More than two months into its spring season, UCLA rowing will finally get a chance to race against all six of its conference rivals when it travels north to Lake Natoma for this weekend’s Pac-12 championship.
Unlike other sports where teams play full league schedules, college crews aren’t guaranteed to see every conference team before the postseason. In the Pac-12, No. 17 UCLA has only faced No. 7 Washington State, No. 14 USC and unranked Oregon State so far this year.
That will change quickly.
“We’re excited about the opportunity to get to see everybody,” said coach Amy Fuller Kearney. “Normally, we’ve seen them earlier. We’ve seen them at the (San Diego) Crew Classic (in past years), but this year they didn’t go, so we haven’t seen (No. 2) Washington, (No. 6) Stanford or (No. 4) California at all this season.”
With all three of those schools in the the top 10, the Bruins will face even greater challenges at Sunday morning’s races. A strong showing at the Pac-12 championship, however, would all but guarantee them a spot in the NCAA championship races.
“Looking at the Pac-12 in relation to what we could be seeing at the NCAA championships, some of the top (Pac-12) crews are top-10 in the NCAAs,” said senior Chloe Kojima, the varsity eight coxswain. “Knowing that this competition is probably the toughest in the country is definitely a motivating factor.”
UCLA entered all four of the races in the Pac-12 championship: the varsity eight, second varsity eight, third varsity eight and varsity four. Each Bruin boat was seeded between No. 4 and No. 6 out of the seven total competing schools. Oregon State, the only Pac-12 team that every UCLA boat has defeated, was seeded lower in every race.
The third varsity eight was awarded the highest UCLA seed at No. 4. With freshman coxswain Ellie Burg in the stern, the boat finished just over three seconds behind Washington State at the most recent regatta. In a mid-April dual meet, the varsity eight powered past USC, defeating its crosstown rivals by almost 20 seconds.
“Our hope is that we can have our best race of the year on Sunday at the Pac-12s. That’s always the goal,” Fuller Kearney said. “I think this year, more than ever, we really are in a position where there’s an underlying excitement to see if we can go faster. … No matter what the finish is, if they’ve given everything they have, then we’re going to walk away proud and happy.”
With four top-10 crews and the crunch of an ever-shortening season, Sunday’s races will be a true test for UCLA.
Senior Maddie Alden, the varsity four coxswain, acknowledged that the heightened competition should help bring out the best in the underdog Bruins, but the pressure was not lost on the experienced senior.
“We have one race to get it right,” Alden said. “We don’t have any make-ups, there’s no semi, it’s just one race – one and done. We have 2,000 meters to show how hard we’ve worked, and that’s it.”