San Diego Crew Classic Day One...It's all downhill from here.

Finally! Racing opened with the men's and women's Cal Cup, the Copley Cup, and the Jessop-Whittier Cup. One might wonder at how the more important, or rather, the more serious races have heats in the Saturday morning without wind and then get the fairness blown out of the water with the Sunday afternoon finals.

Anyway, since the actual results can be found online, I guess I'll share a few observations before I head off to the finals today:

Men's Cal Cup
With 19 competing schools, this has become the most, shall we say, relevant men's division at the Crew Classic. Lehigh, Minnesota, Notre Dame, and Texas were the only non-West Coast/Pac-10 schools to show here, but they will have an impact, as Lehigh took the fastest (does that mean anything?) time in all the heats to advance to the Grand Final. The announcers made the point that Cal Cup winners were no longer required to race up in the Copley the next year any more, which may have contributed to the numbers disparity between the events. Let's hope that the Cal Cup winners give a thought to pressing the bigger names in the Copley.

Women's Cal Cup
Arizona State, Villanova, Temple, Lehigh, St. Joseph's, West Virginia and SUNY Buffalo stand out as the geographic visitors this year. That's a nicely larger group of visitors than the men's Cal Cup entries, and you can note that the Jessop-Whittier Cup entries are still at a healthy level, unlike the Copley (Title IX funding?). Arizona State has a very young team rowing on Tempe Lake (desert rowing!), and they even fielded 33% of the Coggeshall Cup (women's lights) entries. UC-Davis has the fastest time in the event heats, although some schools may be playing it safe and pressing only to qualify. At around 9AM Sunday, the wind isn't terribly enough to make a huge difference between lane 1 and lane 5. We should give due respect to Davis, however, for having the guts to go after Kansas State, a funded Big 12 program with a top-flight coach. K-State advances to the Grand Final as well from that heat, sending West Virginia.

Copley Cup:
In all honesty, having two heats of two is almost silly. The final may turn out to be a dual race between Cal and Stanford, if last year's results are any indicator. Preseason rankings have Cal and Stanford at #2 and #7, respectively, with Oregon State a distant #19. Well, this is a preseason race, and we'll see how our coaching prognosticators fared this preseason.

Jessop-Whittier Cup:
Southern California looks to be the class of the event from the heat times (yeah yeah, I know). In fact, Southern California put down the fastest times for all the collegiate women's events they've entered, much as Cal's men did in all their events. Looks to be another good year in store for those two schools.

Guelker Cup (frosh men):
Perhaps the SDCC stewards should also require the winners of the Guelker Cup to race up in the Copley next year, although it's only been Cal winning this event year after year, so that wouldn't make a difference. Northeastern showed some speed as the winner of their heat and the farthest visitor in the event--they raced in Boston Red Sox jerseys. There are no other Northeastern entries in all the regatta however. Perhaps it's good to just be a frosh at Northeastern.

Korholz Trophy (women's frosh):
Southern California led the event, which fields 21 entries (three heats of seven!) Arizona State and Sonoma State have entries in this event, which bodes well for their budding programs. West Virgnia, Kansas State, Colorado, and St Joseph's have the visitor's distinction.

Coggeshall Cup:
Three entries, one heat, three lanes. If they had to have a heat, then this is understandable. Otherwise, I wonder how hard each crew really wanted to press in Saturday's heat. Arizona State and Chapman may be hard pressed to match Stanford, who is looking to return to lightweight glory.

Well, it's time for me to go watch the finals. Early morning posting is what I get for late night socializing--something that would have been unheard of if I'd been competing. On the other hand, I don't get to compete. Not this year, anyway...