USC Men Show Winning Form in Test Against LMU

MARINA DEL REY: It was supposed to be just a friendly scrimmage, a way of building relations between two crew programs under the same boathouse roof.

But when the new Trojan Navy lined up against Loyola Marymount University at dawn on October 4th, friendly thoughts were the furthest thing from anybody’s minds.

“This was our first test against another school,” said sophomore student Blair Jones. “The only thought on my mind was destroying the opposition.”

And that’s what the Trojans did.

Jones, a 6’8” ‘walk-on’ also had personal reasons for performing well against the LMU Lions. His older brother, Brooks Jones, was MVP of the Lions crew last year and is now the freshman crew coach at USC.

The Trojan Navy boated two crews against LMU. Each crew had at least four ‘walk-ons’ on board and the results were especially pleasing to new Head Coach Gene Kininmonth. “We boated two crews today, ‘Cardinal’ and ‘Gold’ and both crews did well. The ‘Cardinal crew had the most experience while only one oarsman in the ‘Gold’ crew had rowed before this semester,” said Coach Kininmonth.

Given its novice status, the ‘Gold’ crew was given a thirty second head start against LMU and the ‘Cardinal’ boat.

“The ‘Cardinal’ crew looked awesome as it went through its warm up routine. There is nothing like the edge of race day to bring a crew together,” said Kininmonth.

After trailing by a couple of seats to LMU in the first hundred meters, Trojan coxswain Lisa Reed called on her oarsmen for a “Trojan 20” power stroke move and her shell quickly took a full boat-length on the Lions.

“As we raced past UCLA’s boathouse Isaw those Bruin rowers watching us from their dock and so I called for another ‘Trojan 20’ strokes effort. From there it was exhibition rowing all the way to the finish,” said Reed. “At that point we were easily twenty-one lengths in front of LMU!”

However, Reed did not have much time to gloat after the race. Since it was her first race as a coxswain, she was unaware of the important tradition of winning coxswains being tossed off the dock and into the water by their crew.

“I broke a nail and Ijust had my hair done,” cried the dripping coxswain.

Kininmonth said his squad is now eagerly awaiting their next assignment. The Trojan Navy faces UCLA at the Head of the Marina on the morning of November 2 and then the entire Southwest region of college programs the following day at the Newport Autumn Rowing Festival in Newport Beach.

“Although our true potential will come in the spring, I am certainly interested to see how close we can be to Stanford and Berkeley in Newport,” said Kininmonth.