As expected from early season reports, UCSB provided some great racing on every level. Their depth and numbers proved to be too much for us in four out of five races with the closest competition in the novice events. On the varsity side of things the V8 was a hard fought battle. We came out with the goal of not repeating last year's mistake of not checking into the fight. The V was successful as we came off the line hot and managed a close race through the 1000. In the third 500 we were able to keep things close but UCSB started to pull out front. We fought hard and maintained contact until the final sprint where they pulled out and cracked open water in route to a 4 second victory. In all, a great effort by both crews. In the JV we were a little too soft off the start and a very good UCSB boat got up early and never looked back. We were able to hold off a hard charging UCSB 3V but ended up dropping 11.9 seconds to the UCSB JV. The V4s were dominated again by UCSB. Our first four showed how much energy the 8 took out of the guys and were able to stay in front of UCSB’s B four but never mounted much of a challenge for their first four. In reflection, although it is nice to win, we competed well and UCSB is fast. We hope to make adjustments and improvements throughout the season and look forward to the challenge of seeing them again in SD, at WIRAs, and ACRAs.

The Novice 4 came out on top. In a very good race the 4 jumped out ahead of UCSB and stayed ahead for the rest of the race sitting up and rowing strong. The Novice 8 was a close race resulting in UCSB coming out on top by only .4 seconds!! At the start of the race Davis was a couple seats up but as the race progressed UCSB worked back into the race and moved up to about a length up. With 750 meters left to go Davis began to move back into UCSB. Going into the last 500 the boats were even and battled it out until the last stroke when UCSB came out on top. Overall a good day of racing for the Novices.

Thanks in part to mother nature we had an outstanding day at the 2012 Davis Invite. The varsity boats lead the way going 4/4 against some great competition. As always Santa Clara's varsity eight challenged us all the way down the course but in the end we were able to come away with the narrowest victory in the past four years, 2 seconds. The JV eight showed our depth this year by rowing away to victory 9 seconds in front of the competition. The varsity followed up their performance in the big boats by winning the fours races later in the day. All in all a good start to the season but we know that we will have our hands full next weekend against UCSB.

The novice squad had a good day as well. In the novice eight we were honored to have the Stanford Cardinal to lineup against. Along with Stanford the other competitors brought out the best performance from a novice eight in the past four years. Finishing second to an impressive Stanford crew our novice laid down a 6:44, five seconds in front of a tuff Sonoma State crew. After a rough start against Santa Clara, Saint Mary's and Sonoma State the Davis novice fours were near the back of the pack. After the start both fours found their rhythm and moved through the pack. Unfortunately the novice fours ran out of water and the A four finished 3 seconds behind Sonoma State and the B four 5 seconds behind the A boat. All novice boats learned a little about racing and that they cannot let themselves run out of water.

Kevin Clark 92
Jeremy Burlingame 98
Brad Day 01
Charley Johnston 02
Zack Zoller 02
Adam Donovan 03
Andrew Mittleman 03
Scott McCauley 03
Justin Roberts 04
Chris Brown 05
Ryan West 06
Shane Dorrian 07
Chris Gemulla 07
Tyler Jones-Powel 07
Aaron McKenzie 07
Johnathan Leiberman 07
Stephen Held 08
Vince Rodgers 08
Allen Tolleth 10
Chad Christiansen 10
Joel Smith 10
Will Weirsig 11
Nick Toy 12