Posted: Apr 26, 2015

Pirates fare well at WIRAs!

FOLSOM -- Orange Coast College men's crew picked up a pair of hard-earned victories at the 2015 Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association (WIRA) Championships this weekend at Lake Natoma.

A pair of Pirate rowers -- Grant Coultrup and Benjamin Williams -- competed in the regatta's first-ever Varsity Double race and the OCC duo topped an impressive field with a winning time of 7 minutes, 14.8 seconds, over 10 seconds better than second-place Seattle University (7:25.2) and over 13 seconds ahead of third-place Washington State (7:27.9). UC Santa Barbara (7:38.4) finished fourth, while UCLA (7:47.4) placed fifth.

"Grant & Ben are not the biggest guys on the team, but they work very hard and really deserve this victory," OCC head coach Paul Prioleau said. "They basically rowed the boat very well, and just walked away from the field throughout the whole race."

Another big win for the Pirates came in the Second Novice 8 race, where seven Coast athletes who never rowed before this year took boats from Washington State, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine and San Diego State and beat them all with a winning time of 6:23.1. WSU finished second (6:31.8), while UCSB (6:37.6), UCI (6:52.6) and SDSU (7:06.5) completed the results of the race. OCC rowers in that race were Joshua Wills-King, Maxwell Hadden, Dominik Tortes, Barry Ballard, Chad Kessloff, Ivan Mendez, Aria Azadi, Daniel McNamara and Claire Harbutt (coxswain).

Another impressive outing came from Novice 8 crew of Garinn Morton, Logan Atkeson, Lorenzo Salvio, David Ulicki, Logan Carter, Weston Cole, Mikel Berasaluce, Jacob Stauder and Chase Wray (coxswain), who placed second in their Finals race, then, rowed back to the starting line and competed in the JV 8 race less than an hour later and finished third with a time of

Other stories on the regatta are that our Novice 8 doubled up and rowed as the JV 8 as well. They placed second in the Novice 8 final with a time of 6:22.4 before rowing back to starting line and taking third place in the JV event 50 mins later with a time of 6:32.4.

The Varsity had a good race, but were overpowered by four other four-year schools to get a fifth-place finish. In that race, three of the six boats had Coast athletes or alumni rowing in them, with recent alumni rowing for Santa Barbara and UC San Diego. "That is a familiar theme where we develop rowers here at Coast, and then transfer them to other good programs and race against them for the next two years," Prioleau said.

The Pirates will return to the friendly waters of the Newport Harbor for the 2015 Newport Regatta, which is set to begin at 7 a.m. on Saturday, May 9.

PIRATE FACILITIES