A mighty duel

Taking the "shirt off my back" has long been a part of American vernacular, but few know that it comes from an English rowing phenomenon.

That phenomenon has crossed the Atlantic Ocean and will happen at the end of Saturday's race between the Washington and Cal men's varsity eights.

The members of the losing team will give the winners their jerseys.

"The jersey is symbolic of all the work we put in," said sophomore John Lorton. "You have to look them in the eye, shake their hands and give them the fruits of your labor. Can you imagine if Purdue had to give up their number after losing the Rose Bowl?"

While it's hard to imagine on the gridiron, rowing is full of traditions that are not often celebrated in the new age of college sports. Crew was the first intercollegiate sport in the United States, dating back to ancient Harvard-Yale duels.

Despite the image that rowing is dominated by Ivy League preppies, two Pac-10 schools have been butting heads since 1903.

"This rivalry is old-school," said JV sophomore Morgan West. "Guys from the '40s and '50s don't want to see curse words in the paper; we put in the miles on the water, and that's where we want to beat them."

It's a far cry from the things Oregon fans do when UW's football team travels to Eugene, but despite the respect and honor associated with the sport, these two men's programs have had spats.

In 1998, at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) championship regatta, Cal rower Nito Simonsen poured Gatorade off a bridge on the Husky varsity eight. The act was mildly malicious, but it reveals the disparity of how these two programs treat the rivalry.

"Typically we're the top two teams on the West Coast, and racing them four times a year helps," said frosh coach Fred Honebein, who rowed at Cal. There's no conflict of interest here, though. Honebein illustrates his current loyalty to his team, explaining that if he were coaching in a communist country he would root against the United States' boat. "Cal fans have a real distaste for Washington, they can even be a little abrasive."

The bitterness makes sense because the Huskies have won 64 races to Cal's 25. The two teams even managed to tie once in 1963. The lopsided series has certainly fueled Cal's fire, especially now that it has won two straight IRA titles. Lorton recalls a trip he made with a high school friend named Robbie Curran, who decided to row at Cal, which opened his eyes to Cal's mentality.

"Robbie introduced me to this one kid (on Cal's team), I shake his hand and then Rob says, 'John goes to UW.' The guy pulled his hand away and walked off."

Between 1920 and 1950, either Cal or the UW won the IRA national championship 15 times, and routinely their varsity eights represented the United States in the Olympics, with the Huskies earning gold at the 1936 games in Berlin.

The programs have moved in different directions as of late, supplemented by the lack of rules regulating men's rowing. Using scholarship endowments from alumni (Cal's big donor is the owner of Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream) and aggressive recruiting by coach Steve Gladstone, Cal has gone from the South Pacific to the Eastern Bloc to recruit international Olympians.

The Bears even have Canadian Olympian Kevin White in their JV boat.

Husky varsity coach Bob Ernst, who is more concerned with the purpose of intercollegiate athletics, has primarily recruited local kids from Washington and British Columbia.

"So far, everything [the Bears] are doing is within the rules," said Ernst. "They have recruited a unique group of athletes, but we can't complain. We just maintain a more traditional approach to intercollegiate rowing."

Tradition has always come first at Washington, probably because rowing, as we know it, has strong ties to the Emerald City. Seattle natives Hiram Conibear, who invented the stroke as it is today, and George Pocock, who built the sleek boats that allow Husky crews to cut through Montlake Cut, are two of the sport's founding fathers.

While the men's crew bleeds rowing tradition, the younger Husky women's program just wants some competition on the West Coast. The women have won nine IRA titles in 21 years, and under coach Jan Harville, who has won the Pac-10 coach of the year award seven times, they didn't lose a collegiate race for two years between 1997 and 1998.

Their dominance has reduced the rivalry into just another race.

"I don't think we are quite so malicious; it's just not in our nature," said women's novice coach Eleanor McElvaine. "When Cal beat us at national championships in '99, their response was memorable; it was like they won the Olympics, but that's the burden you bear when you are a top program."

The women's team has benefited from being an NCAA-sanctioned sport, complete with scholarships. In order to be competitive, it has recruited overseas as well, but its success is due mostly to hard work.

"When we practice, 90 percent of humanity is asleep," said McElvaine. "We hear more noise from birds than people."

Saturday morning, the team's differences will be evident. McElvaine believes the women's boats have an advantage rowing on their own water, while Ernst sees the cut as just another fair course.

"Rowing is a concentration game, your home course will have fewer distractions. Going through the cut can be distracting, especially when it's loud."

The age of these programs by itself makes every race a historical event, and another chapter will be written into their epic history when the oars touch Lake Washington tomorrow.

"We've been doing this for 75 or 80 years, we are the originals on the West Coast," said Ernst.

"This is the one."