PHOTO AND STORY BY LUKE REYNOLDS
Early Saturday morning as the coaches at the Lake Las Vegas Collegiate Invitational huddled and discussed the best approach for handling the unusually windy conditions, there was some anxiety a common byproduct of schedule changes.
That anxiety had dissipated by Sunday morning, though, as windy conditions gave way to light variable winds nearly perfect for rowing. As crews hit the water the excitement grew as the flag dropped on the 2022 racing season and a sense of normalcy returned to the rowing community after years of battling Covid cancellations.
In the first race of the day—the men’s varsity eight—Drexel beat Oregon State by a little more than one second kicking off the day of racing with a tight finish.
In the second men’s varsity eight race, Cal bested Santa Clara and San Diego with a time of 5:41.80 which was the fastest time of the day. The Cal eight would go on to win all iterations of men’s varsity eight racing.
Cal’s junior varsity eight also had the fastest times in all of the men’s junior varsity eight racing.
The University of Southern California’s women’s program had an impressive showing at the regatta taking the top spot over the University of Washington by about a second and a half with a time of 6:37.50 to Washington’s 6:39.34.
In the women’s second eight, Washington beat the Trojans by 1.72 seconds. It was the Huskies who had a commanding victory in the women’s first varsity four beating USC by more than ten seconds. In the second varsity four event, USC took the cake over UW by seven seconds.
Here are the full results from the event.
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