Trojans greatest year in Rowing was a half-century ago

December 11, 2006

In the first of this exclusive three-part website series, Trojan Coach Gene Kininmonth unlocks the vault of USC’s Rowing Archives to reveal the Trojan Navy’s greatest year in rowing.

Part I of this report is a written account by oarsman Stuart Neffeler ‘57 of the Crew of 1956

Background: In 1956 there were far fewer crews and air travel being more expensive, our poverty stricken program could not travel much to find races. We usually rowed UCLA in two dual meets, 200 meters on Ballona Creek and 2 to 3 miles in the Los Angeles Harbor. We would travel to Stanford for a dual meet, and to Cal Berkeley for another dual. Both Bay Area schools would come south once to meet both USC and UCLA. Stanford came to the Harbor for the Harbach Cup race, a 2 miler, and Cal came to Ballona Creek for the three-way 2000 meter race.

The Schools: UCLA started a varsity crew program in the 1930s along with the Long Beach high schools in the enthusiasm fostered by the 1932 Olympics held in Los Angeles. USC started a club program in 1948. By 1953, SC had begun to beat the Bruins regularly. Both schools had volunteer coaches (bless them). USC had the conditioning advantage because of the longer distances available for rowing in the Harbor. In 1956 there was no Marina del Rey, only Ballona Creek. Cal, and particularly its coach Ky Ebright, was at the top of rowing. Ebright’s Cal crews had won the 8+ gold medal in three of the preceding 5 Olympic Games (1928, 1932 and 1948, Washington won in 1936 and Navy in 1953, there were no Olympics during WWII in 1940 and 1944). The 1956 Cal crew was not one of their better eights, but we did not know it at the time.

The Crew of 1956:
Stroke: George Moore
7. Dean Allen
6. Stu Neffeler
5. Bob Howard
4. Rolf Schou
3. Jim Rogers
2. Joaquin Gil Del Real
Bow: Ben Benjamin
Coach Bob Hillen

The Season: We had raced twice that year prior to the Cal/UCLA encounter. We had beaten the Bruins in a tight race at Ballona Creek a few weeks earlier (the Los Angeles Times ran a photo of the race across all eight columns of the sports page). We had also gone to Stanford to row and had lost by about 1 second. Our four seat, Rolf Schou, became ill the night before the race and with a new person in the boat we never got settled. We felt we were better than Stanford.

The Race: There was no attempt by Bob Hillen to prepare us psychologically for the race, we just kind of straggled to the UCLA boathouse in our own cars. We knew we had a good varsity eight. It felt good and most of the time we seemed to really move the boat.

In our earlier victory over UCLA we jumped them about four seats in the start and the rest of the race was rowed as if we were locked together. Our victory margin was the same four seats. Because of this, I assume, UCLA wasn’t going to let us jump them again and they put on a very fast start and took the early lead. You will see this on the film. USC and Cal got off together. UCLA did not hold their lead for long, perhaps they went out too fast, but by about 500 meters both USC and Cal had passed them. They continued to fall behind and were not a factor.

USC and Cal rowed fairly even through much of the race, and Cal took the lead sometime in the second 1000. I doubt their lead was ever more than 1⁄4 length. The last 500 meters is just a blur in my memory. I, and I’m sure most of the other seven in our boat, were really hurting. Yet somehow George Moore, our stroke, got a sprint going and we won by a foot or two. After we stopped rowing no one knew the outcome, it was too close. None of us could speak for a few minutes, but I did notice something that told me we had won.

Hillen and Ebright followed the race together in a launch. It was afternoon and they were backlit by the sun so all I could see were silhouettes. Hillen wore a baseball hat and Ebright wore something like a fedora and when one tossed the baseball hat in the air and the other pulled down the brim of the fedora I knew we had won.


A member of the 1956 USC Men's Crew team shakes hands with a Cal opponent after receiving his shirt in victory.

Aftermath: The Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and the sports pages covered mostly college sports. As I recall it rained earlier that morning and the baseball and track events were postponed so the Times sent one of their major writers to cover our race. We got a nice article on the second sports page on Sunday. The Goodyear Blimp broadcast our race live and the announcer was Jack Schumacher ’54. We raced Cal again a couple of weeks later in Oakland. They were frothing at the mouth, the San Francisco newspapers were full with the revenge match. Cal jumped to an early open water lead. By the time we woke up Cal had probably more than 2 lengths of open water. We came back some, but lost by about a length and a half.

The Film: This movie was shot by the UCLA film school, and I have no idea why they chose to do so. There was a dirt road on the north side of Ballona Creek and they would shoot several hundred meters of racing, get in their car and drive up the race course and shoot some more as the crews rowed by. They gave the film to us as we had won the race.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH A DIGITALLY REMASTERED VIDEO COMMEMORATING THE 1956 RACE. Launch the video site and select "2006."

The writer, Stu Neffeler graduated from USC in 1957 and returned to complete an MBA in 1959. He presently works as a forensic economist and resides in La Jolla, CA.

Crew Remembers '56 - Part 2 | Crew Remembers '56 - Part 3