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Row on you Bears! By Tina Ravizza Overwhelmed and bewildered at Cal orientation, I struggled to get my bearings that first day on campus. Where we were supposed to meet? Was that good hot dog place on north or south side? Why is that strange guy on Telegraph pacing and snarling? After listening to speeches in a classroom the size of my high school gym, my head was spinning. I took a deep breath and tried to swallow that “I just want to go home” feeling as I considered the scores of information booths. I knew that to find my place on campus, I would have to start getting involved. Every booth was packed—except one. A sun-baked, disheveled man in his late 30s sat alone at the booth for women’s crew, something I knew absolutely nothing about. I walked up and said hello, mostly to kill some time while the other booth lines diminished. Little did I know how the days and months ahead would be determined by this innocent exchange. The salty sea dog was Murph, the novice women’s crew coach. He sized me up in three seconds, noting that, at 108 pounds, there wasn’t enough of me to carry an oar, let alone pull one. Having always considered myself an athlete, I was immediately challenged. But, he continued, I could cox. Intrigued, I showed up at the first meeting a few days later. Fifty-plus other coxswain hopefuls did, too, all vying for two eventual spots as the drivers of those paper-thin shells packed with eight rowers. Mostly out of curiosity, I kept showing up for meetings and then afternoon practices at picturesque Briones Reservoir. My competition shrank quickly to 20 other girls, then ten, and then four once the 6:30 a.m. practices began. By the time boats were being set for competition, only two of us were still showing up. As a decidedly non-morning person with 18 units, sorority activities, intramural football, and a long list of other interests, I wondered what the heck I had gotten myself into. But, somehow, I got assigned to the first boat. My rowers were eight terrific women athletes—any one of whom could have squished me with one thumb. Though our classification was “novice,” these gals were anything but newcomers to the sport. But I still felt I had no idea what I was doing. “I’m supposed to lead them?” I sobbed to an unsympathetic coach. In return, he gave me a book on somebody’s glory days of competitive rowing on the East Coast, a pat on the back, and made me renew my solemn oath to just keep showing up. And show up I did. Six days a week, twice a day near competitions. All I had going for me was a fierce commitment to never let my team down. The boat couldn’t launch without some hands to steer the rudder and a big mouth to lead the rowers’ strokes in and out of the water. And my seven seat, Beth, assured me my shrill screaming down the racecourse did get a rise in their adrenaline. As it turned out, my “engine room”—as we called the biggest rowers in the center of the boat—together with the finesse rowers at fore and aft, dragged my clueless self on to beat Harvard, among others, in our first regatta of the season. Stunned and overjoyed, we followed up with triumphs over Yale, UCLA, USC, SDSU—our entire schedule was marked with W’s. We celebrated Cal women’s crews’ first undefeated season and postseason, including a duel with Stanford where I steered a course that looked more like a ski slalom than a straight line.  We went on to win the first national championship title for Cal women’s sports when we fed our oar spray to the “unbeatable” Washington Huskies on their home turf of Green Lake. There, I almost sent everyone home with matchstick sized mementos of the win—we nearly crashed our racing shell into the dock at full speed just past the finish line. The pain fades as the glory days are remembered. The many hours I shared in the company of these fine athletes and friends were an enormous part of my Cal experience. In the pandemonium of my busy life these days, that “I just want to go home” feeling now means a trip back to Cal, if only in my thoughts. We invite alumni to write about their Cal experiences for “Recalling Cal,” California Monthly, Alumni House, Berkeley 94720. Contributors will be paid $100 upon publication. Back to Top |
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