The warm water on the west coast was just what the Buffalo rowing team was looking for.
The squad participated in the San Diego Crew Classic this past weekend and finished in third-place in a field of 16 teams.
The Bulls had to race in the preliminaries on Saturday to make the finals on Sunday. Going into the Cal Cup, Buffalo drew the second seed, behind only St. Joseph's. The top six teams made it to Sunday's event.
Buffalo was the king of the class in the preliminaries. The eight-person squad finished in first-place not only in their division but had the quickest time out of all the teams. The Bulls finished the race in a time of 7:05.89, which was eight seconds ahead of the second place school, Temple.
"I am very pleased that we won by the largest margin," said head coach Rudy Wieler. "The girls didn't have to push as had and there was no need to overdue the rowing."
The varsity eight team that raced in the event for Buffalo was junior coxswain Sher Briggs, senior stroke-seat Corinne Blum, sophomore seven-seat Melina DiCosimo, sophomore six-seat Lauren Sexton, sophomore five-seat Amanda Garbacz, freshman four-seat Tara Rudkoski, sophomore three-seat Bridget Yannes, junior two-seat Jackie Stone and junior bow-seat Jessica Hughes.
After their dominant performance in the preliminaries, the Bulls were hoping for the same results in the final race of the event. Unfortunately, Buffalo ended up crossing the line in third-place out of six teams with a time of 7:24.74.
The University of California-Santa Davis came in first-place at 7:20.49. St. Joseph's was next with a time of 7:23.20, followed by Buffalo, St. Mary's, Kansas State and Temple.
"It felt good to finally get back into a real race," Wieler said. "It is important for the team to get back into rowing at a race pace and not just at practice speed."
Buffalo took the initial lead right out of the gates of the race but couldn't hold onto first place. The team dropped as far back as fifth-place but was able to push for a late surge to capture third.
"We were ready to race in the beginning and jumped ahead early," Wieler said. "We were not ready to sustain this lead as the race went on."
The best parts of the race came in the beginning and the end. The Bulls were the fastest in the first and last 500 meters of the 2,000-meter race. The second 500 meters of the race, the team was third fastest. After the third segment of the race, Buffalo faltered, and turned the fifth fastest team.
"We raced as well as we could today," Wieler said. "I believe a lack of rowing and speed work affected how the middle thousandth of the race turned out."
This was the first actual race for the team after spring training and the results were just as strong as they were in the fall events.
Buffalo had not competed in a meet since the Syracuse Invitational, which was held on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2006.
"We haven't had any layoff since the fall season ended," Wieler said. "We trained all winter and for the last month we have spent 11-12 hours at a minimum per week practicing."
As an added bonus, Buffalo battled some of its future competition, as the Temple Owls will be competing against the Bulls in the Knecht Cup next weekend. The St. Joseph's Hawks will also match up against Buffalo later in the season.
"It is encouraging to see some of our opponents that we are going to face later in the season to see what they have and how good they are," Wieler said.
The next race for the rowing team is the Knecht Cup at Camden, N.J. The event will start on Saturday, April 14 and conclude the following day on Sunday, April 15.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
