Men's crew excels behind six seniors

By Jack Ferdon

Being a member of the crew team means waking up every day for 5 a.m. practices, spending an inordinate amount of time traveling to meets across the country and saying bye-bye to the bottle for the entire spring quarter. This means that being on the crew team does not particularly appeal to a lot of Santa Clara students, especially seniors.

So this year's crew team, with its six seniors on the varsity roster and four seniors in the varsity eight boat, is unusually experienced and, most likely as a result, is having an unusual amount of success so far this season.

"The team this year has a lot of experience," said senior starboard rower Chris Tschinkel. "And we have the right group of guys."

Perhaps the greatest benefit of having such a large group of seniors on the squad - by comparison, the women's team has only one senior - has come in the team's practices, where the crew version of scrimmages are now possible.

"We have a lot more rowers than previous years," said Tschinkel. "So for the first time we have two [eight-man boats] pushing each other in practice, and that makes you faster."

The proof was in the pudding last weekend at the San Diego Crew Classic. With traditional crew powers like Yale and Harvard not making the trip out west this year - "They kind of wussed out," said senior Wiley Erikson - Santa Clara's varsity eight was offered a chance to race in the Classic's prestigious Copley Cup. This meant that rather than facing familiar foes such as Gonzaga and Sacramento St. in the California Cup - the second tier race in which Santa Clara normally competes at San Diego - Santa Clara would be going up against some of the heaviest hitters in the sport, including UC-Berkeley, Washington and Stanford.

But the experienced Santa Clara squad was not fazed.

"We stepped up to the challenge," Tschinkel said.

In Saturday's qualifying heat, Santa Clara finished fourth out of five boats and finished far behind Washington and Stanford. But they held their own against traditional rival UC-Davis, who figures to be one of Santa Clara's main competitors at the upcoming Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association (WIRA) Championships in May.

After three legs of the 2,000-meter race, the Broncos trailed the Aggies by just over five seconds and the two boats both pulled a 1:39 time in the final 500 meters.

"We challenged Davis all the way to the line," said Erikson. "We'll be ready for them at WIRAs."

In Sunday's consolation race, Santa Clara took second place behind Purdue with a phenomenal time of 6:13 for the race. The time was better than that posted by UC-Davis and Stanford - who beat the Broncos by 13 seconds in a race earlier in the year - in the Copley Cup final on Sunday and four seconds faster than the time in which Gonzaga - who beat the Broncos just a few weeks ago at the WCC Challenge - won the California Cup.

"Looking at our times we could have possibly won the Cal Cup," said Tschinkel.

Added junior port rower John Schlunt, "We put a solid performance forward. Our team is looking strong. We're right where we want to be."

Now the Broncos will look to get better between now and the WCC and WIRA Championships at the beginning of May.

After its performance in San Diego, this experienced squad knows it has the chance to put up some of the best results in the history of Santa Clara crew.

"We're still getting better, still rearranging the boat," said Schlunt. "And we're nowhere near peaking."

Added Tschinkel, "We're definitely better than we have been, especially as of last weekend."