate, because the team works
just as hard as any other sport and deserves at least modest
appreciation and recognition.
Take, for instance, the crazy practice schedule. Besides three
times weekly in the afternoon, the team meets Monday through Friday
at 6 a.m. to travel half an hour to Marina Del Rey. According to
the radio, people don’t even check out of their hotels until
six in the morning.
Plus, during the season, there are meets nearly every weekend.
These women devote pretty much every day to the world’s most
thankless sport.
Still, the girls love it. There are about 40 girls on the team,
most of them recruited on campus.
“We do it for the love of (the) sport rather than any sort
of recognition,” coach Amy Fuller said.
“It’s not like we just come out here and
paddle,” Batina added. “People don’t understand
how extremely fun it is and what a thrill it is to
compete.”
One thing is certain: These girls are doing anything but rowing
gently down the stream.
Check out Peters next week for Humpty-Dumpty references.
E-mail him at bpeters@media.ucla.edu.