Rowing has been part of the blue and gold experience since shortly after UC Berkeley opened its doors. In 1875, when the University Boat Club became Berkeley’s first athletic club, the sport of rowing was so popular that trains pulled stands full of fans to watch races unfold in real time. Today we have drones to capture the smooth bold strokes of Cal Men’s and Women’s Crew, and the shells are made of synthetic materials rather than wood, but rowing remains a uniquely collective endeavor that inspires deep dedication from its fans. The story of rowing at Cal is one of determination and community engagement, not to mention national championships and Olympic gold.
For 150 and 50 years respectively, Cal Men’s and Women’s Crew teams have been hitting the Oakland Estuary and the Briones Reservoir in the early morning hours to build the strength and collaboration required to win regional, national, and international races. Last October, Cal Men’s Crew celebrated their sesquicentennial with a weekend of friendly races and events that drew about 500 people — alumni, friends, and current and former team members — to reminisce and celebrate the sport at the T. Gary Rogers Boathouse. Last spring, Cal Women’s Crew celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. As both teams kick off a new season, coaches, student athletes, and fans are looking back on Cal Crew’s deep history and looking ahead to the medals to come.
Men's Crew oars courtesy of Cal Athletics
Chance encounters lead to teamwork
In an era of NIL (name, image, likeness) contracts and focus on star athletes, rowing remains a uniquely collaborative sport that builds long-term community if not stadium audiences. Over the years, when resources have been scarce, the Cal Crew community has consistently stepped up to support the teams. And even before Title IX made athletics more equitable, Berkeley students, alums, and friends saw to it that Cal Crew women had the opportunity to compete.
The late Gary Rogers, ’63, co-founder of Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream and steadfast UC Berkeley friend and supporter, was instrumental in ensuring that the rowing program thrives. In 1967, the men’s team qualified to compete in the national championships in New York state, but they did not have sufficient resources to pay for the travel. After raising funds to meet that urgent need, Head Coach Marty McNair came together with a group of passionate supporters to create the Alumni Rowing Club, which would help to ensure financial stability for the men’s team. Subsequently Rogers joined the group of supporters, which would become known as Friends of Cal Crew, to strengthen the fundraising vehicle for the sport that unexpectedly changed his life. Like many others who went on to join the team and find it a transformational experience, he came to rowing purely by happenstance.
“The saying goes that there was a blue line on the wall at registration and if you were tall enough to be over that line a coach would come up to you and ask if you knew about crew,” says Gary Rogers’s son Andy ’90, who was on the men’s team and currently serves as director of Friends of Cal Crew. A lacrosse player in high school, he was inspired by his father to check out rowing at Cal and quickly became involved, first as a dedicated team member, and then as an alum building community, raising funds, and producing a compelling video overview of the men’s team’s first 150 years. “Look, Cal Crew competes for a national championship every year. That’s just done. They can’t win every year. But you could try and support the programs set up to do that. My dad was a big piece of all this, but there are a lot of people who advised him. People [who have said] no, this is important. We’re going to make time in our lives to make this happen…We can find a way to pay for it.”
In 2004, Gary Rogers and a group of approximately one hundred passionate rowing alumni provided the resources to build the T. Gary Rogers Boathouse, which houses the men’s team. Though the women’s team sometimes uses the Rogers Boathouse to row on the estuary, they are based at the Briones Reservoir in Orinda. The new boathouse is built around the Ky Ebright Boathouse — named for the coach who oversaw Cal Men’s Crew from 1924 to 1959. Ebright, who was an assistant coach at University of Washington before he came to Berkeley in 1924, led Cal Men’s Crew to three Olympic gold medals. Part of what motivated his move south was that campus leaders in California and Washington hoped to cultivate healthy rowing competition on the West Coast. To this day, the University of Washington team is Cal Crew’s foremost rival.
Cal Men's Crew courtesy of Cal Athletics
A blue and gold medal era
“Until about 1960, the collegiate team that won the national championship or Olympic trials would go on to represent the US as the Olympic crew,” says Scott Frandsen ’02, head coach of Cal Men’s Crew. “Today the crew is a collection of athletes from all over the world, so it’s not a solely American college crew. In 1928, 1932, and 1948, Cal won the Olympic trials and then went on to win the Olympics. We are the only college team with three Olympic gold medals, and that will never be equaled. That Boys in the Boat book, which was great for the sport of rowing, that was all about Washington winning one Olympics in 1936. Cal won three.”
Frandsen started rowing as a junior in high school and he came to Berkeley intending to be on the team, but he notes that the early days really tested his meddle as an athlete. He worked hard and during his four years on the team, Cal Men’s Crew took home the national title every year. He went on row in the pair event for Canada in the Olympics three times, in London, Athens, and Beijing, where he took home the silver in 2008.
“I don’t think I would’ve been set on the trajectory to have the Olympics be a possibility if I hadn’t come to Cal,” he says, citing the competitive environment and the expertise of the coaches. Though he had long assumed he would pursue a career in banking after college, his desire to compete in the London Olympics drew him back to the rowing life. Later, when an opportunity arose to serve as assistant coach, he came back to Berkeley, thinking he’d just try it out for a while. Fourteen years later — six as assistant, followed by eight as head coach — he’s still leading the team. While the sport itself has not changed much, members of Cal Men’s Crew have, in recent years, improved their academic standing, and the team has received the Newmark Award, which celebrates academic achievement by student athletes, eight years in a row.
“Another thing that sets us apart is that you can do both at a very high level,” says Frandsen. “You can get a world-class degree that will set you up for life after rowing, while pursuing national championships and potentially Olympics if that’s what individual athletes want to pursue.”
Cal Women’s Crew: a ritual of growth
Cal women have been putting oars in the water since they founded the Women’s Boat Club in 1900. Before 1972, when Title IX improved access to competitive opportunities for female athletes, oarswomen and their advocates found ways for Cal women to compete with other West Coast clubs and teams. In the late 1960s, the women’s team, coached by Berkeley graduate students Art Sachs and Karl Dridla, began competing in Cal Women’s Crew uniforms, though they were not officially recognized by the university until after the passage of the landmark legislation that helps to ensure that colleges invest equally in men’s and women’s sports.
Supported by influential alumni, coaches for the men’s team, and passionate graduate and undergraduate athletes, Cal Women’s Crew stayed the course at the forefront of a growing sport. So far, they have qualified for 26 NCAA national championships and taken the title four times — in 2005, 2006, 2016, and 2018. Like the men’s team, they regularly send athletes to compete in the Olympics.
“In the last Olympics, we had five athletes competing, and three of our alums earned medals, one silver and two bronze,” says Acosta. “In the Olympics prior to that, in Tokyo, we had six athletes competing, six of our alums, and we won two gold and one bronze. We’ve had a rower or a coach at just about every Olympics since 1984.”
Since 1997, when the NCAA started sponsoring women’s rowing, there has been huge growth in the sport at the collegiate level. Universities known for football, such as University of Michigan, Notre Dame, and Ohio State started women’s rowing teams. High school teams started sprouting up as well, and the recruitment landscape has become more competitive and international. While the women’s team is supported through the Cal Athletics Fund and by Cal Athletics as a whole, they don’t have the equivalent of the Friends of Cal Crew, an outside entity that provides support and develops fundraising strategy. Nevertheless, Cal Women’s Crew attracts and develops top athletes, persists, and wins.
In a video about the evolution of Cal Women’s Crew, members of the team both pre- and post-Title IX reflected on the ways that rowing shaped their lives. Whether they discovered rowing because a flyer caught their eye, or they came to Cal planning to get on the water, the sport became a throughline for connection, commitment, and dedication. Not to mention the magic of getting out on the water in the early morning hours.
“It’s been the blessing of my life. There was all this process…we sanded the boat we rowed in…taking care of it and each other…when you hear the birds in the morning, or there’s a light wind, it was magical, all part of this ritual of growth,” said Pat Spratlen Etem ’79, who won a gold at the Lucerne International Regatta, medaled in the World Rowing Championships, and competed in the 1984 Olympics. She is also the mother of Elise Etem ’12, who rowed with Cal Women’s Crew and won the Pac-12 Athlete of the Year Award. “It’s not just about you being in a good spot, it’s about helping other people be in a better spot.”
