In 1960, Del Beekley led the effort to restart the rowing program at San Diego State. Back then, the team would row out of the 1891 Rowing Club at the foot of 5th Avenue, San Diego Bay. I showed up for the first meeting in a coat-&-tie. Del got me on a rowing machine then told me to report for practice the next week.
If I remember correctly, we worked out six times a week – 5 regular practices and a Saturday morning endurance run to the salt pile in Chula Vista. Every so often we would row west and dodge the Coronado ferry boats. We gained a lot of experience in rough waters. The Navy guys quickly learned if they cut across our bow the wake would swamp us, and seemed to enjoy attempting to do so. Most workouts were late afternoons and ended with dark waters, silhouettes, cold and wet. The winner of the final sprint of the practice got first dibs for the only warm-water showers available – that kept us motivated.
Most races I stroked the JV (lightweight) boat. However, Coach put me in the number-2 seat in the Varsity boat often enough that I lettered (Crew was a Varsity sport back then). I really enjoyed the combination of physics and zen that is rowing.
I was raised in Pacific Beach and called San Diego home through college, but I moved around a lot after graduation. I spent five years in the Air Force, two years in graduate school at Stanford, two years in New York, and finally two years in San Francisco before coming back to San Diego. I am now happily retired.
I love and enjoy my kids and grandkids. I have been heading out to the Sierras every summer for the last twenty-plus years with a great bunch of guys. There is a sense of teamwork involved with camping that is not unlike the special teamwork of rowing.
Crew has a very special place in my heart!
Born in Romania, Levi immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1998. His heart was set on joining the Marine Corps since he was 12 years old, but his dreams were dashed when his parents refused to sign the paperwork to allow him to join at 17. Not yet possessing the cognitive abilities to decide to wait one year, Levi set himself to taking the ACT and SAT, and applying for any and all colleges in the last month applications were open. Secretly hoping to be accepted into San Diego State, his (new) dream finally came true and he was admitted into the school through the International Business Management major.
Bernie rowed as a lightweight under coaches Brian Robison, Derek Snyder, Doug Perez, and Toby Johnson. His years at SDSU were sleep deprived, and are now a fogged out memory. However, one of his earliest anecdotes at SDSU involved this lack of sleep. One day, after a killer evening erg, he fell asleep on a bench outside Tenochca. That was his bed for the night, and 4:30 in the morning his teammates woke him up to go to morning practice. Henceforth, the crew team claimed his dreams and soul. While at school, he worked harder, not smarter. But his discipline skated him through difficult times, and a tenacity to take on any endeavor to graduate and succeed in sport got him through school with a degree, a collection of tanks, and a reputation.
However, the rowing bug had bit Bernie hard and he made a terrible economic decision. He put the engineer career on hold to row professionally. He moved to Philadelphia, where he lives in a monastery and rows with Vesper as they prepare a team for the next international race. The dream put in his head on a bench outside T-Nasty has now become the real nightmare.
As a 5th year senior at SDSU in ’73/’74, it was my last year to get a Varsity jacket. As a Community College transfer, I sat out the spring semester so I could start in the Fall of ’71 with all the other new students. Tennis was my primary sport at the time. However, my JC did not have tennis and the Athletic Director would not let me start a program, hence my tennis career took a nosedive – other than me teaching private lessons and entering SoCal tournaments.
Long story short, my roommate was right; we made the Varsity. We raced in the Western Sprints up in Canada at the end of the season in a Varsity 4+ and made it through the heats and reps to make the final where we finished 5th. Back in those days all the crews on the west coast raced in the Western Sprints. That included Washington, Cal, Stanford, UCLA, Long Beach, UCLA, Santa Barbara and several Oregon schools.