Washington-Cal crew: collisions, dead heats and national titles

It's Duke-North Carolina on water. Yankees-Red Sox with oars.

It's Washington-California, the most competitive pairing in college rowing, an under-the-radar rivalry that reaches a major milestone Saturday on Montlake Cut. The UW and Cal men's varsity eights will line up about 10:20 a.m. for their 100th regular-season dual race since 1903.

ESPN is not sending a "GameDay" crew, but that won't diminish spectator fervor. A UW-Cal dual draws a cross-generational mix of former rowers, school loyalists and crew cognoscenti — a zealous bunch eager to feel the competitive heat rising off the water.

"It's a lot like Ohio State-Michigan or Army-Navy," said Mike Hess, captain of the 1977 and '78 UW varsity crew and unbeaten by Cal in his career. "It's one of those things that has been around forever, and if you're rowing or have rowed for either program, you take it really seriously."

How seriously? The 1977 dual on the Cut was basically an end-to-end dead heat. Hess, a former Olympian, recalls that his need to beat Cal was so all-consuming that his effort pushed him to a catatonic state.

"We finally passed them at the very last second," recalled Hess, now 55. "It was so exhausting that I passed out after we passed the finish line. When I came to, I asked John Stillings, our coxswain, 'Did we win?' He said we did. I felt a lot better."

Hess was there in '75 when high winds created foot-high whitecaps that threatened to swamp rowers' boats. One huge gust caused the log boom, where spectators tied their tightly bunched boats, to snap free of its mooring. Boats drifted in all directions.

"It was like Victory at Sea," Hess recalled. "Half the boats out there were strung across Union Bay. People were trying to cut loose from the boom before it damaged their boats. It was wild."

Washington's varsity won a truncated race. "It was blowing so hard you couldn't row the top half of the course," he said. "I think we only raced 1,000 meters. It was a total disaster. But at least we won."

Eric Cohen, a former coxswain (1979-82), is the volunteer historian of Washington crew. His labor-of-love website (huskycrew.org) documents the freewheeling early years of UW-Cal duals.

Rowing debuted at Cal in 1868, the school's first sport. Washington fielded its first boat in 1901. In 1903 Cal traveled to Seattle by steamer ship for the inaugural dual, drawing a crowd to Leschi Park.

"Seattle wanted to be a big-time city, and in 1903 people were just jazzed that we had something intercollegiate happening here," Cohen said.

Just before the start, though, an oarlock broke in Washington's boat, deep-sixing the race. Cal obligingly rowed a solitary 1.5-mile exhibition.

Yet UW somehow fixed the oarlock. Cal lost the real race, but the captain called it a fair result.

"That set the precedent for the whole series," Cohen said. "Some screwy things were going to happen, but the sportsmanship was always really, really good."

From the screwy-things file: In 1914, UW rowing forefather Hiram Conibear ("A showman and incredible marketing guy," Cohen said) wanted to keep spectators engaged with ample action along the three-mile course. His idea: Set races in motion from opposite ends of the course.

Freshman and varsity boats racing full-tilt in opposite directions had to abruptly bob and weave to avoid a collision.

"They didn't crash into each other, but it was a disaster," Cohen said.

According to Cohen's website, George Pocock observed Conibear "bashing his megaphone over the bow of his launch in utter disbelief."

In 1927, a motorized yacht entered the course during a race and clipped the launch carrying UW's coaching staff. The launch barely made it to shore before sinking. It is the first of two launches during the 1920s to nearly sink during a race.

Both schools cultivated elite teams, each winning their initial national titles in the 1920s, and UW-Cal duals became one of the West Coast's prime-time athletic throwdowns. Ky Ebright, a Washington grad (class of '17), became head coach at Cal in 1924 and for 35 years made the Golden Bears a rowing power.

Three times under Ebright a Cal varsity eight represented the U.S. in the Olympic Games and won rowing gold (1928, '32 and '48). Under Al Ulbrichson, UW did the same in 1936 in Berlin.

The UW-Cal dual (UW leads 69-29-1 all-time) is a tradition matched only by the Harvard-Yale Regatta (145 races dating back to 1852). Yale, though, has won just three times in the past 26 years, becoming a foil for a still-elite Harvard program.

Washington-Cal races, meanwhile, have remained toe-to-toe slugfests between equals. The series has produced four of the past five men's varsity eight national champions, finishing 1-2 the past two years — Cal winning last year, Washington in 2009. In both Grand Finals, they finished within a second of each other.

At least one of the schools has won a medal (signifying a top-three finish) in the past 15 Intercollegiate Rowing Association championship regattas. Cal has 16 IRA titles, UW 13. The Huskies enter Saturday's race ranked No. 1, Cal No. 2.

Washington men's coach Michael Callahan (unbeaten against Cal in his four seasons rowing for the Huskies, 1993-96) says he doesn't put extra emphasis on the Cal dual.

"Anyone who goes through the program recognizes the importance of the relationship of these two schools," he said. "We bring out the best in each other, and we're going to need our best race to beat these guys. I don't have to do a lot of extra cheerleading."

Callahan, whose 2009 squad produced a memorable come-from-behind sprint to nip Cal for the national title, says UW and Cal convey an air of wary mutual respect at the starting line. Brooding intensity, but no trash talk. "Some staring, though," he said.

Hess, whose daughter Joanna is engaged to Callahan, expects to see plenty of Cal fans, from younger ones to octogenarians, on the Cut Saturday. The scene is cordial but competitive.

"In general, we all get along pretty well," he said. "We tease each other a little bit, especially in you're from an era that won pretty consistently. It's a lot easier to be friendly when you've won in the past.

Long-term kumbaya bliss, though, is probably beyond the reach of most UW-Cal fans.

"I had a friend whose son got recruited to Cal," said Hess, a board member of the National Rowing Foundation. "Of course, I was disappointed by that. So every time he would call, and this was in the old days before email, I would fax him the overall record of the series. Just to tick him off."

Notes

• The women's varsity-eight dual series has been contested since 1977. UW owns a 22-12 overall lead, but Cal has won the last seven races after 13 straight UW victories. UW and Cal first rowed duals in men's junior varsity and freshman 8s in 1939.

• Callahan on how the Cal dual fits into his long-term strategy: "You have to understand that you want your best race at the end. I would say Mike (Mike Teti, Cal's coach) even under-prepares his team a little bit for this regatta so he can have a late upsurge at the end of the year. I think he values surprise. I don't think he wants to show you all his speed too early that you might be able to counter. So it's a little bit of a chess match. We want to grow like everybody else, and there's going to be some strong competition at the end of the season."

• The UW-Cal dual became the main attraction of opening day in Seattle before the Windemere Cup supplanted it. The course length fluctuated between three and four miles before the Olympic sprint distance (2,000 meters) was adopted.

• The first UW-Cal race was June 3, 1903, on Lake Washington.