Rowing summer of '89

In the early spring, late winter, of 1989 the US National Team coach, Stuart McLaughlin, came to the west coast searching for athletes to replenish his system. He primarily came to evaluate UC Santa Barbara who was one of the fastest lightweight crews in the nation. He also came north to visit the Bay Area schools and UC Davis where I and my teammate Rich Buie had drawn his attention through test erg scores that we occasionally submitted against national rankings. In retrospect, it was probably Rich who rowed in our lightweight program and scored a time under 8:11 in a 2500m test who he really came to see. When Stuart came on the water to watch us row he also got a look at me. While Rich “the assassin” stroked the lightweight eight, I was the smallest guy in our heavyweight varsity eight. With a time under 8:18 on the test, I caught his eye as well.

Later in the spring, Rich and I both received our invitations to row in the 1989 Lightweight Pre Elite camp for the US National Team. We were to row in the camp for 3 or 4 weeks and then participate in the 1989 US Olympic Festival held in Norman, Oklahoma. All of the other rowers, women, heavyweight men, and the east coast lightweights were to attend their Pre-elite camps in Lake Placid, NY. A few of our women, Marcy Porter, Katie Ring, Leanne Pratt, Chieko Kakihana were in Lake Placid. For Marcy it would be the first step toward the Olympics and sailing on the America's Cup and Whitbread teams. For whatever reason, money probably, Stuart split off 8 lightweights from the west and held a separate camp on Lake Natoma in Sacramento. We were housed at Sac State.

There was Jorge Martin, and Stefan Bennet from UC Santa Barbara, Brian Biggs from San Diego State, Matt Moeller from Santa Clara University, Stuart from Cal, Theo from University of Cincinatti, some kid from Canada, and Rich Hansen the Colorado rancher from University of Puget Sound. The rowing wasn't all that great in camp. We spent time rowing in fours, sometimes in an eight, and we got introduced to sculling in quads. Only Theo and the Canadian had any experience sculling, but for some of the quick learners like myself and Jorge we quickly got up to speed competing in the sculls. The most memorable aspects of the otherwise uneventful camp were riding in the back of Hansen's old ford F150 pickup in the summer heat of Sacramento to and from the lake; staying in the Sac State dorms where to our good fortune they were hosting a cheerleaders camp that seemed to have about 500 girls, and watching on the dorm TV the final moments of the 1989 Tour De France as it was won by Greg Lemond. I knew nothing of cycling at the time, except as a mode of transportation to and from class at UC Davis.

At the end of camp we flew to Oklahoma and made our way to Norman, where we would stay on the Oklahoma Sooners campus for the US Olympic festival with all the other sports. Here the night life and energy picked up significantly from the sleepy camp we'd just spent in Sacramento. The Festival was a drill rehearsal for the Olympics and all the athletes were filed through the gymnasium and doled out with a fraction of the booty Olympic athletes get. We got a bag, cap, and a sweat suit along with some other tokens. I've long since worn out my cap, but I still have the sweat suit jacket despite it clearly being out of style. In Norman, we met the other rowers from Lake Placid. It was obvious their camp had been a lot more fun than ours as the mix of college men and women had led to partying and hook ups. We quickly got in the spirit, ending one evening with about 15 of us skinny-dipping in the Sooners olympic pool until the Sheriff ran us off.

The group from Sacramento were boated in two fours, a West boat and a South. The other lightweights were in the East and North boats. The rumored showdown would have my West boat going against a supposedly very fast East boat for the gold medal. It was Stuart stroking our coxless four, me in 3, Hansen in 2 and Jorge in bow. We'd drive 3 hours in a bus with the other rowers when ever we had to go to the lake. On race day, we had bad weather creating choppy brown waters. I don't remember if we put up a good fight or not. Just that it was as predicted a race between us and East and that we were beat. We'd go home with the Silver.