Men's Crew claims first-ever Collins Cup win over UC Irvine
NEWPORT BEACH -- The Orange Coast College men's crew took on UC Irvine in the inaugural Collins Cup and the Pirates will stake claim as the first-ever winner of the trophy with a comeback win in the Varsity 8 race on Saturday in the Newport Harbor.
A longtime competition of women's crew, the Pirates and Anteaters kicked off their first cup battle on the men's side under fast racing conditions and early on, it looked like UCI was going to take home the trophy with a sizeable lead at the start.
"At about the 250-yard mark, UCI had about a boat-length lead," OCC head coach Cam Brown said. "But slowly, we managed to chip away into that lead and the guys showed a lot of patience and determination to make that happen."
I nearly took the entire length of the 2,000-yard race for the Pirates to overcome that hot start by the Anteaters, but finally, with about 250 yards to go, Coast pulled even, then, ahead of UCI.
With that final hard push, the Varsity 8 team of Chase Wray (coxswain), Garinn Morton, Weston Cole, Logan Carter, Ben Orem, Maxwell Hadden, David Ulicki, Sam Melvin and Jacob Studer crossed the finish line with a time of 5 minutes, 51.08, edging out UCI, which took second with a time of 5:51.3.
"UCI is a team that gets better as the season goes on, so I knew we were up against a tough team," Brown said. "We will see them again in a couple weeks at WIRAs and they will be even better then, so we need to continue to work hard and be ready for another tough race."
In the 2nd Varsity 8 race, both of OCC's Novice A (6:08.7) and Novice B (6:19.0) teams surpassed UCI's crew time of 6:22.2, while in the Varsity 4 race, it was OCC vs. OCC with the Varsity team (6:45.3) topping the Novice squad (7:05.8).
The Pirates will return to the waters on Saturday at the Stanford Invitational, beginning at 7 a.m.
