As the women’s rowing team begins competition Friday in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the UCLA rowers have a different goal. Receiving an at-large bid to compete at the national championships, the Bruins are not eligible to win a national team title, but this fact does not bother them.
“It’s easy to be distracted and excited and a little nervous,” coach Amy Fuller Kearney said. “But at the same time, they’re at the national championships, they’ve earned the spot, so they can relax a little, enjoy the process a little, and really go all out with nothing to lose.”
Placing 12th at the NCAAs last year, Fuller Kearney said that as long as the Bruins can hold their ground for the entire race, a top-10 finish is within reach. Both she, and senior Vanessa Teff, agreed that their main weakness in the Pac-10 finals earlier this month was their failure to keep a lead, giving up a second-place position near the end of the race.
But Teff believes that this mistake is one that will benefit the team in the face of tougher competition.
“We’ve been working on that a lot and we’re ready to go,” she said.
Other schools receiving at-large bids include Dartmouth, the University of Central Florida, and Stanford.
At the Pac-10 finals earlier this month, the Bruins’ varsity eight crew finished fourth behind the second place-finishing Stanford team. Despite the stiff competition ahead, Fuller Kearney said, “Our biggest competitors are ourselves. … It doesn’t really matter who we’re on the line against. We just try to go as fast as we can from A to B.”
Going into the competition, the Bruins are trying to stay focused.
“We try not to go in with too many expectations,” Fuller Kearney said. “We’ve had pretty lofty goals this year and we’ve wanted to systematically improve each year. It would be nice to prove ourselves to be a top-10 crew.”
With the team not vying for a national title there is a lot of pressure taken off the rowers. Still, Fuller Kearney praised the quality of the competition, and the tradition of the race itself.
“It’s such a great regatta because everybody’s good,” she said. “You look across the board and you wonder who you can beat, and that’s exciting because I’m sure we’re that school to other people too. We’ve got some schools that we lost close ones to this year that we hope to get a little revenge against.”
For Teff, this race is also one of redemption, and the last of her college career.
“We didn’t have a great showing at Pac-10s and we’re hoping to do even better and place even higher,” she said. “And, it’s one more race for the seniors.”