November 20, 2004

Marina del Rey, CA: The Trojan Navy’s Varsity Eight maintained its unbeaten status this Fall by easily defeating cross-town rival UCLA in the annual Shell Games regatta on Saturday morning. The 3 1/4 mile race was from Culver Bridge down Ballona Creek, around the breakwater and into the Marina to Jane Bove Boathouse.



The win stretched the Trojan’s win-loss record to 26-0 this season.

“We have never had another crew’s bow in front of us in head to head racing this season,” said varsity bowman Kevin Lorell. “Today, against UCLA we took three seats in the first three strokes and just kept looking to open up the margin for the rest of the race.”

USC’s winning time of 16 minutes 56 seconds was 14 seconds ahead of the UCLA Bruins.

In fact the feisty Trojans, a young crew with five sophomores on board, could be forgiven for thinking the 3 1/4 mile race was only 2000 meters. USC rowed the first 500m in a time of 1 minute 24 seconds and the first 2000m in 5 minutes 49 seconds.

The school record time for 2000m at USC is 5 minutes 44.4 seconds, set by the Varsity Crew against UCLA on Ballona Creek in May 2003.
“Today was pretty quick,” reports varsity coxswain Romina Puente-Arnao. “We wanted to build as big a lead as possible going into the big turn to the Marina. Our shell has a relatively small rudder and does not turn nearly as quickly as UCLA’s so we knew we had to lead to the corner.”

USC held a commanding four boat-length lead going into the big turn at the half-way point of the race. UCLA reduced this margin in half as the two crews entered the Marina.

“No one panicked, we simply straightened up and took off again,” said Puente-Arnao.

In other racing action between the two cross-town rivals, UCLA showed off the greater depth of its program by winning both the Freshman and JV events of the Shell Games regatta.

SHELL GAMES RESULTS:

Varsity Eight: (min:sec)
USC 16:56
UCLA 17:10

JV Eight:
UCLA 18:18
USC 19:04

Freshman Eight:
UCLA 19:06
USC 19:21