Beach Crew women’s open 8+ at Sacramento State’s Head of the American in Gold River, Calif. included (front to back) coxswain Lauren Felske, Kelsey Davis, Ariana Gastelum, Rikki Oden, Sam McFeely, Jayne Goodwin, Maria Guardiola and Cecilia Guerrero.
Contributing Writer
Despite not being acknowledged by Cal State Long Beach as one of its varsity teams, the Long Beach State Rowing Team has pulled together to overcome the financial and scheduling obstacles that come with that lack of recognition. The team managed to pull strong finishes at Sacramento State’s Head of the American in Gold River, Calif. through focus on rowing technique, dedicated time on the rowing machines (ergs) and each member’s personal motivation to get stronger.
The Long Beach State Rowing Team, commonly known as Beach Crew, is the oldest athletic program on campus, founded in 1958. It operates out of the Division of Student Services’ Club Sports and Recreation Department. The men’s and women’s teams practice separately at the Pete Archer Rowing Center in the Marine Stadium of Long Beach.
The teams practice five to six times a week for most of the year from 5:30am to 7:30am along with occasional practices in the evening and independent exercising.
“We show up three times a week in the evening,” varsity men’s coach Robert Edwards said. “It’s sometime between 6:30 and the latest we’ve been there is like 9:30.”
Edwards has coached with Beach Crew for five years and coached, in general, since October of 2004.
The Head of the American is a regatta that takes place in the fall where schools and elites compete a 5,000-meter race. The last regatta took place during October of 2013.
LBSU’s men’s open 4+ finished third out of 16 behind Stanford University’s A and B crews with a time of 18 minutes and 18.1 seconds. Beach Crew also finished fourth place out of 18 in the men’s open 8+ behind University of California San Diego’s A, B and C boats with a time of 17 minutes and15.9 seconds.
“For fall season, we pretty much hit our goals, actually,” Edwards said. “My rowers had the goal that they wanted to be in the top three at one of the events at Head of the American, and they made third place in the men’s varsity four.”
The men’s varsity 4+ consisted of Grey Mouser, Jacob Bledsoe, Jake Skoll, Patrick Tilley and their coxswain, Bryan Pulling. “These are the guys that are willing to show up for the extra practices, and I see them being determined enough to actually compete at a higher level,” Edwards added. “And most of that comes from themselves. If someone else wants to compete, they are more than welcome to come to our practices in the evening. To become a winning team, you have to put in a lot of time.”
Pulling rowed for three years on the team before he began coxing in fall 2012. His goals for spring are all directed towards winning. “We want to win everything,” he said. “We want to qualify for nationals. We want to get a good enough time, so coach will put us in Philadelphia, too. But it’s going to cost a lot of extra time.”
The Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta is a spring 2,000-meter race that takes place in Philadelphia. If the open 8+ qualifies for grand finals at the San Diego Crew Classic Regatta, they will be entered into the Dad Vail Regatta. If the varsity 4+ wishes to do the same, they must beat the qualifying time for grand finals at the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association (WIRA), which is 6 minutes and 37 seconds in the 2,000-meter sprint.
One of the strengths the men’s team has this year is their bonding ability, according to Edwards. “They are one of the most cohesive teams I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “They are dedicated, they are strong athletes, and they are motivated to succeed.”
An “instant family” is the term that Beach Crew’s president Grey Mouser used to describe the team. “We’ve known people for two-three months— if that— and we are already super close with everybody,” he said. “It’s just one big, mismatched, awesome family. So, I mean, there’s nothing better than that.”
Mouser, who is originally from Shafter, Calif., had never rowed before attending Cal State Long Beach. He is now rowing for a third year.
“I think it had made me sharper as an individual and a lot stronger,” he said. “Throughout my sports career, I didn’t want the leadership roles at all. I was a quarterback, but I still didn’t really want it. I never took that role until coming here. I don’t know what it was about this program, but I wanted to take this on, and I wanted to help lead it into something better.”
The women’s team withstood several changes since September 2013. Since last year, the number of members has increased from 11 to 17, whereas the men’s team now has over 30 rowers.
In addition, the women’s team welcomed two new coaches, head coach Ian Simpson and assistant coach Tamar Schaap, who began rowing in 2009 and spent three seasons with University of California Los Angeles.
Simpson is also a coach for Southern California Scullers Club. He is available to Beach Crew on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays while Tuesdays and Thursdays are dedicated to land workouts on the ergs with Schaap.
“I already had an assumption that everybody’s there to work hard because you are sacrificing a lot to do it,” Simpson said. “I like the fact that everybody pretty much does their best to show up every day. Even when they’re sick, people are showing up.”
Simpson said that he enjoys working with a small team. However, he admitted that it has its limitations. “The novices (first-year rowers) have a lot of potential, but we have so few,” he said. “There’s a lot of competition of seats, and we lack that competition within the team. So, we have to figure out how to bring out people’s potential within themselves.”
Although the women’s team has gone through significant changes, their goals remain the same. “The objectives really are to get everybody in shape, to get you rowing reasonably well and to get used to pulling really hard,” Simpson explained. “My personal objective would be that we are able to beat the local teams like [University of California Irvine and Orange Coast College.] I think they have some advantages since we are kind of semi-funded. I certainly want to be the best out of all the non-varsity teams and to be in a position to start thinking about challenging the varsity teams that are out there.”
Lauren Felske, who started rowing her junior year of high school, is now completing her third year with Beach Crew as president. “I would definitely like to leave it at a better place than what it was before,” she said. “For the past couple years, the team has been really small. Right now, the team is focusing on getting stronger and better [technically.]”
Because the team is considered a club, it receives fewer privileges than it would if it were a school’s varsity team. The team is funded through Associated Students Incorporated, grants from the CSULB foundation and other donors such as the Beach Crew Alumni. Members of the team must generally pay around $500 per semester along with race fees and uniforms.
“If dues were less, more people would probably be able to stay,” Pulling said. “A lot of people drop because they can’t really afford it.”
Mouser agrees that school funding would benefit the team and also noted that it would be more difficult to join the team. “As far as walking on, it would definitely be a lot harder,” he said. “And I would probably be making the cut now. So, those are the things you have to look at.”
Mouser suggested that funding through an endowment would ideally help the team financially because it could cut charges in half and pay for race fees, sports clothes and equipment. “If we have an endowment, then we kind of just survive off the interest of it. Now, that’s a large chunk of money if we started collecting interests like that. But instead of being $800 to $1,000, now dues are maybe $500 per person for the whole year.”
Since the school does not give these athletes priority registration, scheduled practices must work around everyone’s schedule, which is why morning practices are so early. However, this time is also spent moving and cleaning equipment. The time actually spent on the water is only an hour and a half.
“I think that is a weakness Long Beach State has in general,” Edwards said. “They have a lot going on outside of crew, and it’s sometimes tough to keep them motivated with rowing in addition to all of their classes and jobs and basic living the rest of their life.”
Though being on the team takes up a large amount of time, it taught Mouser how to manage his schedule more wisely. “Beach Crew makes you get your work done in a timely fashion because you don’t have any time,” he explained. “So, the spare time you do have, you can’t waste it. It becomes a little more precious!I’ve always been a student athlete. The learning and education has always come second to me. I’ve always put more focus in athletics.”
Last year, Mouser received micro-tears in his elbow from lifting weights. “Going to bed at 1am is pretty much the norm. So, it takes a toll on your system. There were plenty of times last year when I was going to bed at 2am, 3am with an hour and a half of sleep. It was more of a nap than it was going to sleep. Being that tired and working out twice a day, sometimes three times a day, you run into the risk of overtraining, which is where I hit.”
Pulling also admits that crew helped him manage time. “I’ve improved as a student for the most part because you need to maintain grades,” he said. “At the beginning, my grades started slipping, which made me become ineligible last year!but now I realize that, if they do get bad, there are consequences. They’ve made me better and improved my grades and overall performance.”
Despite the shortcomings, Simpson believes determination to pull harder and aggressiveness will help the team reach its goals. “What [they] do is harder than being on a varsity team,” he said. “You’ve got to want it as opposed to you have to do it because you’ve been given a scholarship. I want to tap into that part of people’s motivation. I don’t want any club team like this to be any less important. I can say that because, in my perspective, rowing is an Olympic sport, which is beyond most varsity sports. I know on campus, they treat it as a club sport, like fighting with little wooden swords and playing Frisbee and stuff like that. But this is a big-deal sport. And, in most other schools, it is a varsity sport. We may not be able to compete with the varsity, but we can take pride in what we’re doing and have that same professionalism.”
More Information
beachcrew.org
[Ed. note— Gastelum is a member of the Long Beach State rowing team.]
